The Cultural DesignerNo thinking or caring person doubts that we are at a crucial moment in human history.Enough of us are acutely aware of how overconsumption is threatening our environment andour future. There is a groundswell of concern, but action and solutions are alarmingly scarce. Just what can we do?Small steps have been tried and have largely failed. Reading the advertising copy youwould be forgiven for thinking that “eco-design” has solved the problem. It hasn’t and itwon’t. Eco-anything has become an advertising spin to promote the business of consumptionas usual. There is only Good Design or Bad Design -- if design is not actively trying topreserve our future it is, by default, destroying it.A friend of mine proudly showed me her new “eco-friendly” hair drier which claimed to usehalf as much electricity (as what?). I pointed out that if she really must use a hairdrier, she isadding to her carbon footprint whatever its wattage. The only eco-friendly hairdrieris thewind! It is this kind of sham that is confusing people, and worse, causing a dangerous senseof complacency that the small steps we are taking are enough. The cruel reality is that therequired changes are far greater than what can be achieved in this “eco” way. And every daythe target gets further out of reach as we slip behind, and as new, more alarming scientificdata replaces older more moderate estimates.Germaine Greer, writing in the Guardian*, criticised“eco-houses” for being so boring: “newhouses are horrible and eco-houses are the most horrible of the lot.” Someone else recentlydescribed “eco-design” as muesli design. This implies that we have to accept this bland dietbecause it is worthy and the right thing to do, almost as an act of penitence for our previousexcesses. This is not going to encourage people to buy in to it, even if they want to (whichmany don’t). So it is another reason why eco-design is not working and not going to solvethe problem.What is going wrong here? To me, this kind of design is not working because it is not thewhole design process. It is design stripped and reduced to the utilitarian and functional. There is no cultural dimension, nothing that creates a sense of identity -- and above all thereis no nourishment. It is simply not enough to motivate the massive changes in habit andlifestyle that are required. It is just a continuation of the way design is working now.Look at some of the indigenous houses and art of adornment around the world. There,buildings are made from locally available material, so that the form of the building takes onthe characteristics of the material and its landscape, such as mud houses in Africa andbamboo houses in Indonesia. Yet these are also built with a panache and a joy in theexploration of what it is that expresses, the material, the people, the time and the place, rightdown to the detailing of colourand pattern. This gives them a sense of pride and identity.Compare that to the regular monotony of the identical boxes spread like a virus across thedeveloped world, Germaine Greer’s “horrible” houses. And the same applies to everything inthem, everything that we buy in our consumer frenzy. Whether it is expensive or cheapdesign, it is all junk food. It is designed to leave you unsatisfied, with a craving to come backfor more. Everything -- the clothing, the the phone/camera/music players, the accessories,the luxury holidays, the monster houses and cars -- is designed, with the help of theadvertising industry, to make us want more and to feel insecure and inferior if we don’t havethe latest.No wonder we show all the symptoms of undernourishment! We are consuming junk foodwhich is designed to sell maximum bulk with minimum satisfaction. One small meal of goodnourishing food will leave you feeling fit and satisfied for a long time. One large heap of junkfood leaves you only craving more, where you are hooked, obese, lifeless and truly like a junkie!It is clear that we have to redesign everything to make our lifestyle sustainable. By that Idon’t just mean things, but more importantly the way we do things. But for the moment, justtalking about objects, it is not enough to simply replace box houses (and the few remainingaccessories) with carbon neutral, 100% sustainable, etc, etc houses. If that is the ‘worthy’option, it will be hard to get people to take it up, and even if they do the craving will remain.What is missing is culture. If we do not add the cultural element to the technologicalelement of design, change will not happen. The challenge is to reduce our footprints to asufficiently small size to allow enough for everyone for ever, IN A WAY THAT NOURISHES US
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