The Cultural Designer

No 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 and
our 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 you
would be forgiven for thinking that “eco-design” has solved the problem. It hasn’t and it
won’t. Eco-anything has become an advertising spin to promote the business of consumption
as usual. There is only Good Design or Bad Design -- if design is not actively trying to
preserve our future it is, by default, destroying it.

A friend of mine proudly showed me her new “eco-friendly” hair drier which claimed to use
half as much electricity (as what?). I pointed out that if she really must use a hairdrier, she is
adding to her carbon footprint whatever its wattage. The only eco-friendly hairdrieris the
wind! It is this kind of sham that is confusing people, and worse, causing a dangerous sense
of complacency that the small steps we are taking are enough. The cruel reality is that the
required changes are far greater than what can be achieved in this “eco” way. And every day
the target gets further out of reach as we slip behind, and as new, more alarming scientific
data replaces older more moderate estimates.

Germaine Greer, writing in the Guardian*, criticised“eco-houses” for being so boring: “new
houses are horrible and eco-houses are the most horrible of the lot.” Someone else recently
described “eco-design” as muesli design. This implies that we have to accept this bland diet
because it is worthy and the right thing to do, almost as an act of penitence for our previous
excesses. This is not going to encourage people to buy in to it, even if they want to (which
many don’t). So it is another reason why eco-design is not working and not going to solve
the problem.

What is going wrong here? To me, this kind of design is not working because it is not the
whole 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 there
is no nourishment. It is simply not enough to motivate the massive changes in habit and
lifestyle 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 on
the characteristics of the material and its landscape, such as mud houses in Africa and
bamboo houses in Indonesia. Yet these are also built with a panache and a joy in the
exploration of what it is that expresses, the material, the people, the time and the place, right
down 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 the
developed world, Germaine Greer’s “horrible” houses. And the same applies to everything in
them, everything that we buy in our consumer frenzy. Whether it is expensive or cheap
design, it is all junk food. It is designed to leave you unsatisfied, with a craving to come back
for 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 the
advertising industry, to make us want more and to feel insecure and inferior if we don’t have
the latest.

No wonder we show all the symptoms of undernourishment! We are consuming junk food
which is designed to sell maximum bulk with minimum satisfaction. One small meal of good
nourishing food will leave you feeling fit and satisfied for a long time. One large heap of junk
food 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 I
don’t just mean things, but more importantly the way we do things. But for the moment, just
talking about objects, it is not enough to simply replace box houses (and the few remaining
accessories) 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 technological
element of design, change will not happen. The challenge is to reduce our footprints to a
sufficiently small size to allow enough for everyone for ever, IN A WAY THAT NOURISHES US
CULTURALLY AND SPIRITUALLY. Cultural expression is a fundamental aspect and need of what
it is to be human: the very earliest records mark the distinctive feature of the first homo
sapiens as being creators of art, in cave painting and jewellery**. And as the physical
accoutrements of our lives, the ‘stuff’ we now buy incessantly, arereduced, so the cultural
fulfillment has to increase in compensation. If we are culturally and spiritually nourished then
I believe we will loose the craving we now have to form our fragile identities around the stuff
we buy. In all the arguments for for eco- or sustainable design, this is the key missing
element.

Another critical component of this cultural aspect is reconnection to nature, to the planet
that gives us life. Living in our cocooned cities we do not know where our food or water
comefrom, or where our rubbish goes to. We take it all for granted. For us to survive we
need to recreate a balance with, and respect for, nature. How many other people share my
abhorrence of the ghastly ads of 4WD monsters driving up rivers and conquering mountains?
It is almost like a knife in the guts! That sort of crass, adolescent and destructive attitude
can only thrive in a society that has lost touch with nature.

The Polynesians had strict rules about fishing that evolved to protect overfishing and to
preserve the resource that they depended on. Maori call this kaitiakitanga, guardianship of
the future. They didn’t overfish because THEY would suffer the consequences. WE do
overfish because someone else suffers the consequences, and they are too far removed for
us to care. So, having wiped out most of their fisheries, Europeans are now stealing
Senegal’s fish, and the Senegalese, who depend on itare going without. Those doing it are
not true fishermen but businessmen whose only concern is profit, so the remove gets greater
and the caring less.

All of this means that a new type of design must be created. I call this Cultural Design --
design as we have never known it, at least for a very long time. The cultural designer will
primarily design abstract lifestyles and rituals that allow us to lead a sustainable life. For the
few objects that are needed, they will have much less to do with the physical workings of
objects, and more to do with their effect -- how they nourish us.

I would like to propose a pilot project to start this off -- to try to establish this discipline. I
would assemble a team of people to work together. It would be a cross-discipline mix that
might include an artist, a sociologist, a Maori, a historian, a geologist, a botanist and a
designer. The goal is to create the forms and vocabulary of a new language -- one that
expresses what it is to live in New Zealand now. It has to be in a totally contemporary and
relevant way. It is not a nostalgic or sentimental resurrecting of past misperceived idylls. So
while it may study the process that produced the African mud houses, it is not recreating
them. It is working through the entire creative process, in every way, researching every
aspect of this time and place -- looking at the structure of the rock and landscape, the flora,
the climate, the Maori and European histories, their aspirations and fears, the materials
available and how these work. Out of all this we will find ways that speak of us and nourish
us and give us pride and identity. Where we have to design objects they will be made to last
so that we cherish them for generations, all the time feeding us and our children.

It is not impossible. It has been done before. We just have to do the same for today in our
own way and get rid of the junk food.

* Germaine Greer in ‘A Few Home Truths about Fake Design’ in the Guardian Weekly
12.09.08.

**Robin McKie in ‘The Voyage of Humanity’ in the Guardian Weekly 12.09.08. “The first
10,000 humans [in Africa, who were] skilled in the use of stone tools . . . began to display
rudimentary artistic ability.” Later in Europe, Cro-Magnons “hunted mammoths, left
magnificent cave paintings and made woven clothing and elaborate jewellery.”