ETERNALIZE THE FLEETING
ETERNALIZE THE FLEETING
How can visual design strategies transform ephemeral moments into enduring forms that merge fleeting and eternal time dimensions?
Final Major Project | UAL
This project was my Final Major Project in Design for Art Direction at UAL, presented at the Final Exhibition on November 28, 2024. It is divided into two distinct parts:
Ehemerality & Permanence
The project explores Kairos—the opportune moment—contrasting it with the enduring nature of materials like bronze, chosen for its historical resilience and ability to preserve form over time.
Naples, where time reveals itself in layers, directly informs the project. From Roman ruins to Baroque architecture, the city embodies a dialogue between the fleeting and the eternal. The Bronze Age legacy of the Campanian region further inspires the material choice, linking ancient craftsmanship to contemporary design.
Materiality
Bronze: A symbol of permanence, allowing ephemeral moments to be eternalized. Drapery: A metaphor for transience, capturing movement, light, and air.
By casting fabric-like folds in bronze, the project transforms a fleeting moment into a lasting artifact, preserving its motion, presence, and memory.
Capturing the Fleeting, Preserving the Eternal
Design often struggles to balance the ephemeral and the enduring. Ephemeral Orders explores this tension by transforming transient moments—like wind moving through fabric—into lasting artifacts. Positioned within collectible design, the project critiques disposability, offering a sustainable alternative rooted in cultural heritage and artisanal craftsmanship.
Inspired by Naples’ layered histories, the project integrates traditional techniques with contemporary design, using durable materials like bronze to preserve intangible beauty. It highlights how objects can bridge memory, time, and materiality, celebrating transience while enduring across generations.
1. An Experimental Photoshoot – A visual exploration of drapery and movement, capturing ephemeral gestures through photography.
2. The Design of an Eternal Object – A bronze-cast piece that transforms a fleeting moment into a lasting artifact, preserving movement and memory in a durable form.
The Inspiration
A curtain caught in the wind, a fleeting gesture of movement—these quiet, impermanent moments inspired this project. They hold a sense of pause, reflection, and presence, where time slows and the everyday becomes poetic. Ephemeral Orders captures this essence, turning transient beauty into a form that lasts.
Defining the eternal and the ephemeral
One of the key questions in this project was how to define what is ephemeral and what is eternal—and how to translate that distinction into material form.
• The Ephemeral refers to things that exist briefly—moments, gestures, movements that disappear as soon as they occur. Wind blowing through fabric is an example of ephemerality in action: it is momentary, intangible, and constantly changing.
• The Eternal refers to forms and materials that endure, resisting time and decay. Bronze has historically been used for monuments and artifacts that survive centuries, solidifying memories into lasting objects.
This project sits between these two definitions. The table captures a fleeting movement—a fabric caught mid-air—while rendering it in a material known for its permanence. By doing so, Ephemeral Orders explores how objects can carry traces of time, questioning whether something ephemeral can ever truly be fixed, and whether something eternal can still evoke a sense of impermanence.
The tablecloth was identified as the most fitting object to embody the project’s investigation into ephemerality and permanence. In Neapolitan culture, it carries deep associations with shared meals, familial gatherings, and acts of care, making it a symbol of both heritage and preservation. Its adaptability—both in its physical form and cultural significance—aligns with the themes explored in the provisional outcome, particularly the tension between the fleeting and the enduring
By selecting the tablecloth as the basis for the design, the project examines how an everyday object, shaped by routine gestures, can be translated into a lasting form. The ability of fabric to drape, shift, and respond to movement informed the transformation of this ephemeral moment into a solid, reflective artifact.
The table itself functions as both a utilitarian object and a conceptual piece. While it serves practical purposes—as a dining table, nightstand, or console—it also operates as a medium for reflection.
