So i'm really interested in what i tried to get that guy to talk about at the end of our discussion- how can we as designers design things to improve the world? But more realistically, how can we do that while taking into account that fact that we live IN the world, in a capitalist economy where we can only be successful if what we do can also generate money for either ourselves or our clients. Any thoughts? Ideas? He seemed to sort of avoid the question when i asked him. What do you think? how could you design a retail environment to both make a profit (or at least make enough to operate) and also do "good". I've been thinking about some sort of community center that improves the town. like what if you brought together a bunch of local companies in one building to create some sort of "ithaca business union". I got the idea from the research on Warehouses and Wholesale Clubs... they started in Europe with the idea of bringing multiple local retailers together so customers could easily come and buy everything in one place. Maybe we could do this in collegetown so that cornell students could support the local economy more directly. maybe this could even go in green cafe? think about how many times you want to buy some good fresh local food or some small gifts or anything else you can buy downtown or in the commons but you simply dont have the time or the car to get down there. So instead you buy stuff at wilson farms. maybe this could work? comments, ideas??
Maybe the problem is that we are looking at the whole process from teh wrong perspective. We see ourselves as designers who are creative and insightful and can come up with these great ideas to design for everyone else to use. I've been taking some classes in CRP and it's really interesting to learn how the institution of planning evolved and i think that it can relate to this whoel idea of designing for the greater good. Planning is currently viewed by many academics and professionals (the good ones anyways) as almost more akin to managing. They would call planners "facilitative leaders"- they work with various different groups to find out what the important issues are and then they apply their expertise to help aid the process. The basic idea is that it's neither a top-down approach of "we are the planners and we are going to plan for you" now a bottom-up approach of "let the people decide everything because thats who we're planning for" but rather a delicate balance of the two. Planners must understand what the people want and what they think and how they feel because they are the ones that the planning is being done for, BUT at the same time planners must recognize that they have a lot of knowledge and expertise that the people dont, and they should use this knowledge and the skills they have to aid the entire process of planning. On the broader scale, it's not just the people who are being planned for that are of the planners' concern, they must also worry about the government who controls operations, the architects who design what is made, the business owners and various otehr stakeholders who have a say in what goes on, and many other groups who are in some way or another involved in the whole process. The planner must mediate between all of these groups and figure out a way to make everything come together.
So why can't we as designers use this same framework to design for the greater good? why can't we incorporate the social sciences into design? It would make sense... we are in fact, at the end of the day, designing for people. so wouldn't it make sense to have a deeper understanding of people? I think we need to broaden the scope of design to include more fields.
This relates to the fast growing notion of information networks and systems of collaboration. There is a multitude of information in the world that we as humans know. We have evolved to become specialists in literally millions of different fields. There is so much knowledge collectively among us and yet it is not shared enough. The future of knowledge is not more information but rather connecting all the information we already have. And it seems to me like design is the key to doing this.
-Gilad
Take a read through this article with regards to planning and urbanism (I had mentioned the growing divide between new urbanism and landscape urbanism).
ReplyDeletehttp://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/01/30/green_building/?page=full
Your example relates this to planning, but I have seen this daily in the world of interiors (which, can be considered an urban planning but at the workplace or office scale--particularly design that is driven also by analytical and human-factors needs).
An example was a firm I did a project for in which there was a disconnect between what was heard from the end users, and the executive team - it was a HUGE disconnect. As a designer, how do I negotiate this disconnect?
In my own opinion, it is not the place for a designer in typical professional practice to decide or choose sides, or to say which is good or bad (unless, of course, that is the mission of your particular firm).
It is our position as designers to resolve this disconnect -- that is a design problem in itself, and not an easy one. Picking a side is the easy way out.
The idea of shared networks and information collaboration is definitely the spirit of our time. And I do believe in the incorporation of social sciences in design...actually, I do see this every day in design. The danger lies in how we define our framework for that "greater good".
In a sense, if we are designing for the greater good, it could be argued that designing cities or buildings is not for the greater good--or, who is to define that as a society? Think of the protection over the intellectual turf between the "new urbanists" and the "landscape urbanists." Again, we need to define the context or framework in which our work will live in. I am quite excited you guys are thinking along these lines. To help you along, here is a quote from Lebbeus Woods when he was told that the UN estimates that architecture, as a profession, is affecting no more than 5% of what is being built worldwide.
"Question: Proportionally, this indicates that architects are only responding to the needs of an extremely small, and affluent percentage of the world’s population. Does this mean that we, as architects, are incapable of forging change and becoming real innovators for fear of the risks and responsibility involved in addressing different fields of work and research? What role can architectural education adapt in relation to these questions?
"Lebbeus: The most important part of education is asking questions. Young people entering schools of architecture are naturally curious...With more experience in the world generally and in the field of architecture [design] itself, their teachers should offer guidance by framing the most critical questions about what it means to be an architect/designer in today’s world. This should be done in the design studio, where everything comes together, and not only in separate elective courses on ethics, politics, history.
In the high-pressure realm of professional practice, the really important questions usually don’t get asked and architects ride along on a wave of assumptions about what their responsibilities are and to whom. Architects’ associations are little more than dues-supported clubs. It’s only schools, really, where the tough questions get asked."