Public lecture, Faculty of Art & Design, Institut
Teknologi Bandung, 7 December 2007 [slightly edited, 6 March 2013]
What I am about to
tell you is based on my experiences as an observing participant in the field of
design. My lecture contains some history, some observations and some advice,
which you can take for what it’s worth.
I was asked to say
something about things for your faculty to consider in view of its position now
and in the future. Well, the good news is that from one point of view it is all
very clear and simple. There is really only one thing to consider, towards
which all our actions and ingenuity
should be directed, namely, saving our planet.
The bad news is
that we need to save our planet in the first place, but I really think it is
so, as do more and more people, maybe even some politicians, now that Mr. Gore
has been awarded a Nobel prize for relaying a message that has been out there
for a while, but better late than never. Your own President has jumped on the
bandwagon too, and I hope many more will follow.
Strictly speaking
it is not the planet we should save, but life as we know it. We may be messing
up in a bad way, but the planet will survive, including the most tenacious
forms of life. Micro-organisms have been around the longest and will remain in
the long run. We like to think of ourselves as a very successful species, but
that’s because the most successful organisms, both in total body mass and
durability, are usually invisible to an animal our size.
As any other
organism, we are constantly dealing with changes. We think we are pretty good
at adapting, but, again, who do we compare ourselves with? Only with animals or
plants that are roughly our size. Compared to most other organisms we are bulky
and complex, and our organization in large, incoherent social groups is and
extra complication. Of course we have the advantage of being able to think and
invent, but thinking can also give us the wrong ideas, and there are numerous
examples of discoveries and inventions that were scorned for years until we
finally recognized their value.
It is no secret
that the weapons industry accounts for a large part of technological
developments, and this has been the case for centuries. I think it would be a
better idea if we use all this energy to develop new technologies which
fundamentally support life – not just human life, but all life – in stead of destroying it. Or in the words of visionary
designer Buckminster Fuller: developing ‘livingry’ in stead of ‘killingry’. So
in stead of having wars on terrorism and other kinds of disagreements, we
should have a war on global warming or pollution or something. Which would
really be a war on ourselves, because we
are responsible for disturbing the ecological balance on our planet.
Science and
technology have always been driven by the objective to ‘conquer nature.’
Therefore, it comes as no surprise that we should end up fighting ourselves,
because no matter how highly we think of ourselves, we are still part of
nature. ‘Conquering nature’ has come to mean, to exploit nature until there is
nothing left. I am fully aware that this is basically a Western idea, and
nothing to be proud of. It has divided the world into what we misleadingly call
‘developed’ and ‘underdeveloped’ or somewhat more mildly ‘developing’
countries. And it has brought us to where we are now: on the brink of
endangering ourselves as a species.
So how are we going
to win this fight with ourselves, and how is design involved in this? I propose
to start seeing design as a natural phenomenon. In this I follow the ideas of
the American architect William McDonough and the German chemist Michael
Braungart. In their book Cradle to Cradle
they propose a new design paradigm, modeled after nature. Its main principle is
‘waste equals food.’ In practice this would lead to a radical form of
recycling, not at all like the half-baked attempts that we are engaged in now.
Every scrap of material has to be re-used, in stead of being discarded as
useless and harmful waste. And of course we should only use renewable sources
of energy and avoid environmentally harmful production and building methods.
For example, McDonough and Braungart have built a textile factory in
Switzerland, which uses water from a nearby river. This water leaves the
factory cleaner than when it comes in. They succeeded in doing this by
carefully choosing and controlling the chemicals used in the production
process.
I think the fields
of design and architecture are very fortunate to have these ideas spelled out
for them, so they can start working at saving our planet today. This new
paradigm is by no means easily established, but it undoubtedly is a real
solution and not merely fighting symptoms as we have done so far. It should
encourage and inspire us, and release us from the stranglehold of indifference
and fear. Cradle to Cradle is
required reading for anyone studying design or architecture, and their teachers
too, for that matter.
One thing I got
from reading Cradle to Cradle is that
eco-design so far has been rather superficial and short-sighted. To make truly
sustainable design, and even to qualify precisely what that means, you need to have very specific
scientific knowledge, which is not readily available and accessible for
designers. Your faculty being part of a technical university is a tremendous
advantage in making connections between different fields of knowledge that are
traditionally separated. There must be people at every faculty working on
environmental issues. I suggest you find them and make them work together with
your students, even though it may be difficult at first.
When somebody at
the age of eighteen starts studying design, they probably don’t know a whole
lot about what design actually is. And I think that even after two or three
years, they are still in the process of finding out what design is, which is
not so easy, because to design can be many things, design can be many things,
and there are many types of designers. This is something you may regret,
preferring clarity and a simple world, but there it is.
Another thing that
adds to the confusion about design, is that it is historically connected to
many different and sometimes contradictory objectives. The roots of the design
profession lie in the 19th century and along the way it has picked up many
different ideological biases: socialist ideals and capitalist ambitions,
Modernist convictions and nostalgic tendencies, claims of artistic originality
and claims of objective universality.
One of its
inheritances from the 19th century is taste education, easily recognizable when
the term ‘good design’ is being used. The idea was that common people should
develop their taste to the level of the educated. Which is impossible, because
taste changes according to the dynamics of fashion. ‘Good taste’ is not a
timeless, universal property, but a social instrument with which an elite
separates itself from the majority. The educated are always developing their
taste away from where the masses are.
Another historical
trace in design is a peculiar mix of American and European influences. In
America, design developed itself as a profession in the 1920s and 1930s,
introducing styling, especially in the car industry, as a means to fight the
Economic Depression. And they did so with self-proclaimed success – success
being narrowly defined as commercial success. Meanwhile in Europe its
development as a profession was held up, first by the economic crisis and then
by the Second World War. European designers were much more serious about their
social ideals, and didn’t have the advantage of a unified mass market. The
years of scarcity and reconstruction after the war – starting from zero –
matched the puritanical Modernist design philosophy so perfectly, that it has
been untouchable for decades. At the same time European design was infused with
American self-confidence through propaganda activities as part of the Marshall
Plan.
Another
example is a theory which was developed around the 1970s, in which designing is
described as a ‘problem-solving’ activity. Although by no means conclusive,
this theory has gained wide acceptance within the design field. Designers seem
to like the idea that they are solving problems, even when they are not. This
poses two tricky psychological problems. When a designer gets a commission he
will automatically translate it into a ‘problem.’ Consequently, he will present
his design as a ‘solution,’ even if there was no problem in the first place –
except maybe the designer’s problem to come up with an acceptable design. This
conceptual mistake gives him the feeling of being somewhat like a mechanic or a
doctor, who fix broken things. And consequently he will treat his commissioner
as someone who has a problem or some sort of disease. This narrow view of what
design is, may help a designer believe that he is doing a good job, but it
prevents him from letting design be all it can be.
Somehow all of
these confused and sometimes contradictory ideals have accumulated in the way
we see design. Some may fade, but they never really perish. They are still
being carried over by generation upon generation of designers, only adding to
the confusion of students who try to figure out what they are dealing with.
Obviously, since
the 19th century, and even in the last 10 to 15 years a lot has changed. But
the way we try to define design has not caught up yet. We still use the terms
“graphic” and “industrial” design even though the graphic and other industries
have changed dramatically. The classic idea of industrial production has to do
with conveyor belts, Taylorism, and mass markets – the bigger the better. This
has changed. New production and distribution methods have made it possible for
niche markets to acquire a ‘mass’ of their own. And niche markets require a
very different approach than mass markets. As the British design-historian
Helen Reed wrote ten years ago: designers don’t design for industry anymore,
but for consumers.
Consequently,
design is in the middle of a great transition: from being private property of a
rather small group of professional practitioners, to being public property,
while the number of professional designers is exploding. Another important
factor is the incredibly fast rise of the computer as a universal design and
communications tool.
As a matter of
fact, the actual transition itself has already happened quite a few years ago,
but we haven’t fully adapted to it yet. The design landscape has become
infinitely more complex and the values of design are no longer determined by a
small in-group. It is difficult for some to accept that is has become an
integral part of popular culture, which has a life and dynamic of its own. In
short, all the ingredients you need for a classic generation gap are in place.
As the design
landscape becomes more complex and the processes within which designs are
constituted become more sophisticated, more people are involved in the design
process. It is hard to maintain control in a situation like this. Many designs
are the outcome of a multidisciplinary collaborative effort rather than the
achievement of a single individual. Moreover, consumers and users are starting
to influence the way a design looks more directly than before. In webdesign
this is already obvious: interactive designs are not fixed and change according
to the use that is made of them. But the possibility to adapt a design to the
personal preferences of any user is being incorporated in many ‘harder’
products as well, especially digital devices. The interactivity of the software
seems to rub off on the hardware.
Meanwhile, the
existing copyrights system is under pressure. In the digital world an
alternative system for fair use and shared developing is being established
(called Creative Commons), and there is a lot of talk about the Open Source
approach to software development as a model for product development. These
changes go directly against the traditional designers’ instincts, because they
have often been trained to strive for originality in an individualistic,
pseudo-artistic sense.
Not only designers
like the illusion of being in control – it is a general human trait. At the end
of the 19th century men believed that there was little left for scientists to
discover. We had it all pretty much figured out and we thought we had
practically conquered nature. Well, we couldn’t have been more mistaken. Our
world view was shattered by Einstein’s theory of relativity and later the
discovery of quarks and other strangely behaving subatomic particles. Of course
this shattering didn’t happen overnight – we are still trying to get used to
the idea. It is always awkward for human beings to adapt to changes such as
this, because usually our brains are way ahead of our emotions. Knowing certain things does not
necessarily mean that we can fully accept them right away emotionally. We need change, but we also need continuity, and often
in our hectic society the balance between both is upset.
Subsequent
discoveries in many other fields, ranging from molecular biology to
astrophysics, have reinforced the feeling that ultimately we hardly know
anything at all and that natural processes are so complicated that they defy
human understanding altogether. Slowly we are getting used to the idea that
things are rarely as simple as we think they are. At the same time, having invented
the computer, we have something with which we can handle complexity much better
than we could before.
Rather then using a
reductionist approach to get a better understanding of design, I think we
should accept its richness and diversity, which I consider to be the true power
of design. Also in this sense it is important to think of design as a natural
phenomenon. Loss of diversity is lethal. Design in all of its manifestations is
an instrument for human beings to express their individuality and at the same
time confirm their social aspirations. This calls for maximum diversity – not
uniformity. This has been obstructed for too long by Modernism’s objective to
simplify (with slogans like ‘less is more’ and ‘form follows function’), which
may have been useful during a certain period of time, but is now obsolete.
Traditionally,
design has been divided into a number of disciplines, which have attracted and
repelled each other in wave-like patterns. Nowadays, in many situations these
traditional boundaries are irrelevant. One can think of innumerable other ways
to divide the field. The Design Academy in Eindhoven has been successful for
many years with an unusual division of departments: Man and Mobility, Man and
Living, Man and Identity, Man and Communication, Man and Humanity, etc. Another
possibility is to look at scale, ranging from small, unique hand-made pieces
(such as jewelry) to city planning. Or maybe an extended division according to
materials as is traditionally used in the applied arts. Or according to price
per product. Or speed of turnover of products. Or
level of innovativeness. Just use your imagination. The general picture
is always a gliding scale, which should in no case be seen as a hierarchy. No
specialization or style or approach is inherently superior to another.
References
Richard Buckminster
Fuller, Critical Path, 1981
Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, 2002
William McDonough
and Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle.
Re-making the way we make things, 2003
Helen Rees, ‘Patterns
of making: thinking and making in industrial design,’ in: Peter Dormer (ed.), The Culture of Craft, 1997
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