We live in a time when everything is designed, from our carefully crafted individual looks and online identities, to the surrounding galaxies of personal devices, new materials, interfaces, networks, systems, infrastructures, data, chemicals, organisms, and genetic codes...
Even the planet itself has been completely encrusted by design as a geological layer.
There is no longer an outside to the world of design. Design has become the world.
— Istanbul Design Biennial
Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley, the curators of the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial, announced the conceptual framework for next year's biennial in a press release held today in a library of the Istanbul Archaeological Museums.
Its overlong title, ARE WE HUMAN?: The Design of the Species: 2 seconds, 2 years, 200 years, 200,000 years, indicates primary conceptual concerns: the omnipresence of design, or the world as a designed object; the category of the human, alongside and contra that of the animal; and an expanded temporal focus that "spans from the last 2 seconds to the last 200,000 years."
"Design always presents itself as serving the human but its real ambition is to redesign the human," the curators state in the press release. "The history of design is therefore a history of evolving conceptions of the human. To talk about design is to talk about the state of our species."
Rather than celebrate particular designers or imagine speculative futures, the biennial will be an "archaeological project," striving to document, across multiple media, a contemporary context where "everyday reality has outpaced science fiction." This extremity of the present will be considered within an extended purview, from "the footprints of the first shoes to the latest digital and carbon footprints."
Invited designers and thinkers will be asked to consider these eight, interlinked propositions:
Alongside commissioned projects such as events and workshops, the biennial will include an open call for short video responses to these propositions. Details of the open call will be announced on February 1, 2016.
Andrés Jaque and the Office for Political Innovation will design the exhibition architecture, intended to serve as "clusters of interactive clouds for reflection and discussion." Rather than a singular and cohesive branding strategy, a number of emerging Turkish designers will create an array of material that will be dispersed throughout the city.
"Design is what makes the human. It is the basis of social life, from the very first artefacts to the exponential expansion of human capability," Colomina and Wigely state. "But design also engineers inequalities and new forms of neglect. More people than ever in history are forcibly displaced by war, lawlessness, poverty, and climate at the same time that the human genome and the weather are being actively redesigned."
"We can no longer reassure ourselves with the idea of 'good design,'" they continue. "Design needs to be redesigned.”
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45 Comments
Biennial curators need to lay off the drugs, geez
designer drugs
DESIGN WITHOUT ANESTHETIC ASKS URGENT QUESTIONS ABOUT OUR HUMANITY
Bartender, another round here!
Somewhere a bull is missing his shit.
reality is alipping away into "good design", very valid point
"Design is what makes the human. It is the basis of social life, from the very first artefacts to the exponential expansion of human capability."
I think this is wrong. I'm not so interested in the last part of the statement, although, if they're talking about computation and machinery, I'd label those developments as engineering.
My problem is with the idea that the "very first artefacts" were designed. I would argue that design is a function of industrial production - designers make plans (buildings, goods, whatever) that are then carried out by others. Pre-industrial trades, and what remains of them today, are a completely different thing. Craft.
I loathe the arrogance of designers who think of themselves a saviors when they are actually just another cog in the consumption economy. Design just means more crap.
What's missing here is any kind of intelligent critique of the particular choices that humans actually make regarding how or what they design. It reveals the Ivory Tower far above that the curators occupy rather than having a stake in the outcome like we all do. It also constructs this new policially correct framework where people have no responsibility in their own outcomes, its just BIG BAD DESIGN that controls all outcomes.
Add in a round of political hot button topics DESIGN ROUTINELY CONSTRUCTS INEQUALITIES that mean nothing. Does that mean the beaver that constructs a tight beaver dam is contributing to beaver inequality? Perhaps it should be NATURE ROUTINELY CONSTRCTS INEQUALITIES.
Saying human = design is like saying the earth is round, what is interesting about that? Also interesting is how architecture people use "design" so they can talk about "more interesting stuff" like online profiles. How embarrassing it would be to do a show about buildings!
Also, if Good Design no longer is a virtue, I guess that means they are celebrating what is echoing around, a kind of nihilistic design outside of humanity for purposes of caplital (and then nothing).
+++anonitect
good design cannot be novelty. Good design can only be innovation. Most "design" and architecture these days is nothing more than novelty...a reshaping of the same old thing...newness for the sake of newness...
"asks urgent questions about humanity" is not design. it's ART, duh.
Good design is for humans, not media or academia or biennals.
Either way, I'd have loved to be at the bong-hit roundtable that produced this gem
That list isn't drug-induced, just the routinely pretentious babble discharged from deziners eager to trot out that bachelor's in the humanities they thought they'd never get to use, or who get hard visiting Salon.com.
Though I loathe the anti-intellectualism of the new media, i find intellectuals that pander to this 'everything is design' mantra to be worse--so they can like talk about brands. Brutalism was pretty bad right? Trump and social media, so weird, right?
http://www.wisdomofchopra.com/
Nate, I too dislike the anti-intellectualism of the media, I do not find this verbal jizz to be intellectual though. It is pseudo intellectualism. Compare this kind of "theory" to the work being done in other fields. Its a joke. Architectural theory has completely abandoned the scientific method. Can we please start backing some of this shit up with some sort of research, experimentation, or rigorous logical reasoning....
bees, birds, ants, moles, rabbits, foxes, snakes, etc.etc. even bears design, build and maintain their own dwellings, a lot better than "humans". And they're better looking too.
has completely abandoned the scientific method. Can we please start backing some of this shit up with some sort of research, experimentation, or rigorous logical reasoning....
Jia - Yes, design theory is a big wank fest, but that doesn't mean that the answer to our problems is to mimic STEM fields. The humanities can be rigorous as well, and I worry that a constant turning to the scientific method (which almost automatically suggests the use of technology) undermines our capacity to understand the world through our own experience in it. Colin Davie's article Work and Technology makes the point better than I can. Here's a small bit (I can't recommend it highly enough, and its a short read:)
When we feel cold, for example, we look at a thermometer to see how cold it 'really' is. So deep is our respect for the objective reality represented by the scientific instrument that we allow it greater importance than the reality of our own experience. Scientific reality is a disembodied reality. The only reality available to us, however, is the reality of our bodily presence in the world.
JLC - I think that we need to define things clearly. I would agree with the curators that humans are the only animals on this planet that design things - other animals might make shelters or use tools; design is a step in an industrial process.
This should really have been BIG - he is the true master.
before the industrial era there was no design? big statement
also, these birds do "design" with an aesthetic and practical purpose, the arrogance to believe that man is above all of nature always baffles me.
http://www.core77.com/posts/26541/animal-architects-bowerbirds-design-build-showy-colorful-homes-to-attract-mates-26541
'good design' is now bad its pretty obvious to most of us here. even if you dont realize you are saying it......knoa though believes in 'good design'
I'm not saying that bower birds don't make really lovely things, they do. But, aside from our tendency to anthropomorphize things that look similar to human behavior, which, in this case, is just as likely to be instinct as true expression - if the birds are in fact consciously making aesthetic decisions, their behavior is closer to art making than design.
What we call design today has very little to do with the architecture or the production of goods made before the industrial revolution, which I would categorize as closer to either art or craft. Cathedrals, for instance, were built without a completed plan: ornament, and even structure, would worked out as construction was ongoing. They are an aggregation of the work of artists and craftspeople.
Before the industrial revolution a chair was made the way chairs had always been made in a place, with advances in efficiency or strength of construction developed over generations, for the most part. Thrones were built the same way as chairs, just with more care, better materials, and more patience.
Modern design is planning for an industrial process, and whether that's molding plastic or pouring concrete, the idea is set before the object is produced. I know that the word design comes from the Italian word for "to draw," but meanings change over time; no one would mistake our profession for the architecture practiced by Michelangelo.
Nature itself is designed by the process of natural selection. Evolution is the greatest designer ever. It has led to things that we could never achieve with our limited time and silly design processes. Take Lou Kahn and have him work on a single project for 100,000,000 years and it still wouldn't come close to the comlexity and perfection of a single organism...
Evolution is the greatest designer ever.
Weird way of conceiving of evolution. Replace the word God with the word Evolution, but keep the idea of conscious intent?
The process of evolution has resulted in amazing creatures, but they were in no way designed. Design requires intent.
9. OR R WE DANCER?
"design requires intent"
The intent of evolution is survival. evolution is a design process with out a designer.
We can take it even further and say that The universe is designed by the parameters of physics. The universe is a parametric self designing entity...that is an undeniable fact. Humans are only special in that we can anticipate the result and affect the outcome with our biases.
The intent of evolution is survival.
Just not true, Jia. Does this really require explanation? Evolution is not an entity: it did not set out with the purpose of making species more competitive. Evolution cannot be considered design under any definition of the word that means anything at all.
Your conflation of the design process with natural phenomena is the kind of aggrandizement that is so problematic in the field.
anon, spot on. Evolution isn't sentient, it can't go ahead and decide not to...it does what it does, with or without human intervention.
^ right, but it is still a creative process because it creates. Im not sure why conscious intent is a necessary component to qualify as "design." After all, cities (especially old cities that lack formal planning, favelas, the palimpsest that results from individual actions over time...) lacks a conscious intent, yet it is still designed collectively by the culture/society as a whole...as in nature, individual actions/objectives manifest to create something unintentional yet refined through a "higher" process. IMO this is design...
Mayan City
Egyptian village
Cities have always been intentional. They change over time, but that doesn't make their design a natural process.
Saying that evolution is a creative process is like saying that gravity is really into making things fall down.
i met gravity once
she was a bitch
straight up slapped me in the face
as I bailed on me skateboard
face plant in the crete
DESIGN IS ALWAYS DESIGN OF THE HUMAN
This premise is not correct. We've completely redesigned our streets and cities around the needs of the car (or human-car hybrid). The individual independent human moving under her/his own power is secondary (in many cases a clearly disenfranchised minority) in much of our built environment.
Cities evolve over time. Cities adapt to environmental, social, economic, and political changes. The present manifestation of a city is a result of many adaptations over time. For instance, present day manhattan in its totality was never conceived or planned...the basic dna may have been consciously designed, but the city itself in its entirety is a product of the natural force of human behaviors. Yes, even our political systs are a natural feature of the human animal...no less "natural" than the social behaviors of other animals.
Situationist - Yes, city design often prioritizes cars over pedestrians, which is a mistake. But, those decisions were made by human designers.
Jia - Of course cities change over time, but it's naive to think that human behavior is equivalent to, or as "natural" as that of other animals. I'm not saying that we are better than other animals, by any means, but we stopped being a part of nature a long time ago. We've got the Internet, Crispr, nuclear weapons, and lawyers. You can't possibly believe that humans act in the world in a way equivalent to a honey bee colony, or a troop of chimpanzees.
One of the many things that we do that no other animal does is to produce things with industrial processes. Design is a step in those process, therefore it is unique to humans.
"Design always presents itself as serving the human but its real ambition is to redesign the human," the curators state in the press release. "The history of design is therefore a history of evolving conceptions of the human. To talk about design is to talk about the state of our species."
A quote from the curators - what they get wrong is that they attribute the changes in humanity to design - design is only one facet of the larger cause; the industrialization and technological advances demanded by capital. Design is far less powerful than they wish it were.
humans are a part of nature. We are slightly more advance versions of the chimp. The main problem with our our society these days is that we believe otherwise.
And lol to the idea that we "left nature." Everything is part of nature. Of course some of our behaviors are unique to our species, but other species also have unique behaviors...
^ that is an human biased opinion. If Aliens were looking down upon us, and they were more intelligent, it could be the equivilent of how we see ants...or cities to them may be like coral reefs are to us...the perspective in that above definition is very narrow.
It's not hubris to suggest that we have separated ourselves from nature. In fact, I think that the opposite is true. Believing that we are still a part of natural systems absolves us of the harm we have done to the planet.
We have created machines that increase our capacity for work, speed us across the planet, and augment our memory and intelligence. We are cyborgs. Sure, we're made of meat, but our collective impact and capacities are far outside of the scope of anything natural.
^ quandam.com, can you explain why a plastic bottle is artificial rather than natural?
can you also explain why the fungi farmed by certain species of ants is natural?
The idea that our destructive tendencies are unnatural is simply wrong. our destruction is a direct result of our human nature...perhaps self destruction is a common natural course of an intellegent species....Your view of nature is silly and reductionist...as if nature is only pristine meadows and fluffy bunnies...a single comet could snuff the earth out in miniutes ...is that comet not part of nature? It is far more destructive than us...
We are still living within nature because everything is nature. Industrialization is most likely a common trend in species throughout the cosmos....6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars and counting...do you really think we are the apex of biological life? If not, then why are we the threshold between nature and other...
Jia, one more time. "Is that comet not part of nature" No. It is not, unless by "nature," you mean all of the matter in the universe.
Let's go with the first definition of nature that pops up when you google it. Nature: the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.
But, maybe we can get back on track. Why are we the threshold between nature and the other? Because we have designed machines that dramatically increase our capacities, and we now rely on them for life. If our machines stopped working, we would die by the billions. We have been redesigned, which is what the curators are arguing. My only real disagreement with them is the amount of agency they're giving design. It isn't the driving force, capital is.
^ its a matter of perspective. Yes, we rely on machines, but who's to say that those machines are not part of nature. My main point was that design is a natural feature of the human species. To treat design as something divine or above natire is a problem because it denies our connection to the ecosystem. We are still very much connected to the ecosystem. If the ecosystem collapses due to global warming many will die. If a virus jumps from birds to humans we die. If the worlds oceans get over fished and collapse many will die...ect...
To your point on capital... I agree.
^ you didnt answer the above questions. You must have a criteria or else its just an opinion. And, what fiction did I make up? The Universe is not a fiction, its vastness is well known. if you reduce nature to non-human animals on one small planet then your opinion is silly and shortsighted. Most if not all scientists would probably agree.
^ not my fault that you can't understand. What I'm saying is pretty much common sense to anyone with a 21st century undetstanding of nature.
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