On the art of taking things apart, understanding their relationships, and seeing new possibilities.
Years ago, while studying design at Portland State University, I wanted to build an oversized ice cream cone. I had a clear idea of what I wanted the sculpture to look like. Figuring out how to construct it was another matter. My professor suggested that I approach it through the eyes of a five-year-old, breaking down the entire object into basic geometric shapes. A cone, a sphere, a few simple volumes that could be constructed individually and assembled into something much larger.
The explanation was almost ridiculously simple. Yet I remember that conversation because it changed the way I approached making things. Once I could recognize the underlying structure of an object, I could begin to understand how to build it. More importantly, I realized that the same reasoning could be applied to almost anything. What had initially seemed complicated became a series of manageable decisions. The simplicity of the exercise opened up an enormous range of possibilities, and I began to recognize how useful that way of thinking could be beyond sculpture.
Over time, I started noticing variations of this process in everyday problem-solving, visual composition, and the way we interpret familiar things. I became interested in the act of taking something apart to understand how it works, what each element contributes, and what happens when those elements are rearranged. Deconstruction gradually became a principle I returned to, sometimes deliberately, sometimes almost intuitively.
Understanding What Things Do
Consider something as ordinary as moving a heavy piece of furniture. There are products designed specifically for this purpose, such as furniture sliders. You can buy them, place them under the furniture, and solve the problem. Another approach begins by asking what those sliders actually do. They provide a surface that allows furniture to move more easily while protecting the floor. Once we understand the function, we can identify other materials with similar properties. Depending on the furniture and flooring, something as simple as a suitable piece of fabric might accomplish the same task.
I like this example because it illustrates how identifying an object's function can change the way we see it. We become accustomed to recognizing things by their names and intended uses, sometimes overlooking the physical properties that make those uses possible. By examining those properties, we can begin to recognize alternatives. A familiar object becomes a collection of characteristics that may serve purposes beyond the one for which it was originally designed.
I grew up in Argentina, surrounded by people who approached practical problems with this kind of resourcefulness. My grandfather, a Spanish immigrant from Galicia, once made decorative plaster cornices using a wooden mold he had carved himself. I remember watching him produce the individual plaster sections, let them dry, and install them along the ceiling. I thought it was ingenious, although at that age I couldn't fully appreciate what went into that kind of problem-solving. My mother, much like her father, has always had an inventive approach to practical challenges. She could look at what was available and figure out how to make something work. Looking back, I recognize how much that environment influenced my own approach to making things.
There is a cultural dimension to this as well. In my experience, resourcefulness has a particular presence in everyday Argentine life, where improvisation often becomes a practical response to limited resources. A specialized tool may be expensive, unavailable, or unnecessary when something already at hand can perform the same function. After moving to the United States, I encountered an environment where specialized products are often inexpensive, readily accessible, and designed for very specific tasks. I've adopted plenty of those conveniences over the years. The experience has made me more aware of how the resources surrounding us influence the solutions we instinctively consider.
The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss explored a related concept through bricolage, a way of making that draws on existing materials and their potential uses. The bricoleur works with what is available, adapting and combining resources according to the problem at hand. I find this idea especially relevant to creative work because it involves a particular way of looking at materials. A piece of wood, a sheet of plastic, or an ordinary household object may have properties that make it useful in an entirely different application. Recognizing those possibilities requires understanding what a material can do, independently of what it was originally intended to do.
The Context We Take for Granted
Moving from Argentina to the United States made me increasingly aware of another aspect of this thinking: context. We grow up surrounded by conventions that eventually become automatic. We learn how people greet one another, how social occasions unfold, and what certain images or gestures communicate. These associations become so familiar that we rarely examine them until we encounter a different environment.
Christmas is an easy example. I grew up celebrating it in the middle of summer, with hot weather, cold dishes like vitel toné, and the occasional swimsuit, summer outfit, or pool toy among the presents. For someone accustomed to the North American imagery of snow, pine trees, and winter clothing, Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere can be a surprisingly different picture.
Living between cultures made me more conscious of how much meaning depends on the circumstances surrounding something. Customs that feel completely natural in one place may require explanation somewhere else. An object, an image, or a social gesture can acquire different associations depending on where it appears and who is interpreting it. I began paying closer attention to the conventions that organize everyday experience and how easily familiarity can shape our expectations.
The experience also changed the way I approach unfamiliar systems. Having moved to another country once, I now recognize many of the things I would need to understand if I were to move somewhere else. If I moved to France, for example, I would already know that I needed to learn about immigration procedures, healthcare, finances, social customs, and the organization of daily life. The answers would be different, but I would recognize many of the categories I needed to investigate. What once seemed like an entirely unfamiliar experience could now be approached through a structure I had learned to identify.
This ability to recognize patterns has become useful to me in design as well. Whether working with a physical object, a visual identity, or an unfamiliar environment, identifying the elements that organize a system gives us a way to understand it. Once those elements become visible, we can begin to examine how they interact and how changes in their arrangement might affect the whole.
The Relationship Between Parts
Collage is one of the places where these ideas become especially tangible for me, although the process often moves in the opposite direction from constructing a sculpture. When building something, I may begin with a complete form and work backward to understand its components. With collage, I frequently begin with fragments and discover the composition as I work. I look through old magazines, revisit images I've collected, pull out pages, and place different elements near one another. Sometimes the process develops slowly, with combinations that lead nowhere. Other days, one image suggests another almost immediately, and the composition begins to take shape through a succession of visual connections.
What interests me is how an image changes when it enters a different composition. A photograph originally selected for an advertisement carries information about its subject and the setting in which it appeared. Once removed from that context, it becomes available for another arrangement. Its scale might change, another photograph might alter how we interpret it, or an unexpected combination of images might create an association that was previously absent. The fragments retain elements of their original identity while participating in a different visual system.
Robert Rauschenberg's Combines offer an interesting example of how everyday objects and found materials can take on new roles within a composition. In a different context, Virgil Abloh frequently worked with recognizable objects and visual codes, altering details, exposing construction elements, or introducing typography that changed their presentation. I have always been drawn to this kind of work, particularly the way a relatively small intervention can transform how we perceive something familiar. Sometimes the most interesting change comes from adjusting the relationship between existing elements.
But working with collage has also taught me something about the decisions we make while creating. During a workshop in Argentina, I had become particularly attached to an image and kept trying to make it work within a composition. The instructor encouraged me to take it out, continue experimenting, and consider bringing it back later. He kept reminding me to stop insisting on a particular piece simply because I wanted it there. Eventually, I removed it, and the composition improved.
That experience stayed with me. I had been organizing the composition around an image because I liked it, even though its presence was limiting the arrangement. Removing it allowed me to see the other elements differently. A piece I had considered essential turned out to be influencing decisions that were making the composition less effective. The exercise also made me aware of how easily attachment can interfere with creative judgment. We keep trying to make something work because we want it to work, even when the composition is suggesting another direction.
I began to understand detachment as a useful part of the creative process. Taking something out, even temporarily, creates enough distance to evaluate what it was contributing. It allows us to examine the composition without having to defend every decision we've already made. An image may be visually compelling on its own and still disrupt the larger arrangement. Another, less remarkable fragment may be exactly what the composition needs. Sometimes removing one element reveals a relationship that had been difficult to notice while it was there.
There is a form of conscious examination involved in this process that I find particularly interesting. We can ask what a particular element is doing, why we've chosen to include it, and what might happen if we remove or replace it. Those questions bring greater awareness to decisions that may initially have been intuitive. They also allow intuition and evaluation to work together. I may recognize that two images belong together before I can explain why, then examine their relationship more deliberately as the composition develops. Over time, experience makes certain visual connections easier to recognize, while the willingness to reconsider a decision keeps the process open to unexpected directions.
Moving Forward by Taking Apart
We often imagine construction as a forward-moving process, adding elements, building upward, and assembling individual parts until something is complete. Yet some of the most useful moments in my creative practice have involved examining an existing structure, understanding how its components work together, or discovering that a different arrangement might produce a better result. There is something particularly useful about being able to move backward through a process, identify the decisions that shaped it, and use that understanding to determine what happens next.
I return to the ice cream cone exercise because it was such a simple introduction to a much larger way of thinking. My professor showed me how to identify the elementary forms within something that initially seemed difficult to build. That lesson gave me a method I could carry into other situations, including those I hadn't yet imagined. Years later, removing a single image from a collage taught me another variation of the same principle: understanding what each element contributes can change how we approach the entire composition.
Deconstruction has gradually become part of how I construct. Examining what exists, understanding the relationships between its parts, and recognizing what can be changed gives me a clearer sense of how to move forward. Sometimes that process begins with a simple geometric shape. Sometimes it begins by taking something out. //SC