Published
in: Morf 2, 2005, pp. 190-199
In
the Western world we grow up with the ideology of modernism, or with its
remaining fragments. Modernism emerged in a period of great optimism and blind faith
in the blessings of science and technology. In the meantime, this faith has been
significantly eroded.
There
is also a design style that is referred to as modernism. Especially
architecture and the design disciplines that deal with technology and
industrial production are very closely connected with modernist orthodoxy.
A
designer is only human, and therefore will sometimes ask himself: What on earth am I doing? Making more stuff for a world already
bursting at the seams with things. Things that will soon be discarded, only to
be replaced with other things that in turn will also be discarded. Okay, so I
have produced something. I have felt the pinch of satisfaction that goes with
achievement, but have I done anything other than make an interchangeable
contribution to a dubious system of wastefulness?
Modernism
has always talked big words about progress and a better world, but in reality
its tenets make it very difficult for designers to deal with this type of
questions.
**
It
all started four hundred years ago. In 1619, the French philosopher René
Descartes saw in a dream (!) how he could develop a scientific method based on
reason. He admired Galileo Galilei, who several years before had used
astronomical observations to prove his theory that the sun was the center of
the universe and not the earth. Based on this approach, the modern scientific
method came into being.
Ever
since, scientific discovery has driven man systematically away from the center
of creation. Darwin’s theory of evolution taught us that man is only animal.
Not long after, Freud discovered the unconscious and irrational motives for our
actions. Einstein’s theory of relativity made quicksand of space and time, and
told us that the universe has no center at all.
And
we clung even harder to the one thing that makes us unique: the rational mind. And
we remained human enough to be blinded by its successes.
Science
and technology brought achievements that considerably improved the plight of (a
selective part of) mankind: industrialization, electricity, modern
transportation, medicine, modern communication, etc. These triumphs of human
ingenuity influenced our overall view of the state of the world: we were going
forward, we were on the right track, and humanity had its own destiny firmly in
its hands. We believed in the man-made world, even if all this wealth should be
distributed more fairly.
Correspondingly,
modernism rests on three pillars:
Rationalism –
The idea that the mind is the key to our knowledge of the world and the
happiness of mankind. Rational principles are universal and timeless.
Progress –
The idea that historical developments automatically lead to a better world.
Everything from the past is rejected as being obsolete.
Emancipation – The idea that all people are equal and have equal
rights. Society must be arranged in such a way that this idea is realized.
The
modernist design style endorsed these same principles. The modernist designer wanted
to come up with timeless, universal products. The modernist designer rejected everything
from the past as being outdated. The modernist designer assumed that his
designs would bring about a better world. The modernist designer put function
over appearance; beauty was merely a derivative of functionality. The modernist
designer used a method that was derived from the analytical approach of science:
design as problem solving.
Because
there are thinking errors and contradictions in these principles, they
inevitably led to inadequate and disappointing results. Belief in progress presupposes
that knowledge is a matter of addition and subtraction. There is supposed to be
a finite amount of unknown facts and a finite number of problems; each
discovery made and every problem solved, is one less, and in the end, we will
automatically reach the ideal world. However, the human mind is limited – the
more we know, the more we find out how little we know. We live in a world that
is constantly changing – for each problem solved a new one comes along. The
past may be past, but doesn’t mean it’s obsolete, and much less that it should
be rejected.
Designers
that adopt this attitude, work inside a vacuum. They ignore useful conventions
and the wisdom of previous generations that is in them. Opposition to the past
can lead to an excessive emphasis on originality (or whatever is perceived as such).
About
his contribution to a better world, the modernist designer reasoned: people
living in harmony with their environment are happier; we have to offer a beautiful
and good environment to as many people as possible; designers have an essential
role to play, because they are the ones who make up that environment as well as
the things inside it. Their ideal was a rationally arranged world. Only an
omniscient designer with an unlimited mind could possibly create such a world. Instead,
the modernists with their limited human intellect and their individualistic originality
have produced an incoherent set of separate components for Utopia, only proving
that tens of thousands of ‘good’ designs do not make a good world. A rationally
arranged world is a totalitarian world, where there is no room for chance or
emotions.
It
is at the very least naive to assume that the majority of the people could ever
have the same taste preferences as a group of aesthetic specialists such as
designers. The aesthetic concept of modernism (functionalism) contradicts its
own principle of rationality: even if function is more important than
appearance, in no way does it follow that that which is functional is also
beautiful. The modernist designer also ignored the fact that most products do
much more than perform a (mechanical) function. In many cases, their decorative
aspect is more important than their functionality, and products are carriers of
meaning that users can employ to express their personal preferences, their social
position or their cultural identity.
The
scientific method can be used as a model for a design method that may prove productive
in certain cases, but (i) design is not science and (ii) design is much more
than problem solving. The method of problem solving makes a problem out of
everything. Moreover, it gives the designer the feeling that he has solved a
problem when he has finished a design. This is self-deceptive if he has only
addressed those properties or features of the product that he thought were ‘the’
problem. Because the designer is focused on what he perceives to be ‘the’
problem, it is likely that he neglects other aspects of the design.
The
highest ambition of the modernist designer was to create timeless and universal
designs. This is contrary to the idea of progress, which presupposes historical
development. Designs are not laws of physics or mathematical formulas. There
are no timeless or universal designs. Designs are a temporary and unique expression
of the culture they spring from.
**
Chances
are small that a designer recognizes himself in this image of the modernist
designer, which admittedly is more or less a caricature. Chances are
considerable, however, that a designer recognizes parts of himself in it. Fragments
of modernist ideology are still fed to us from an early age, and, more
particularly, many design schools still propagate it, be it in concealed or
diluted form.
It
is not my intention to make short work of everything modernist. Some of the
principles of modernism represent fundamental human values. However, I do want
to emphasize that the modernist way of looking at things has serious
shortcomings. Modernism as a design style has produced a flawed, inhospitable and
rather miserable world. Le Corbusier, one of the pioneers of modernism in
architecture, called the house “a machine for living” – a telling metaphor.
Modernism
has raised a lot of resistance for being coercive, heartless and immune to
criticism. Modernists tend to act superior in the conviction that they own the
truth. Since the 1960s, Western culture has been a battleground on which modernism
was constantly bombarded by counter-movements and subcultures, such as
structuralism, student revolts, pop culture, environmental movement, postmodernism
and punk. The difficulty with combating modernism is that you have to rely on
its own favorite weapon: reason. Debate is, after all, conducted on the basis
of rational argumentation. Tragically, modernism is so closely linked with the
theory and practice of contemporary design that there seems to be no way of
escaping it for designers who wish to stand up against it.
Maybe
it helps to realize that the principles of modernism were not delivered to us
on stone tablets but have a traceable historic origin. Around 1900, Modernist
design originated from a reaction to the highly decorated handiwork of Jugendstil,
and came to maturity in the following decades. A new aesthetic was sought that
resonated with the capabilities of machine production. Socialism was still a
young and vibrant movement that inspired many artists. The longing for a better
world was perfectly understandable in view of the horrors of the First World
War. It was all too tempting to believe that science, technology and rational
behavior could make an end to all our shortcomings.
**
Of
the three pillars of modernism, one has to be rejected outright: blind belief
in progress is a dangerous illusion. Moreover, it is necessary to formulate
some principles that overcome the limitations of modernism. The starting point
I would like to propose is the relationship between man and nature. Even though
the sciences have conclusively demonstrated that man is not the center of
creation, we still behave as though we are. Modernism was strongly influenced
by the perspective of classical physics, which looks for universal, eternal
laws. In physics, nature is an object, the scientist looking at it as an
outsider. Culture and art are seen as opposites of nature, ignoring that man
himself is part of nature. If man is part of nature, then the things he produces
are too. Culture is a natural phenomenon. The city, our home and all the man-made
things we surround ourselves with, are our natural habitat.
Do
new designs ‘originate’ in the same way as new forms emerge in nature? Yes and
no. Both the similarities and the differences teach us something. People make
things. Considered as a natural fact there does not have to be a reason. A tree
doesn’t think: Another leaf, what is that
good for? There is no reason – there is a cause: the tree is alive, and living
trees produce leaves.
In
nature, the rate of evolution depends on the lifetime of a species: the faster
generations succeed each other, the faster the species can evolve. In design,
we see something similar: fashion evolves faster than architecture because the turnover
speed is much higher in fashion. The fashion cycles show how evolutionary
patterns can play a role in the origin of man-made things: changes are relatively
small, there is a high degree of continuity and at the same time there is room
for individual variation.
‘Progress’
is not likely to be mentioned in fashion. Progress is a problematic concept
also in evolutionary science: it is impossible to argue that the world is
getting better in the course of time through the process of evolution.1
Organisms adapt, while at the same time their environment is evolving too. If
you walk forward on a ship that is moving backwards, you are not going forward.
The question is: for whom is the world getting better, and for what time frame?
People
throw away things. Waste generation is a natural process. However, in nature
everything is reused and in this sense in nature there is no waste.2
Producing waste is not bad – not reusing waste is. Recycling is an expression of nature: the new is born from the
old. Nature does not design but still continually brings forth new shapes and
forms. Nature is an open system to which the sun adds energy. This abundant energy
from the sun is the fuel of evolution.
Evolutionary
changes in nature are a side effect of reproduction. When organisms copy their
DNA, small accidental errors occur (mutations). Sometimes these errors turn out
beneficial, sometimes detrimental. Disadvantaged mutations eliminate themselves,
while advantaged mutations have a better chance of reproducing (selection). In
this way organisms develop, a process that has resulted in the richness of life
on earth over a course of millions of years.
Because
organism and environment are interdependent, there exists a dynamic equilibrium
between both. This is called symbiosis. A symbiotic environment is like an organism
itself. When one species starts to dominate at the expense of others around it,
self-regulatory mechanisms emerge: for example, food shortage or additional
vulnerability to diseases will decrease the number of individuals of the dominant
species.
Natural
evolution is slow, forced to take small steps. Occasionally there may be a ‘growth
spurt’, but in a diagram, the evolution of species looks like a tree – it is
impossible to jump from one branch to another. Here we have an important
difference with the capabilities of the human mind: ideas don’t have this
limitation. The idea for the construction of a chair can be based on that of a
bridge. Man-made objects don’t need to have a ‘logical’ pedigree. A design can
skip whole stages of development, and from one day to another it can be made
from an entirely different material, or be based on a totally different constructive
principle.3
This
gives man exceptional possibilities but also exceptional responsibilities.
Nature
always proceeds with caution – large errors are ruled out through
self-correction – and does not need to worry about things like justice, beauty
or extravagance. Man does have to
take care of such matters, but unfortunately human beings often tend to be impatient
and shortsighted.
We
should stop fooling ourselves into thinking that the world can fix itself and passing
our problems onto future generations.
**
There
are three important principles in nature:
Energy – Nature
is an open system to which energy is being added continuously. This energy generates
growth and development.
Consistency –
Species live in a symbiotic relationship with one another, which means that
they are interdependent and evolve together. Everything is connected with
everything and automatically has a purpose, a place and a meaning.
Feedback –
Natural processes are cyclical. From the old comes the new. Growth and
development are part of life.
There
is nothing reprehensible about the desire for novelty and change, which are the
main motives for design. Too much change, however, can be disorienting,
alienating or even uprooting. The quest for the new often seems more like a sick
compulsion than a healthy sign of growth. A designer is part of a larger whole
in which everything has its place. There is no shame in making a small
contribution to the bigger whole. That designs do not always have a long lifetime
is inevitable, living as we do in a throwaway society. Worse than the throwaway
mentality of consumerism is the throwaway mentality that is prepared to dismiss
the collective wisdom of many generations as ‘obsolete’.
We
remain tied to the past, whether we like it or not. Design philosophies come
and go. The one leads to the next one, driven by human impulses such as
ambition, discontent or boredom. The circumstances that contribute to the development
and character of a new design philosophy later appear to be of minor importance.
Unrightfully so. Historical understanding is essential in order to be able to
see how our thoughts and actions are influenced by old ideas, also the powerful
ones that are never disputed or have an aura of immutability.
**
The
realization that we are part of nature and that we are subject to the laws of
nature, can teach man – and certainly designers – humility. A humility that the
modernist designer so sorely lacked. This may give us a more realistic
perspective on where we stand in the scheme of things, and what the impact of our
actions can and should be.
Notes
1 Richard Dawkins, ‘Human Chauvinism
and Evolutionary Progress’, in: A
Devil’s Chaplain,
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 2003.
2 Gabrielle Walker, ‘The Collector’,
in: New Scientist, 179 (2405),
26
July 2003, p. 38-41.
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