Massive Change; A New Type Of Design.

“The twentieth century will be chiefly remembered by future generations not as an era of political conflicts or technical inventions, but as an age which human society dared to think of the welfare of the whole human race as a practical objective.” (Arnold J. Toynbee, 1889-1975).

It was clear in Tuesday’s lecture that this was not a notion shared by most. Personally, I believe that design is everywhere; it can concern anyone and anything. Most of the individuals referenced below do not consider themselves as designers, but they speak of “designing systems, designing organisations, designing organisms, designing programs. We must admire and participate in the efforts of these thought-leaders or risk losing them.”

“Most of the time we live our lives within invisible systems, blissfully unaware of the artificial life, the intensely designed infrastructures that support them.”

“Accidents, disasters, crises. When systems fail we become temporarily conscious of the extraordinary force and power of design, and the effects that it generates. Every accident provides a brief moment of awareness of real life, what is actually happening, and our dependence on the underlying systems of design.”

In considering alternative housing for slum-dwellers, Katy suggested the need for affordable design that is also appealing. Carol Burns of Taylor and Burns Architects also maintains a similar position and argues that “it’s true that manufactured housing too often has looked cheap and has been stigmatized in various locations because of it. But I believe that good design need not cost more than poor or inattentive design.”

Currently, a solution to the ‘slum problem’ seems impossible, especially when the Third World consists of “entrepreneurs who struggle to build informal urban environment by hand. What if we were to design a property system that supports this?” Individuals such as Hernando de Soto, a Peruvian economist who redesigns property law to grant property rights to the poor, show that problems like these can be solved.

It has become a common misconception that “if people have a roof, they have shelter.” De Soto argues that “people need more than a roof. You need that roof in the system.” Olivier mentioned a project in Shanghai that aimed to eliminate slums. Unfortunately, the solution considered the province of Shanghai in separatist terms; the system should have been implemented throughout the whole country to create a full effect, and not just in one provincial area. Instead of “isolated parcels of land…it’s now a matter of considering an entire city infrastructure and its connected environs.” Architects tend to build pieces of city without regarding their relationship to the whole. Perhaps change is required in the design practice and in the thinking (of designers) before global change itself can be realised?

As far as the issue of money is concerned, “we now bare witness to an emergence of social entrepreneurs with ethics as powerful as their conviction to do the greatest good for all.” In 1999, Slovakia saw an increase from 10 to over 10,200 citizen groups in 10 years, whilst Brazil increased its citizen groups from under 5,000 to over 1,000,000. There are many citizen groups, nongovernmental organisations and non-profit associations (such as Bill Drayton’s Ashoka) that share the same goal.

Poverty reduction through design rejects the binary notion of the client/designer relationship, and observes current events. Problems are adopted everywhere, whilst ideas are developed and tested against other solutions. The effect of this is “to imagine a future for design that is both more modest and more ambitious. It is critical that the discussions go beyond the design fields themselves and reach out to the broadest audience” i.e. to those directly affected by the work of designers. Only then can we bring about Massive Change.


References and Further Reading:

• Massive Change by Bruce Mau and the Institute Without Boundaries, especially the Urban Economies and Wealth & Politics chapters.
• Taylor and Burns Architects, Carol Burns.
• The Institute for Liberty and Democracy (Lima, Peru), Hernando de Soto.
• Ashoka, Bill Drayton.
• It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be by Paul Arden.
• Planet of Slums by Mike Davis.