Keynote @alicerawsthorn @EditDX
Introduction by Nina Boccia @nboccia Director of Programs, Design Exchange
- Alice Rawsthorn is authoritative voice on design
- Last book was Hello World: Where Design Meets Life (2013)
- Next book, Design as an Attitude, to be published in spring 2018
- Based in London
- OBE (Order of the British Empire) for service to design and arts in 2014
[Alice Rawsthorn]
Good or bad design in light of sustainable development goals
Machine Art, exhibition at MoMA 1934
- Curated by Philip Johnson, a student, who had gone to Baushaus
- Championed modern movement
- A year after joining, added design
- Machine Art was first project in 1934
- Speed, economy, convenience
- Amelia Earhardt
- Visitors weren’t accustomed, reviews were dreadful, letters of complaint flooded in
- Now seen as an enduring influence on popular perceptions: what something does, and what it looks like
“The Beauty of Life”, William Morris — lecture similar to Johnson
- Nothing in your house that isn’t useful
- William Morris hated this
Then, art context, like Pompidou Centre, more how it looks, not so much function
Citroen car, 1955 in exhibition
- Fall from the sky
Toaster
Fostered idea of industrial design
- Can be damaging
- Symbols of design beauty
Valentina typewriter 1969 for Olivetti, but it didn’t work, stopped production to so many complaints
- Yet it’s still in design museums worldwide
Businesses and NGOs only thinking of design in this way is limiting
Accra, outside Ghana
- Where waste goes to die
- Can design be used to clean this up, instead of filling it with junk like this?
Use in healthcare?
Not just unfit for purpose, but irrelevant
- What should replace it?
Defining design
Design is an agent of change that can help us to make sense of what is happening, and to turn it to our advantage.
- Changes could be economical, social …
- Doesn’t have to be scary
- Need this, right now, for speed and scale
Women’s march on London: Too much to fit on one sign
- …
- Terrorism
- Accelerating science and technology
- Refugee crisis
Design isn’t a panacea, but can help … if society allows it to do so
- Only if process includes design as good and bad
Non-negotiable quality since 1880, usefulness
- Why consider desirable if not useful?
New Bus for London 2012 (new Routemaster), replacing 1954 model Routemaster
- Named the Boris bus
- New Routemaster looks good, when you see a lot more together
- Quality of engineering is so poor, it breaks down
- Diesel breakdowns
- Overheating for passengers
- It’s too unreliable to be useful
- Tasteful rubbish is still rubbish: Reyner Banham
Digital product: Google Glass
- Seems so exciting at Google, thought the rest of us would wear them
- The look dodgy, don’t do much more than phones
- Triggered court cases
- Mocked
- Sales poor, stopped making them in 2013
- Wasn’t useful, although it serve function
Useful needs to be combined with third, integrity
- If concerned with manufacturing, distribution, etc. … it can’t be consider as good design
Roland Barthes: any pleasure from car is blighted by it being a gas-guzzling economic bomb
Apple iPhone: following physics in the hand
- But environmental impact, and workers?
- Apple has made some progress, but still worry
- Can’t possibly look at them anymore
- Or Dublin taxes
Fairphone: sustainable
- Know they’re trying to develop as responsibility and sustainable as possible
- Without integrity, can’t be designed responsibility
Razor wire on fence at Calais, to prevent refugees from leaving France
- Homeless spikes to stop people from sleeping there
- Purpose is odious
- No integrity
Another response: Talking Hands, Treviso in Italy
- Many refugees on their way through
- Most living illegally, nothing to do
- Can’t be employed legally
- Local designers set up and run talking hands workshops
- Hand skills, focusing on skills the refugees already have
- Carpentry, embroidering
- An example of good design, empathic, useful
Useful and integrity, changes beauty
Material quality
- Shapes come in and out of fashion
Postmodernism 1980s
- Neo-rationalism in 1990s
- Now, Chinese design: objects 3-D printed, reminiscent of what we see on our screen
- 3D printing, ever more innate intricacy
Cookery, bone china with chisel
- Chisel was thought too coarse for porcelain
- Singularity
- Looks different from different heights and views
- Creates an optical illusion that each piece is unique
Singularity rising, because of digitalization making things uniform
Politics of personal identity, radical redefinition of identity and gender
- Being biologically black
- Feminism, transgenderism
- Increasing fluidity gender
- Facebook tried to add 58 types of options, but then people complained that they couldn’t express themselves, Facebook responded with a freeform field
- Fashion graphics can reflect colours, political concerns
- Can use digital manufacturing systems, become more affordable and accessible
Are we going to exercise choice?
- Not everyone wants to cook their own food
- But do-it-yourself is becoming popular
- Pleasure of making
- Exposure to digital technologies, making us more sensitive to touch
Touch:
- Light fixture manufacture, Simon 100, no physical cues
- We’re so accustomed to using phones by touch, we know how to use it
- Too sharp, too wet, too slippery is uncomfortable
Hardware of tablet:
- Pull to refresh, scrolling down a screen
- NY Times: few scientific articles on touch
- Haptic software
Greater understanding of materials
- Form becoming function is less important, with material become more important
Some important design projects that are good
Georg stool by Chris L. Halstrøm, a simple wooden stool manufactured in Denmark
- Won awards, on old fashion merits
- Political subtext, gender fluidity
- Visualizing how it will be used, despite gender
- Uses texture, as sense of touch is less likely to be stereotyped
- String attaches to stool, individual can adjust to be comfortable
- Everyone is free to interpret as they wish
Wecyclers, Lagos Nigeria
- African designers at the vanguard, compelling projects, with humanitarian goals
- Adebiyi Fatai Mabadeje
- Recyclable waste building up in slums
- Streets in slums too narrow for city trucks
- Develop a service so that citizens can text cyclist, then trade for points, e.g. useful for food
- 7,000 houses in Lagos use this, created 80 jobs
- Contributes to sustainable production
Sehat Kahani: improvisational design, to improve healthcare to women in Pakistan
- Pakastan has shortage of women doctors, even though there are more in university
- After graduation, women are pressured to marry
- Network of tele-clinics, so that women doctors can practice at home
- Tele-clinics staffed by nurses, in Karashi
- Problems: problem shortages, believing the women are real doctors
- Addressed
- Contributes to good heath and well-being
Forensic architecture: Israeli architect, Eyal Weizman in London
- Uses data to reconstruct scenes of criminality
- Cameroon, evidence
- Fostering peace and justice
All inspiring projects of good design in a contemporary sense
- Challenges stereotype of design
- Improve quality of life, rather than rubbish
[Questions]
Scale? Grassroot projects. Big powers? Barriers?
- Think scale is becoming more flexible
- Empowering designers to work independently on complex problems
- More funding, e.g. Ackerman, Gates Foundation
- Downstairs: Bruce Mau exhibit
- The Ocean Cleanup project from Dutch designers, controversial, but has also generated a lot of support, clearing up plastic trash in oceans
- $100,000 to launch project, ended up raise $2 million, now $31.5 million
- Has prototyped in North Seas, next year will go into Pacific
- If it flops, it will make it harder for other attitudinal designers, but if it works, it will make it easier
- Projects have to prove merit
How can raise design philosophy? Wanted to become a software designer, thought could change the world, build with information. Frustrated that there isn’t a language, but it isn’t practical. Multidimensional.
- Good news, there needs to be more debate on this issue
- This festival shows this
- May not come from specialist designers
- Families will think of design differently, from coming here
- Awful if people thought there’s not point in trying
- The war continues, a lot of battles have been won
Example of female doctors in Amsterdam, trust?
- Don’t know specifically
- Have 20 tele-clinics, planning to have 150 by 2020
- Have a lot of media support
- Design community saw as improvisational
- Medical professionals dealing with design in a practical way
- Process will have been speeded up
- Could serve dlderly women, who have a lot of medical problems
Comment, some families will go home and have pizza, others will have hand china. Culture, we’re far away from that. Affluent get to choose.
- True.
- General public awareness of sustainability and recycling has increased
- While not at level we would like, it’s significant
- Middle England, conservative, are skeptical
- Local city councils providing an effective recycling service, there’s been a radical shift from landfill towards productive
- Even 10 cent fee for plastic bags in Britain, skin flints don’t want to spend, so drastic shift
- Some people can trade for food, cell phone minutes
- Design has a lot to do
In brief. David Ing. 