Writing · Research · Critical Thinking

2025

Supervisor: Annina Koivu, Brynjar Sigurdson, Paula Muhlena

Abstract:

We all have a memory of lifting an object. Whether it was surprisingly heavy or surprisingly light, weight is a quality we associate with physical goods only relevant when we transport them.

Everything in the manufactured world must be transported. From the moment a raw material is extracted, to when it is processed and distributed, without transportation our products will not have a use.

The transportation of goods can be distinguished into two categories: industrial transportation-complex logistical systems responsible for the delivery of consumer goods globally, and human transportation-physical lifting, from the clothes you wear, cellphone you carry in your pocket or sofa you may need to move into your home.

Whether heavy or light, Please Handle With Care is an investigation into the role weight plays within product design in the context of transportation, use and sustainability.

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1. Introduction

When I was eight years old my parents took me to the Henry Ford Museum in our neighboring city of Detroit Michigan. I stood in front of an exploded display of a Ford Model-T for what felt like an hour examining all of its parts and components and ran circles through a shiny sheet metal hut like home. Fast forward twelve years to a lecture hall in architecture school, where an image of that exact dwelling appeared on the screen: Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion House.

"How much does your house weigh?" This typical provocation by Fuller was aimed at critics of his Dymaxion House, a radically new environment for dwelling introduced in 1927 and so named for its "maximum gain of advantage from minimal energy input." This 1,600-square-foot house remarkably weighed only three tons with its cost was about the same as the price of a car. The dream of a low-cost factory-built house captured the attention of many socially conscious architects in the twentieth century: if the automobile industry could mass-produce their products quickly, efficiently, and relatively cheaply, why couldn't a similar system be applied to housing?¹

But why should something so stationary as a building (never to be lifted by a human without the use of heavy equipment) consider its inherent weight?

The concern of weight is commonly thought to be most relevant in the sporting industry. Whether that be the elimination of any additional gram on hiking and back-packing gear for cooking, trekking and sleeping to make your trip more physically bearable, or innovations in performance equipment to break new records and compete, we often associate the reduction of weight with physical performance. And what had begun with a personal interest in “ultra-light" gear and the outdoor industry quickly evolved with a realization that everything in the manufactured world must be transported. From the moment raw material is extracted from the earth to its processing into a consumer product and eventual distribution, without transportation our products will have no use.

If not considering back-packing or hiking equipment, then we often think of the transportation of goods from a logistical lens: the shipping and handling of goods using worldwide services such as FedEx, UPS, or DHL. “Flat-pack” has become the common universal symbol for what it means to design for transportation, but the transportation of goods happens on a daily basis and on a more personal level. Whether that be the weight of the cellphone you carry in your pocket, the shoes you wear on your feet, or the sofa that needs to be rearranged in your home, there is an inevitable interaction with the mass of our belongings.

1. R. Buckminster Fuller. A Minimum Dymaxion Home Project (Elevation, Axonometric, and Plan). 1927 | Moma, www.moma.org/collection/works/804. Accessed 8 Nov. 2024.

2. Weight and Industrial Transportation Systems

In the case of consumer buyer behavior, “a customer is less likely to buy an armchair, or piece of furniture, if they need to pay 20% more of the price in transportation of the item due to its weight exceeding the 31.5kg benchmark. The surcharge in shipping is enough to make someone reevaluate if they truly want to purchase something.”² - Nicolai De Gier, founder and CEO of Danish Furniture brand TAKT.

As humans, we put far too much effort into moving goods around, including ourselves. But thanks to the invention and standardization of the shipping container, among other things, globalization is enabled, and everything is now just a shipload away.³ So then why is weight relevant when we use industrial means of transportation? Afterall, whether air, sea, rail or land-modern means of freight transportation utilizes heavy-duty vehicles to move as large quantities of goods as possible.

Traditionally, the transportation of goods has an unexpected constant of roughly 3% of total cost. This principle emerged with the appearance of the silk road, where goods needed to be light-weight and non-voluminous to be carried by animals.⁴ In a recent interview with CEO of global supply chain company, Raphael Tomashof explains that within logistics, when standards are introduced the process of moving goods becomes complexified, and there is a constant balance between the gross weight (simply the entire shipment weight, typically expressed in kilograms) and volumetric weight (also expressed in kilograms but based on your shipment’s dimensions [length, width and height in centimetres], to which a density ratio is applied based on the vehicle of movement) of cargo as their modes of transportation need to be adjusted based on weight limitations and volumes.^{5 6} But despite the industrial capabilities of modern trucks, ships, airplanes and trains, the principle seen in how goods were moved through the Silk Road remains relevant: there will always be constraints on how much weight can be carried, whether by vehicle or living being.

In the shipping industry, heavy packages are considered to weigh over 31.5kg, and any shipment of more than 68 kg is considered freight. Freight can be a single large item, or many items collected and packaged as part of a pallet.⁷ But why is 31.5kg a benchmark for shipping surcharges, and how has this become a design consideration especially in the context of furniture industry?

The moment that something is carried by a human, health and liability protocols are in effect. In the context of delivering a parcel to your door, which regulations vary from country to country, the average human can carry something that weighs around 31.5kg only a certain number of times per day. ⁸ This requires additional manual handling or equipment (such as forklifts or dollies), which adds to labor costs. Carriers may also need to follow specific safety protocols to prevent injuries, increasing handling expenses and contributing to higher shipping costs for heavier items.
Now throughout many different areas of the world, the human delivery of parcels is inevitably the last step in the complex logistical process which enables you to receive your goods, and as long as humans are physically interacting with objects, their associated weights will remain relevant.

2 Caruso, James, and Nicolai De Gier. “TAKT, on Weight, Logistics and the Furniture Industry.” 23 Oct. 2024.
3 “Björn Steinar Blumenstein and Johanna Seelemann Tackles Consumerism and Food Waste || Antenna 2017.” YouTube, YouTube, Accessed 13 Nov. 2024.
4 Beukers, Adriaan, and Ed Van Hinte. Designing Lightness: Structures for Saving Energy. Nai010 Publishings, 2020. p 53
5 Caruso, James, and Raphael Tomashof. “Introduction to Supply Chain Management .” 30 Nov. 2024.
6 “Calculating Chargeable Weight by Air, Ocean, Road and Rail.” DHL, www.dhl.com/us-en/home/global-forwarding/freight-forwarding-education-center/calculating-chargeable-weights.html. Accessed 19 Nov. 2024.
7 “Large Item Shipping with DHL.” DHL, www.dhl.com/us-en/home/dhl-for-your-business/shipping-challenges/heavy-large-or-unusually-shaped-item-shipping.html. Accessed 15 Nov. 2024.
8 Caruso, James, and Raphael Tomashof. “Introduction to Supply Chain Management .” 30 Nov. 2024.

3. Human Perception of Weight

Weight has a visual quality that we often recognize before we interact with a product from our personal lived experiences. Nicolai De Gier describes how materials have “signal values” and gives an example of interacting with an Ash dining table: “If you were to attempt to pick up what appeared to be something constructed from solid wood and if it was surprisingly light weight, something in your mind could potentially feel off. This contributes to what are called ‘quality markers’ in product design and can impact the overall perception of a product.”⁹
In an article titled “Object Perception: Where Do We See the Weight?” the exploration of Milner and Goodale’s two-stream hypothesis proposes that visual processing in the brain is divided into two streams: the dorsal stream for guiding actions and the ventral stream for identifying objects. A new study, however, suggests that object characteristics influencing action, like weight, are represented within the ventral stream. Using fMRI, the researchers observed that areas typically linked to object recognition in the ventral stream also respond to weight expectations based on visual cues, such as texture, even when the objects appear identical. These findings imply that the ventral stream’s role extends beyond identification to include certain action-related information. This challenges a strict division between the dorsal and ventral streams, highlighting that both streams can contribute to actions like adjusting grip force based on anticipated weight. While the two-stream model remains valid, these results underscore a more complex interaction between perception and action, suggesting that expectations based on experience and visual properties can shape our actions through shared neural pathways.¹⁰

We all have a memory of lifting an object. Whether it was surprisingly light, or surprisingly heavy, weight is a physical quality we can only associate with materiality and our lived experience. So, if you attempted to lift a piano, or move your sofa across your living room, can you imagine how you would adjust the tension in your muscles or change your posture and stance?

9 Caruso, James, and Nicolai De Gier. “TAKT, on Weight, Logistics and the Furniture Industry.” 23 Oct. 2024.
10 Kentridge, Robert W. “Object Perception: Where Do We See the Weight?” Current Biology, Cell Press, 18 Aug. 2014, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214008240?ref=pdf_download&fr=RR-2&rr=8f16acf8ed586aa0.

4. Made To Move: Products Which Consider How Humans Can Move Them

"Modern living seems to rely on a balance of informality and structure, temporality and permanence. A lot like the humble wire basket." In an interview with Sam Hecht and Kim Collins of London based design studio Industrial Facility, the design of a Wireframe Sofa for Herman Miller revolves around how an individual can carry and move it by themselves.11 "It's genuinely surprising when a sofa cannot be swung around to watch a film through a projector or be moved from one room to another by fitting easily through a standard door frame,"12 The sofa is distinguished by its wire-frame structure, which carefully holds the contoured cushions into place. The wire-frame base has been a tradition in Herman Miller pieces, last used by Bertoia and “intriguing because they have the ability to create structure with very little mass". As a result, the Wireframe Sofa is considerably lighter than other sofas of similar size, giving it an advantage when moving or making small adjustments. In addition, it results in less material waste and a lighter package for shipping to the customer.

“Weight has scarcely been a design issue. This is certainly true of furniture in general. One can purchase lightweight chairs and tables, but with very few exceptions they are meant for the camping market. Even logistics champion IKEA could put much more effort into weight reduction. No sooner have their customers unboxed their products and assembled them that they will forget about the effort it took to drag the packages insides and handle the heavy fiberboard planks?13

So then why should designers consider the weight of their products or what they are designing, and how is this a relevant characteristic for how we live with our material items?

We must look no further than the cellphones sitting in our pockets, or the wireless headphones in our ears or the laptops and smart devices we carry to understand how prioritizing the reduction of weight in product design has impacted many people in daily life. The invention of Lithylene batteries, which first appeared on the market in fall 2002 and following developments into pre-shaped Lithium-Ion batteries affords new opportunities for design in mobile devices.14 What was before considered the heaviest and bulkiest component of electronic devices - a mobile phone being a nearly 5kg briefcase carried by a handle15 - now enables the mobility to transport devices in our pockets to wearing them on our bodies.

Perhaps the ease of mobility of our items can incentivize the longevity of how long we keep them. But more importantly, if we consider the transportation of our goods on a human scale, it will only make it easier for us to move them to our next destination: whether that be a new home, the room next to us or commuting to work.

11 Caruso, James, and Kim Collins. “Wireframe Sofa for Herman Miller” 17 Oct. 2024.
12 Dezeen staff | 4 June 2020. “Wireframe Sofa by Sam Hecht and Kim Colin for Herman Miller.” Dezeen, 26 Jan. 2021, www.dezeen.com/2020/06/04/wireframe-sofa-herman-miller-vdf-products-fair/.
13 Beukers, Adriaan, and Ed Van Hinte. Designing Lightness: Structures for Saving Energy. Nai010 Publishings, 2020. p 37
14 Stattmann, Nicola. Ultra Light - Super Strong: A New Generation of Design Materials. Birkhäuser, 2003. p 17

5. Weight, Transportation and Environmental Impact

“Within supply chain management, transportation energy will always be a consideration when moving goods. And if we compare the transportation of aluminum ingots vs toilet paper, toilet paper will underutilize the weight limit of the carrying vehicle before maximizing the capable volume. Alternatively, the aluminum ingots will likely exceed the weight limitation of the carrying vehicle before utilizing the entire volume- it is now required to use a larger carrying vehicle which consumes more fuel contributing to higher emissions.”16

As with physical labor, we inherently understand the basic principle that to move more weight requires more energy. So how does the reduction of weight play a role in environmental impacts and sustainability when transporting goods? And how does reducing the weight of a product impact on our experience using it?

Stockholm based design agency Form Us With Love responds to the wasteful cosmetics industry with a clever venture into redesigning the common household handwash. “The problem is obvious: liquid soap is essentially bottled water. By making the simple switch to a powder solution, FORGO cuts out single-use plastic altogether and dramatically reduces the environmental impact of shipping personal care products. 30 refills ship in the space of one bottle.”17 A single paper sachet contains 12 grams of powder and creates 250 milliliters of hand soap, and by having the customer fill the bottle with water (an ingredient you likely have at home) the emissions produced by shipping larger and heavier containers can be dramatically reduced.

In a case study on toilet paper performed with Kimberly-Clark, an American multinational consumer goods and personal care corporation that produces mostly paper-based consumer products, Raphael Tomashof explains how optimizing a product for transportation impacts its use. “We did an exercise with them when the products left the packaging line. Since the centre of a toilet paper roll is empty, and essentially just air, we compressed them allowing the cost to be reduced by fifteen to twenty percent in just transportation.”

While compressing toilet paper rolls reduces shipping costs and environmental impact, it also alters the familiar interaction we expect from such a ubiquitous object. This raises a broader question, as with the hand soap—how can designers balance logistical efficiency with the everyday usability and enjoyment of products? These considerations go beyond mere convenience; they directly influence sustainability metrics. Since transportation emissions are often quantified in kilograms or metric tons18, even small reductions in product weight can have a significant impact when scaled globally. By reassessing the balance between material use and user experience, designers have the opportunity to rethink the way we interact with essential goods while reducing their environmental burden.

15 “The Cellphones of the 1980s.” TechCentral, 5 Jan. 2015, techcentral.co.za/the-cellphones-of-the-1980s/191544/.
16 Caruso, James, and Raphael Tomashof. “Introduction to Supply Chain Management .” 30 Nov. 2024.
17 “Forgo Handwash.” Form Us With Love, www.formuswithlove.se/work/forgo/. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.
18 “Carbon Footprint Units of Measurement.” Leaf Huella de Carbono, 2 Apr. 2024, leaf-si.com/units-of-measurement-for-the-carbon-footprint/.

6. Conclusion

“Within the last decades, we have seen a shift in lifestyles compared to previous generations, [and in the context of the housing market] more and more people are renting compared to buying and moving more frequently. The consideration of how we move our goods is becoming more relevant than before.” - Oli Stratford, editor in chief of Disegno Magazine in discussion of pre-jury review.

It was not until I began to move across countries and continents via air travel that I became aware of the weight of my belongings. The checked bag soon became the bounding box for which size, and weight, of my personal goods I could bring to my next home, typically leaving furniture behind.

Please Handle With Care began as an investigation into "Ultra-Light" equipment, the relationship with the mass of our belongings, and how we personally move our goods. What started as a curiosity about the weight of objects in the outdoor industry expanded into a broader exploration of how weight plays a role in industrial transportation, product perception, and environmental sustainability.

Through interviews with researchers, designers, and CEOs, from independent studios to global supply chain networks to commercial furniture brands, what was revealed is that weight is not just a technical specification but an embedded factor in design, logistics, and human experience. Furthermore, weight directly impacts transportation costs, energy consumption, and environmental footprints. Whether it is through reducing shipping surcharges, making products more adaptable to human-scale movement, or minimizing carbon emissions, the reduction of weight in design has far-reaching consequences-from a sofa to a bottle of hand soap.

Ultimately, weight is an essential yet often overlooked aspect of design that influences how we live with and interact with our objects. By understanding and designing with weight in mind, we can create products that are suited for a world where movement, adaptability, and sustainability are becoming ever more critical.

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