Premsela Forum (Un)limited Design.
With Paul Atkinson, Ronen Kadushin, Claire Warnier & Dries Verbruggen.
Managed to reach this event last week in Amsterdam, so I will keep on posting about the 3 presentations I saw.
First things first 🙂 ->
The subject of his discourse was ‘The changing Role of Design in a Post-Professional Era’.
A very compelling plead for design as the converging point of disciplines, that would eventually dismantle the regular way we conceive ‘professionals’ and their work.
This thinking shift is triggered by the fact that ‘Designer – User’ became two facets of one kind: users are also now the agents of design.
The starting question was a quote from P. Pacey’s writing (1992) ‘Anyone Designing Anything?’:
‘Has the professionalization of design deskilled us or disempowered us?’
(The question reminds me of the Sherry Turkle (2009) debate on how digital instruments change the practices of architects)
The question is finger pointing at how Technologies, instruments, and, in this case, the socio-cultural effects (like the production shift they caused by over posing users and designers) are removing from the public sphere certain categories of skills and knowledge.
Paul Atkinson claims that this removal is actually part of a process that reminds me of North’s concept of ‘creative destruction’: boundaries need to be transgressed, and de-skilling is necessary for being a professional. As far as I got the idea, I see this as no longer a dichotomy between expertise and non-expertise, but between 2 types of expertise. Maybe Mode 1 and Mode 2?
Looking closer to design, the status of this discipline has clearly changed. For making things so easy to do, we have devalued some of our professions. For the best or for the worst?
One argument against the raising amateurish culture comes from the professionals: what will happen with their credibility and authority? If they get lost, won’t they loosen further on other value structures that hold on our society and keeps it from falling apart?
Well, Atkinson answers that this fear is not justified: credibility should not come from the elitist status of professional designer; instead, it should come from the universality of design.
(Reading Yaneva, Verbeek & Sterling I took notice of how design itself is being politicized, encountering terms like ‘social design’, ‘democratic design’ or ‘representative design’. One thing is sure: the entire debate on ‘keep design for the elite’ vs. ‘give design to the masses’ brings me a nostalgic taste of John Locke readings. Dear expert designers and amateurish fans, please sign a social contract.’
For P. Atkinson, Design is a decision. A joint one between 3 actors: the ones with assumed roles of users and designers, and, of course, the technological tools.
Giving the example of Rapid Prototyping, P. Atkinson showed the effects of suddenly realizing the fact that outcomes do not have to be identical in design, nor ideal or perfect. RepRap are printers of objects (see below)
Even more, they print parts not only for creating objects, but also for re-creating themselves. Up to now, the most advances RepRap (and fablab Amsterdam has a similar one) can replicate itself up to 60%. (just think of the consequences regarding using these cloning machines for sustainability…). The presenter explained how he sees their existence proves the altruistic attempt behind design, and machines that are capable of much more are not that ‘science-fictionally’ far away.
If you want one, you can get started here:
Fab@Home project.
Of course, there would be a lot to say about the disruptive consequences of such technologies used in design. They just change the established order of things, shifting the producing methods. This is what Atkinson calls the ‘post-industrial manufacturing’ that goes back to crafting, but now with the empowerment of new technologies.
Just like in the saying: ‘New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common’.
— John Locke,’Dedicatory Epistle.’ Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690).
If this sounds interesting, maybe you can also check the Rapid Manufacturing Leads to New Design Processes in the Work of Assa Ashuach and Lionel Theodore Dean, the project was mentioned during the presentation.
I liked the rhetoric question of whether we shall place different values on the products created by 10.000 people and the ones created individually.
(Makes me wonder, are there different criteria of valuing them?
I need to get clear what are we comparing? What is different, in fact?
The process of design, its effects, the hard , touchable outcome, the consequences of these outcomes, the applicability of the objects created, or their ‘successful’ come into practice?
Are all these determined solely by the one-production or open production differences?
Or are they just too different processes to be compared, just because the producing style is different?
Shall we think of their outcomes as the result of two different species of design, leading to two species of designed objects, or would we be able to mingle the hybrids?
If we would think of ‘species’, it means that I just need to take a look at a designed object and instantly utter if it’s the outcome of many or of only one…)
According to Paul Atkinson, technologies applied in design helps in transcending the expectations and limitations of the mass production. Literally, it ‘liberates’ the designer and the consumer from an ossifying thinking, with rewarding results for both sides.
The example given for the empowerment feeling described how visitors of creative production sites bring on friends to show them what they have done, proudly saying ‘I’ve never been creative! But, hey!LOOK! I’ve done this!’. 🙂
So, until now, we have 2 axes of debate and 4 design possibilities of analysis:
Experts vs. Amateur
Individualist vs. Collective design production
So, who is the designer?
(I would say, WHAT is a designer?)
Where does design start and end?
Are the amateurish designs just craft or do they have commercial potential? If they do, how shall they be promoted?
How are we going to educate expert designers? Atkinson is looking forward the times when universities will enable designers to develop systems where the end result is to some extent unknown, rather then a multiple replication on an ideal model.
These radical new ways of approaching design could lead to a post-professional era.
As far as I could follow his thinking, I understood that this does not mean an eradication of the notion of ‘expertise’. Yet, this concept won’t remain safe & the same, but will undergo a process of creative destruction, will be split, changed, re-molded and, for sure, removed from the current 1st position of authority.
A quite comfortable thought for any Open Philosophy preacher 😉
Research Diaries of ESST folks, 2010 