Kevin O’Callaghan is a design wizard and
Monumental is his manifesto, featuring hundreds of beautiful and useful design objects made out of obsolete, useless, cast-off technology. Since 1985, O’Callaghan has taught a now-legendary 3-D design class at New York’s School of Visual Arts, where students solder, rivet, and weld the flotsam of mass-produced consumer culture into new, different, and, most importantly, functional objects. For “Yugo Next,” an exhibition that toured the United States—and mesmerized the media wherever it went—students transformed so-called “useless” Yugo automobiles into a piano, a barbecue, a shower, a confessional, an accordion, a gigantic telephone, and a toaster that actually popped, among other things. O’Callaghan is a philosopher, comedian, entrepreneur, and social critic who shows how design can make the world a better place.