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manifestos-space-design · 7 years ago

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1000 Words: A Manifesto for Sustainable Design

By Allan ChochiNov, 2007

www.core77.com/posts/40586, visited September 3, 2018

“I don't like the word manifesto. It reeks of dogma and rules—two things I instinctually reject. I do love the way it puts things on the line, but I don't like lines, or groups. So a manifesto probably isn't for me. The other thing about manifestos is that they appear (or are written so as to appear) self-evident. This kind of a priori writing is easy, since you simply lay out what seems obviously—even tautologically—true. Of course, this is the danger of manifestos, but also what makes them fun to read. And fun to write. So I'll write this manifesto. I just might not sign it. Anyway, here they are. Exactly 1000 words: Hippocratic Before Socratic "First do no harm" is a good starting point for everyone, but it's an especially good starting point for designers. For a group of people who pride themselves on "problem solving" and improving people's lives, we sure have done our fair share of the converse. We have to remember that industrial design equals mass production, and that every move, every decision, every curve we specify is multiplied—sometimes by the thousands and often by the millions. And that every one of those everys has a price. We think that we're in the artifact business, but we're not; we're in the consequence business. ...designers are feeding and feeding this cycle, helping to turn everyone and everything into either a consumer or a consumable. And when you think about, this is kind of grotesque. "Consumer" isn't a dirty word exactly, but it probably oughta be. Stop Making Crap And that means that we have to stop making crap. It's really as simple as that. We are suffocating, drowning, and poisoning ourselves with the stuff we produce, abrading, out-gassing, and seeping into our air, our water, our land, our food—and basically those are the only things we have to look after before there's no we in that sentence. It gets into our bodies, of course, and it certainly gets into our minds. And designers are feeding and feeding this cycle, helping to turn everyone and everything into either a consumer or a consumable. And when you think about it, this is kind of grotesque. "Consumer" isn't a dirty word exactly, but it probably oughta be. Systems Before Artifacts Before we design anything new, we should examine how we can use what already exists to better ends. We need to think systems before artifacts, services before products, adopting Thackara's use/not own principles at every step. And when new products are needed, they'll be obvious and appropriate, and then can we conscientiously pump up fossil fuels and start polymerizing them. Product design should be part of a set of tools we have for solving problems and celebrating life. It is a means, not an end. Teach Sustainability Early Design education is at a crossroads, with many schools understanding the potentials, opportunities, and obligations of design, while others continue to teach students how to churn out pretty pieces of garbage. Institutions that stress sustainability, social responsibility, cultural adaptation, ethnography, and systems thinking are leading the way. But soon they will come to define what industrial design means. (A relief to those constantly trying to define the discipline today!) This doesn't mean no aesthetics. It just means a keener eye on costs and benefits. Screws Better Than Glues This is lifted directly from the Owner's Manifesto, which addresses how the people who own things and the people who make them are in a kind of partnership. But it's a partnership that's broken down, since almost all of the products we produce cannot be opened or repaired, are designed as subassemblies to be discarded upon failure or obsolescence, and conceal their workings in a kind of solid-state prison. This results in a population less and less confident in their abilities to use their hands for anything other than pushing buttons and mice, of course. But it also results in people fundamentally not understanding the workings of their built artifacts and environments, and, more importantly, not understanding the role and impact that those built artifacts and environments have on the world. In the same way that we can't expect people to understand the benefits of a water filter when they can't see the gunk inside it, we can't expect people to sympathize with greener products if they can't appreciate the consequences of any products at all. Design for Impermanence In his Masters Thesis, "The Paradox of Weakness: Embracing Vulnerability in Product Design," my student Robert Blinn argues that we are the only species who designs for permanence—for longevity—rather than for an ecosystem in which everything is recycled into everything else. Designers are complicit in this over-engineering of everything we produce (we are terrified of, and often legally risk-averse to, failure), but it is patently obvious that our ways and means are completely antithetical to how planet earth manufactures, tools, and recycles things. We choose inorganic materials precisely because biological organisms cannot consume them, while the natural world uses the same building blocks over and over again. It is indeed Cradle-to-Cradle or cradle-to-grave, I'm afraid. Balance Before Talents The proportion of a solution needs to balance with its problem: we don't need a battery-powered pooper scooper to pick up dog poop, and we don't need a car that gets 17 MPG to, well, we don't need that car, period. We have to start balancing our ability to be clever with our ability to be smart. They're two different things. Metrics Before Magic Metrics do not get in the way of being creative. Almost everything is quantifiable, and just the exercise of trying to frame up ecological and labor impacts can be surprisingly instructive. So on your next project, if you've determined that it may be impossible to quantify the consequences of a material or process or assembly in a design you're considering, maybe it's not such a good material or process or assembly to begin with. There are more and more people out there in the business of helping you to find these things out, by the way; you just have to call them. Climates Before Primates This is the a priori, self-evident truth. If we have any hope of staying here, we need to look after our home. And our anthropocentric worldview is literally killing us. "Design serves people"? Well, I think we've got bigger problems right now. Context Before Absolutely Everything Understanding that all design happens within a context is the first (and arguably the only) stop to make on your way to becoming a good designer. You can be a bad designer after that, of course, but you don't stand a chance of being a good one if you don't first consider context. It's everything: In graphics, communication, interaction, architecture, product, service, you name it—if it doesn't take context into account, it's crap. And you already promised not to make any more of that. So there's my manifesto. A little stern perhaps, but that's what editing down to 1000 words will get you. The power of design is an amazing thing. Let's wield it wisely. “

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manifestos-space-design · 8 years ago

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The Oslo Manifesto. Design and Architecture for the SDGs

By the Norwegian Centre for Design and Architecture and 17Goals, 2016

Signed by 275+ people.

oslomanifesto.org/home/read-sign/, visited February 2, 2017

On 25 September 2015, when the 193 Member States of the United Nations approved the 2030 Agenda and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, (SDGs) they also created the world’s most demanding design brief.

/The SDGs are “universal”: this means they apply to every nation, every sector, every business, every profession, including design and architecture.

/The SDGs are about “integration”: this means they demand a new emphasis on a systemic approach that does not sacrifice environmental and social considerations to economic gain, but rather seeks for true synergies and solutions that benefit people, nature, and prosperity.

/Finally, the SDGs are about “transformation”: this means they challenge us to rethink the way we live, to rebuild all the systems that are degrading ecological and human health — and to make our world sustainable.

/In sum, the SDGs are the ultimate design and architecture challenge: how do we create, and recreate, a world that achieves all 17 of the visionary goals that have now been agreed to by all the world’s nations?

And how do we achieve this by the year 2030?

The designers, architects, and creative professionals of the world have been handed a special and enormous responsibility, given to them by the 193 heads of state. They must imagine and bring to life the design elements of a new, sustainable world — quickly.

/01

How can this design contribute to the goal of ending poverty in all its forms, everywhere?

/02

How can this design contribute to ending hunger and encouraging the transition to sustainable agriculture?

/03

How can this design help ensure healthy lives and well-being for all at all ages?

/04

How can this design support quality education and lifelong learning?

/05

How can this design advance gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls?

/06

How can this design help ensure the sustainable management of water and universal access to sanitation?

/07

How can this design contribute to a sustainable energy transition?

/08

How can this design promote decent work for all?

/09

How can this design advance sustainable industrialization and innovation, especially in those places that do not have access to modern industry?

/10

How can this design help to reduce inequality within and among countries?

/11

How can this design transform production and consumption patterns, to make them more sustainable?

/12

How can this design make our cities more inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable?

/13

How can this design be part of the urgent action that is needed to combat climate change and its impacts?

/14

How can this design be part of caring for our oceans and seas?

/15

How can this design help to protect and restore ecosystems and preserve biodiversity?

/16

How can this design contribute to the development peaceful, inclusive, and just societies?

/17

How can this design advance the global partnership needed to achieve all of these goals?

Ready to Make the Commitment?

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manifestos-space-design · 8 years ago

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The Mapmaker Manifesto

By Stamen, 2014

mapmaker-manifesto.tumblr.com, viewed February 2, 2017

Speak in pictures whenever possible. Structure your data, but be sure to leave room for the unstructured. Mate function and form in equality. Transform the ambiguous, obscure, and complex into beautiful, engaging, and accessible. Represent data with accuracy. Remember it is made by humans and subject to inaccuracy. Let the data say what it wants to say. Respect the message. Strike a balance between the literal, the abstract, and the artistic. Know when to show the dots on the map or just the dots themselves. Make your own map. Share it. Make your own data. Share it too. Remember why you are making the map and who you are making it for. Remember that everyone is a mapmaker. Remember to make maps together.

Design your life like you’d design a map.

Mate function and form in equality.

Represent data with accuracy.

Remember that data is made by humans and sometimes inaccurate.

Live your life like you’d follow a map.

Determine You are here.

Observe what is around your location.

Decide where you want to go and your mode of transportation.

Go!

Change direction if you change your mind.

Archive the map when it doesn’t work anymore.

Don’t listen to the computer if you disagree with it.

Manifesto Notes:

This world does not only belong to you and to me, but to every person and living creature on it. If we want to continue to live on this earth, then we must change our interactions with it.

In order to change, we must understand reality. It may be too late to change climate change, the death of bees, the melting of icecaps, the rise of the sea.

But it is not too late to understand how we might adapt to it.

When you look at a map, there are a few key steps to determining direction:

The first step is defining, “You are here.”

The second step is determining what is around you.

The third is to decide where to go (what to pursue) and the kinds of paths to follow (how to get there).

We mapmakers and visualizers of data are well-equipped for this task.

It is up to us to share data and information, so that we can make the map of Now.

It is up to all of us to to draw the path to our future, and to determine our navigation style.

Let us make this map together. Let us see our data and allow it to change our direction. Then we must see the data. We must know the information. We make the data. It belongs to all of us. Function. Form. Motility. Pursuit of beauty. It is important to remember, we are all makers of maps. If it's as much about the journey as the destination, then how we get there is as important as the paths we take.

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manifestos-space-design · 8 years ago

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A Radical Designer’s Manifesto

By Chris Blake, 2010

rdmanifesto.tumblr.com/manifesto, viewed February 2, 2017

The Manifesto of Radical Designer’s Manifesto:

All design should be financially accessible and together we can find all sorts of solutions to make an awesome space on even the smallest budgets or even no budget!

Designing your space or any space or anything takes time

It’s time for every working-class person to have a comfortable, aesthetically pleasing space to come home to after a long day.

Every person should have a home to go to!

Design is collective and many ideas have been done over and over again; don’t beat yourself up if you like something, go with you gut feelings!

Yes, paint can be a best friend in doing a project on the cheap, but there are other options too!

Being “green” is fine and all, but without collective fight-back, it is just individualistic and it won’t save the Earth!

Design geeks and aspiring design geeks, it’s time to UNITE AND FIGHT!

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manifestos-space-design · 8 years ago

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Urban Policy Manifesto

www.dezeen.com/2016/11/18/patrik-schumacher-social-housing-public-space-scrapped-london-world-architecture-festival-2016/, viewed February 2, 2017; note the comments following the article.

1. Regulate the Planners: Development rights must be the starting point, then tightly define and circumscribe the planners’ scope and legitimate reasons for constraining development rights: access/traffic constraints, infringements of neighbours’ property utilisation (rights of light), historic heritage preservation, pollution limits. Nothing else can be brought to bear – no social engineering agendas!

2. Abolish all land use prescriptions: The market should perhaps also allocate land uses, so that more residences can come in until the right balance with work and entertainment spaces is discovered. Only the market has a chance to calibrate this intricate balance.

3. Stop all vain and unproductive attempts at “milieu protection”

4. Abolish all prescriptive housing standards:Planners and politicians should also stay away from housing standards in terms of unit sizes, unit mixes, etc. Here too the market has the best chance to discover the most useful, productive and life/prosperity-enhancing mix. The imposition of housing standards protect nobody, they only eliminate choices and thus make all of us poorer.Stop all interventions and distortions of the (residential) real state market. (All subsidised goods are oversupplied and thus partially wasted.)

5. Abolish all forms of social and affordable housing: No more imposition of quota of various types of affordable housing, phase out and privatise all council housing, phase out the housing benefit system (and substitute with monetary support without specific purpose allocation).

6. Abolish all government subsidies for home ownership like Help to Buy: This distorts real housing preferences and biases against mobility.

7. Abolish all forms of rent control and one-fits-all regulation of tenancies: Instead allow for free contracting on tenancy terms and let a thousand flowers bloom. Here is a recipe for the creation of the dense, urban fabric that delivers the stimulating urbanity many of us desire and know to be a key condition of further productivity gains within our post-fordist network society.

8. Privatise all streets, squares, public spaces and parks, possibly whole urban districts

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manifestos-space-design · 8 years ago

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Parametrics as Style - Parametricist Manifesto

By Patrik Schumacher, 2008

Presented and discussed at the Dark Side Club(1), 11th Architecture Biennale, Venice 2008

www.patrikschumacher.com/Texts/Parametricism%20as%20Style.htm, viewed February 2, 2017

We pursue the parametric design paradigm all the way, penetrating into all corners of the discipline. Systematic, adaptive variation, continuous differentiation (rather than mere variety), and dynamic, parametric figuration concerns all design tasks from urbanism to the level of tectonic detail, interior furnishings and the world of products.

Architecture finds itself at the mid-point of an ongoing cycle of innovative adaptation – retooling the discipline and adapting the architectural and urban environment to the socio-economic era of post-fordism. The mass society that was characterized by a single, nearly universal consumption standard has evolved into the heterogenous society of the multitude. The key issues that avant-garde architecture and urbanism should be addressing can be summarized in the slogan: organising and articulating the increased complexity of post-fordist society. The task is to develop an architectural and urban repertoire that is geared up to create complex, polycentric urban and architectural fields which are densely layered and continuously differentiated.

Contemporary avant-garde architecture is addressing the demand for an increased level of articulated complexity by means of retooling its methods on the basis of parametric design systems. The contemporary architectural style that has achieved pervasive hegemony within the contemporary architectural avant-garde can be best understood as a research programme based upon the parametric paradigma. We propose to call this style: Parametricism. Parametricism is the great new style after modernism. Postmodernism and Deconstructivism have been transitional episodes that ushered in this new, long wave of research and innovation.

Avant-garde styles might be interpreted and evaluated in analogy to new scientific paradigms, affording a new conceptual framework, and formulating new aims, methods and values. Thus a new direction for concerted research work is established.(2) My thesis is therefore: Styles are design research programmes.(3) Innovation in architecture proceeds via the progression of styles so understood. This implies the alternation between periods of cumulative advancement within a style and revolutionary periods of transition between styles. Styles represent cycles of innovation, gathering the design research efforts into a collective endeavor. Stable self-identity is here as much a necessary precondition of evolution as it is in the case of organic life. To hold on to the new principles in the face of difficulties is crucial for the chance of eventual success. This tenacity - abundantly evident within the contemporary avant-garde - might at times appear as dogmatic obstinacy. For instance, the obstinate insistence of solving everything with a folding single surface - project upon project, slowly wrenching the plausible from the implausible – might be compared to the Newtonian insistence to explain everything from planets to bullets to atoms in terms of the same principles. “Newton’s theory of gravitation, Einstein’s relativity theory, quantum mechanics, Marxism, Freudianism, are all research programmes, each with a characteristic hard core stubbornly defended, … each with its elaborate problem solving machinery. Each of them, at any stage of its development, has unsolved problems and undigested anomalies. All theories, in this sense, are born refuted and die refuted.”(4) The same can be said of styles: Each style has its hard core of principles and a characteristic way of tackling design problems/tasks. Avant-garde architecture produces manifestos: paradigmatic expositions of a new style’s unique potential, not buildings that are balanced to function in all respects. There can be neither verification, nor final refutation merely on the basis of its built results.(5) The programme/style consists of methodological rules: some tell us what paths of research to avoid (negative heuristics), and others what paths to pursue (positive heuristics). The negative heuristics formulates strictures that prevent the relapse into old patterns that are not fully consistent with the core, and the positive heuristics offers guiding principles and preferred techniques that allow the work to fast-forward in one direction. The defining heuristics of parametricism are fully reflected in the taboos and dogmas of contemporary avant-gared design culture: Negative heuristics: avoid familiar typologies, avoid platonic/hermetic objects, avoid clear-cut zones/territories, avoid repetition, avoid straight lines, avoid right angles, avoid corners, …, and most importantly: do not add or subtract without elaborate interarticulations. Positive heuristics: interarticulate, hyberdize, morph, deterritorialize, deform, iterate, use splines, nurbs, generative components, script rather than model, …

Parametricism is a mature style. That the parametric paradigm is becoming pervasive in contemporary architecture and design is evident for quite some time. There has been talk about versioning, iteration and mass customization etc. for quite a while within the architectural avant-garde discourse. The fundamental desire that has come to the fore in this tendency had already been formulated at the beginning of the 1990s with the key slogan of “continuous differentiation”(6). Since then there has been both a widespread, even hegemonic dissemination of this tendency as well as a cumulative build up of virtuosity, resolution and refinement within it. This development was facilitated by the attendant development of parametric design tools and scripts that allow the precise formulation and execution of intricate correlations between elements and subsystems. The shared concepts, computational techniques, formal repertoires, and tectonic logics that characterize this work are crystallizing into a solid new hegemonic paradigm for architecture. One of the most pervasive current techniques involves populating modulated surfaces with adaptive components.Components might be constructed from multiple elements constrained/cohered by associative relations so that the overall component might sensibly adapt to various local conditions. As they populate a differentiated surface their adaptation should accentuate and amplify this differentiation. This relationship between the base component and its various instantiations at different points of insertion in the “environment” is analogous to the way a single geno-type might produce a differentiated population of pheno-types in response to divers environmental conditions.

The current stage of advancement within parametricism relates as much to the continuous advancement of the attendant computational dresign technologies as it is due to the designer’s realization of the unique formal and organizational opportunities that are afforded. Parametricism can only exist via sophisticated parametric techniques. Finally, computationally advanced design techniques like scripting (in Mel-script or Rhino-script) and parametric modeling (with tools like GC or DP) are becoming a pervasive reality. Today it is impossible to compete within the contemporary avant-garde scene without mastering these techniques. Parametricism emerges from the creative exploitation of parametric design systems in view of articulating increasingly complex social processes and institutions. The parametric design tools by themselves cannot account for this drastic stylistic shift from modernism to parametricism. This is evidenced by the fact that late modernist architects are employing parametric tools in ways which result in the maintenance of a modernist aesthetics, i.e. using parametric modelling to inconspicuously absorb complexity. Our parametricist sensibility pushes in the opposite direction and aims for a maximal emphasis on conspicuous differentiation. It is the sense of organized (law-governed) complexity that assimilates parametricist works to natural systems, where all forms are the result of lawfully interacting forces. Just like natural systems, parametricist compositions are so highly integrated that they cannot be easily decomposed into independent subsystems – a major point of difference in comparison with the modern design paradigm of clear separation of functional subsystems.

The following 5 agendas might be proposed here to inject new aspects into the parametric paradigm and to push the development of parametricism further:

Inter-articulation of sub-systems: The ambition is to move from single system differentiation – e.g. a swarm of façade components - to the scripted association of multiple subsystems – envelope, structure, internal subdivision, navigation void. The differentiation in any one systems is correlated with differentions in the other systems.

Parametric Accentuation: The ambition is to enhance the overall sense of organic integration through intricate correlations that favour deviation amplification rather than compensatory or ameliorating adaptations. For instance, when generative components populate a surface with a subtle curvature modulation the lawful component correlation should accentuate and amplify the initial differentiation. This might include the deliberate setting of accentuating thresholds or singularities. Thus a far richer articulation can be achieved and thus more orienting visual information can be made available.

Parametric Figuration(7): We propose that complex configurations that are latent with multiple readings can be constructed as a parametric model. The parametric model might be set up so that the variables are extremely Gestalt-sensitive. Parametric variations trigger gestalt-catastrophes, i.e. the quantitative modification of these parameters trigger qualitative shifts in the perceived order of the configuration. This notion of parametric figuration implies an expansion in the types of parameters considered within parametric design. Beyond the usual geometric object parameters, ambient parameters (variable lights) and observer parameters (variable cameras) have to considered and integrated into the parametric system.

Parametric Responsiveness(8): We propose that urban and architectural (interior) environments can be designed with an inbuilt kinetic capacity that allows those environments to reconfigure and adapt themselves in response to the prevalent patterns of use and occupation. The real time registration of use-patterns produces the parameters that drive the real time kinetic adaptation process. Cumulative registration of use patterns result in semi-permanent morphological transformations. The built environment acquires responsive agency at different time scales.

Parametric Urbanism(9): The assumption is that the urban massing describes a swarm-formation of many buildings. These buildings form a continuously changing field, whereby lawful continuities cohere this manifold of buildings. Parametric urbanism implies that the systematic modulation of the buildings’ morphologies produces powerful urban effects and facilitates field orientation. Parametric Urbanism might involve parametric accentuation, parametric figuration, and parametric responsivess.

Modernism was founded on the concept of space. Parametricism differentiates fields. Fields are full, as if filled with a fluid medium. We might think of liquids in motion, structured by radiating waves, laminal flows, and spiraling eddies. Swarms have also served as paradigmatic analogues for the field-concept. We would like to think of swarms of buildings that drift across the landscape. Or we might think of large continuous interiors like open office landscapes or big exhibition halls of the kind used for trade fairs. Such interiors are visually infinitely deep and contain various swarms of furniture coalescing with the dynamic swarms of human bodies. There are no platonic, discrete figures with sharp outlines. Within fields only the global and regional field qualities matter: biases, drifts, gradients, and perhaps even conspicuous singularities like radiating centres. Deformation does no longer spell the breakdown of order but the lawful inscription of information. Orientation in a complex, lawfully differentiated field affords navigation along vectors of transformation .The contemporary condition of arriving in a metropolis for the first time, without prior hotel arrangements, without a map, might instigate this kind of field-navigation. Imagine there are no more landmarks to hold on, no axis to follow and no more boundaries to cross. Contemporary architecture aims to construct new logics – the logic of fields – that gear up to organize and articulate the new level of dynamism and complexity of contemporary society.

Furniture and product design fully participates in the parametricist agenda we are pursuing. We consider furniture not in terms of isolated objects but as a pre-eminent space-making substance. Our design efforts need to encompass the domains of interior design, furniture design, and even product design. We can orchestrate all those registers to advance the design of integrated, immersive worlds. Our handling of interior furnishings as dynamic swarm formations, or sometimes as a continuous surface/fluid mass, is geared towards the detailed elaboration of the continuously differentiated fields described above.

NOTES:

1 The Dark Side Club is a critical salon initiated and organized by Robert White to coincide with the Architecture Biennale. Three successive events were onceived as a critical salon to debate some of the themes Aaron Betsky had set for this year’s Biennale. Three curators have been invited to each put forward a proposition for debate: Patrik Schumacher, Greg Lynn, and Gregor Eichinger. Each invited young architects and thinkers to debate the direction architecture is taking. The first session – curated and introduced by Patrik Schumacher was titled: Parametricism as New Style. The following 8 architectural studios were presenting: MAD, f-u-r, UFO, Plasma Studio, Minimaforms, Aranda/Lasch, AltN Research+Design, MOH. Jeff Kipnis acted as moderator.

2 This interpretation of styles is valid only with respect to the avant-garde phase of any style.

3 It is important to distinguish between research programmes in the literal sense of institutional research plans from the meta-scientific conception of research programmes that has been introduced into the philosophy of science: whole new research traditions that are directed by a new fundamental theoretical framework. It is this latter concept that is utilized here for the reinterpretation of the concept of style. See: Imre Lakatos, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, Cambridge 1978

4 Lakatos, Imre, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, Cambridge 1978, p.5

5 The final reckoning takes place later, in the arena of the mainstream adoption which only indirectly feeds back into the central, discursive arena of the discipline.

6 The credit for coining this key slogan goes to Greg Lynn and Jeff Kipnis.

7 “Parametric Figuration” featured in our teachings at Yale and at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. It also featured in my studio at the AADRL.

8 Parametric Responsiveness was at the heart of our 3 year design research agenda “Responsive Environments” at the AADRL in London from 2001-2004.

9 “Parametric Urbanism” is the title of our recently completed design research cycle at the AADRL, from 2005 – 2008.

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manifestos-space-design · 9 years ago

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Laufen Manifesto for a Humane Design Culture

Multiple authors, 2013

Anna Heringer, Hon. Prof of the UNESCO Chair for Earthen Architecture, Germany; Andres Lepik, Director of Architekturmuseum of TU München, Germany; Hubert Klumpner, Architect, Urban-Think Tank, Dean D-ARCH, ETH Zürich, Venezuela/Switzerland; Peter Rich, Architect, hon. FAIA, South Africa; Line Ramstad, Landscape Architect, Gyaw Gyaw, Norway/Burma; Peter Cachola Schmal, Director at Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Germany; Andres Bäppler, Architect, Schule für Leben, Germany/Colombia;Emilio Caravatti, Architect, Italy; Dietmar Steiner, Director of Architekturzentrum Vienna, Austria; Christian Werthmann, Professor of Landscape Architecture and Design Hannover, Germany; Martin Rauch, Hon. Prof of the UNESCO Chair for Earthen Architecture, Germany; Dominique Gauzin-Müller, Editor EcologiK, France; Helena Sandman, Architect, Hollmén Reuter Sandman Architects/Ukumbi, Finland; Enrico Vianello, Architect, studio TAMassociatti, Italy; Rahul Mehrotra, Architect, Chair of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard, India/US; Alejandro Restreppo, Urban Planner, Colombia; Susanne Hofman, Architect, Baupiloten, Germany; Anh-Linh Ngo, Editor ARCH+, Germany; Louis Fernandez Galliano, Editor Architectura Viva, Spain; Alejandro Encheverri, Director of Urbam, Colombia

www.toposmagazine.com/laufen-manifesto-humane-design-culture, viewed September 30, 2016

Too many people worldwide subsist in undeserving living conditions, and their ranks are growing by the day. As representatives of the professions collectively shaping the built environment, it is our responsibility to resist this intolerable situation. We are speaking out to define an alternative position. We must produce spaces that counter exploitation, control and alienation, whether in urban or rural landscapes. With all our expertise, creativity and power, we need to contribute more dynamically and consequentially to the global quest for equality. Across a range of pilot projects, we have begun to initiate a more humane design culture, working with a robust network of communities, craftsmen, planners, builders and organizations. These alternative practices demand not only further development, but also substantial scaling-up. Guided by a deeper understanding of individual needs and aspirations as our fundamental concern, we must urgently multiply our efforts to improve the ecological, social, and aesthetic quality of the built environment, while developing more effective design strategies to anticipate predicted future growth on a global scale.

01 COLLABORATING EYE TO EYE We must commit ourselves to respectful communication and cooperation with residents and communities as key partners in achieving positive, measurable change. The impact of a participatory process extends beyond actual design outcomes – it should empower individuals and cultivate a constructive atmosphere with lasting effects. The process should allow sufficient time to facilitate a dialogue striving for respect, curiosity, flexibility and care.

02 DESIGNING WORK Projects must be conceived in a way that creates meaningful work. A thoughtful approach to designing buildings, places, landscapes and products can nurture small-scale enterprises like construction, farming and crafts. By opting for labor-based techniques and non-standardized materials, we can foster a decentralized form of construction and production. Creating an atmosphere of entrepreneurship and innovation is essential in forming value chains connecting local craftsmanship and global industries. New models of self construction for low-income populations must be explored, combining education, training and long-term income generation. The creation of work is foundational for greater equality and peace.

03 UNFURLING BEAUTY We believe that beauty is an essential human need, linked strongly to dignity. We must strive for an authentic harmony that resonates with people, the genius loci and their territory. The longing for beauty can be stronger than fear and thus a crucial catalyst for humane development.

04 IDENTIFYING THE LOCAL Modernization has levelled cultural differences globally and hampered context specific design. Individual projects must be based on careful observation of geophysical conditions, local building traditions and space hierarchies. Global knowledge on building techniques must be adapted to the local climate, available materials, skill base and energy sources. Site and culturally sensitive design contributes to self-sufficiency and more sustainable local economies.

05 UNDERSTANDING THE TERRITORY While designers and policy-makers devote significant attention to mega-cities and high density environments, larger agglomerations are deeply dependent on smaller living units and their landscapes. Truly humane design projects understand zones of impact and influence on many scales. They operate between the local, the regional, the continental, and the global, thereby revealing a rich network of dynamic social, economic, and ecological relations that must be respected, adjusted for, and improved as needed.

06 EDUCATING DESIGNERS Designers are not trained sufficiently to achieve positive change for people living in undeserving conditions. Design education has to evolve radically to ensure young designers have the capacity to bridge the gap between design and construction, understand the nuances of diverse sites and territories, and communicate more profoundly with local communities and stakeholders. In short, instil a greater social empathy. Manual skills must be developed on the same footing as digital and intellectual skills. Designing the right process must be equally important as the outcome.

07 SHAPING POLICY Integrated infrastructure, new collaborations, and innovative approaches to project development and financing must be translated into a global policy strategy. A vast change is necessary in the way we conceive, distribute and construct human habitats. We must connect top-down and bottom-up processes, with a view to fostering more productive exchanges between residents, policy-makers, financial institutions, the design profession and executing bodies. This will require the mobilization of both human and financial resources. We need broader and better solutions, at a lower cost, for a larger number of people.

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manifestos-space-design · 9 years ago

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An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

By Bruce Mau, 1998

www.manifestoproject.it/bruce-mau, viewed September 29, 2016

Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.

Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

Ask stupid questions. Growth is fuelled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

____________________. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.

Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.

Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

Read only left–hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our ‘noodle’.

Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device–dependent.

Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between ‘creatives’ and ‘suits’ is what Leonard Cohen calls a “charming artifact of the past.”

Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object–oriented, real–time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea—I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else… but not words.

Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old–tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces—what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference—the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals—but with no actual conference. 39. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.

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manifestos-space-design · 9 years ago

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Brexit Design Manifesto

By Dezeen manazine, Max Fraser, Camron PR, Bethan Ryder, Micha Weidmann Studio; 2016

Signed by 150+ people

www.dezeen.com/manifesto, viewed September 29 2016

Design can help the UK thrive after Brexit.

But first the government must help design. Here's why.

The UK's architects and designers are among the most creative and dynamic in the world. They generate billions for the economy and act as global ambassadors for our nation.

Design is one of our nation's greatest strengths and plays a key role in the "soft power" we project overseas. Our architects and designers are recognised for their creativity and expertise, creating world-class buildings, infrastructure, products, services, clothing and software.

London is acknowledged as one of the world's design capitals but this is far from being a London-centric industry – 60% of creative businesses are outside the capital.

The sector is a huge asset to the UK both culturally and economically. It is the fastest-growing part of the UK's creative industries, generating over £71.7 billion in goods and services a year and employing more than 1.5 million people.

Design has been at the heart of our identity for hundreds of years, from Thomas Chippendale and Christopher Wren to Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Robin and Lucienne Day.

Contemporary UK designers including Jonathan Ive, Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, Zaha Hadid, Tom Dixon and Barber & Osgerby have shaped the modern world and helped provide a globally recognised visual identity for our country, influencing our lives and our sense of who we are.

Architectural landmarks such as the Reichstag in Berlin and the Centre Pompidou in Paris fly the flag for our design expertise in the most prominent way possible, while we lead the world in sectors such as car and gaming design.

But design is not just about famous names and projects. It can help deliver better quality, more efficient and more enduring infrastructure across the country – as it has done for centuries via the work of the great architects and engineers of the past, whose landmarks still serve and help define our nation.

Brexit presents the architecture and design sector with a challenge.

Design has benefited from the UK's membership of the EU. The continent is the most important export market for design services and the largest talent pool for employees.

But design is not only a European industry – it's global. Many "British" designers hail from overseas and were drawn to these shores by our nation's openness and international connections, and by our world-renowned design schools. Their creative minds have vastly enriched our nation's life and helped develop our unique design scene.

As the UK prepares for Brexit, the design sector is concerned that these competitive advantages will be lost. This would be a loss to the whole nation.

Here's what the sector needs from government to help it rise to the challenge.

After Brexit, the UK will need a successful design industry more than ever, since designers solve problems and thrive in challenging circumstances.

In order to continue to grow, the architecture and design sector needs help in the following five areas:

Recognition: the government should take note of the sector's cultural and economic importance and pursue policies to help it thrive after Brexit. In particular, it should help the sector maintain and develop the strongest possible ties with Europe and the rest of the world.

Education: design should be championed in schools to inspire future generations of designers. Higher education requires investment to compete with the best in the world and must continue to attract the brightest overseas minds. Student exchange programmes and research links must be retained.

Recruitment: to retain their edge, design firms need to be able to recruit talent from anywhere in the world with a minimum of bureaucracy. And after graduating in the UK, the brightest overseas students should be able to join firms here, or start their own. EU employees already working for UK design firms must be allowed to remain in the country.

Manufacturing: with policies to support both small and large manufacturers, designers can help strengthen UK industry. Government should recognise that design can lead to better, more competitive products.

Intellectual property: with the UK no longer part of EU rights law, designers will need reassurance that they will be able to get international protection for their ideas with a minimum of cost and bureaucracy.

In summary, intelligently designed products, services and systems can help improve individual lives, business competitiveness and community cohesion.

But first, let's ensure that policies are in place to help the sector deliver a prosperous future for all.

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manifestos-space-design · 9 years ago

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First Things First 1964

By Ken Garland, 1964

maxb.home.xs4all.nl/ftf1964.htm, viewed September 29, 2016

Signed by 21 people

We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, photographers and students who have been brought up in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable means of using our talents. We have been bombarded with publications devoted to this belief, applauding the work of those who have flogged their skill and imagination to sell such things as: cat food, stomach powders, detergent, hair restorer, striped toothpaste, aftershave lotion, beforeshave lotion, slimming diets, fattening diets, deodorants, fizzy water, cigarettes, roll-ons, pull-ons and slip-ons.

By far the greatest effort of those working in the advertising industry are wasted on these trivial purposes, which contribute little or nothing to our national prosperity.

In common with an increasing numer of the general public, we have reached a saturation point at which the high pitched scream of consumer selling is no more than sheer noise. We think that there are other things more worth using our skill and experience on. There are signs for streets and buildings, books and periodicals, catalogues, instructional manuals, industrial photography, educational aids, films, television features, scientific and industrial publications and all the other media through which we promote our trade, our education, our culture and our greater awareness of the world.

We do not advocate the abolition of high pressure consumer advertising: this is not feasible. Nor do we want to take any of the fun out of life. But we are proposing a reversal of priorities in favour of the more useful and more lasting forms of communication. We hope that our society will tire of gimmick merchants, status salesmen and hidden persuaders, and that the prior call on our skills will be for worthwhile purposes. With this in mind we propose to share our experience and opinions, and to make them available to colleagues, students and others who may be interested.

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manifestos-space-design · 9 years ago

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First Things First 2000

2000

www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/first-things-first-manifesto-2000, viewed September 29, 2016. Signed by 200 people.

We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, art directors and visual communicators who have been raised in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable use of our talents. Many design teachers and mentors promote this belief; the market rewards it; a tide of books and publications reinforces it.

Encouraged in this direction, designers then apply their skill and imagination to sell dog biscuits, designer coffee, diamonds, detergents, hair gel, cigarettes, credit cards, sneakers, butt toners, light beer and heavy-duty recreational vehicles. Commercial work has always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do. This, in turn, is how the world perceives design. The profession’s time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are inessential at best.

Many of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this view of design. Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.

There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention. Many cultural interventions, social marketing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programmes, films, charitable causes and other information design projects urgently require our expertise and help.

We propose a reversal of priorities in favour of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication – a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design.

In 1964, 22 visual communicators signed the original call for our skills to be put to worthwhile use. With the explosive growth of global commercial culture, their message has only grown more urgent. Today, we renew their manifesto in expectation that no more decades will pass before it is taken to heart.

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manifestos-space-design · 9 years ago

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First Things First 2014

By Cole Peters, Chris Armstrong, Aral Balkan, Jon Gold, Laura Kalbag, André Mooij, Anna Sobolewska; 2014

Signed by 1653 people

firstthingsfirst2014.org, viewed September 29, 2016

We, the undersigned, are designers, developers, creative technologists, and multi-disciplinary communicators. We are troubled by the present state of our industry and its effects on cultures and societies across the world.

We have become part of a professional climate that:

prizes venture capital, profit, and scale over usefulness and resonance;

demands a debilitating work-life imbalance of its workers;

lacks critical diversity in gender, race, and age;

claims to solve problems but favours those of a superficial nature;

treats consumers’ personal information as objects to be monetised instead of as personal property to be supported and protected; and

refuses to address the need to reform policies affecting the jurisdiction and ownership of data.

Encouraged in these directions, we have applied ourselves

toward the creation of trivial, undifferentiated apps; disposable social networks; fantastical gadgets obtainable only by the affluent; products that use emotion as a front for the sale of customer data; products that reinforce broken or dishonest forms of commerce; and insular communities that drive away potential collaborators and well-grounded leaders. Some of us have lent our expertise to initiatives that abuse the law and human rights, defeat critical systems of encryption and privacy, and put lives at risk. We have negated our professions’ potential for positive impact, and are using up our time and energy manufacturing demand for things that are redundant at best, destructive at worst.

There are pursuits more worthy of our dedication. Our abilities can benefit areas such as education, medicine, privacy and digital security, public awareness and social campaigns, journalism, information design, and humanitarian aid. They can transform our current systems of finance and commerce, and reinforce human rights and civil liberties.

It is also our responsibility as members of our industry to create positive changes within it. We must work to improve our stances on diversity, inclusion, working conditions, and employees’ mental health. Failing to address these issues should no longer be deemed acceptable by any party.

Ultimately, regardless of its area of focus or scale, our work and our mindset must take on a more ethical, critical ethos.

It is not our desire to take the fun out of life. There should always be room for entertainment, personal projects, humour, experimentation, and light-hearted use of our abilities.

Instead, we are calling for a refocusing of priorities, in favour of more lasting, democratic forms of communication. A mind shift away from profit-over-people business models and the placing of corporations before individuals, toward the exploration and production of humble, meaningful work, and beneficial cultural impact.

In 1964, and again in 1999, a dedicated group of practitioners signed their names to earlier iterations of this manifesto, forming a call to put their collective skills to worthwhile use. With the unprecedented growth of technology over the past 15 years, their message has since grown only more urgent.

Today, in celebration of its 50th anniversary, we renew and expand the First Things First manifesto, with the hope of catalysing a meaningful revolution in both our industry and the world at large.

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manifestos-space-design · 9 years ago

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This is not a Manifesto: Towards an Anarcho-Design Practice

By Jared Davidson, 2009

2009

garagecollective.blogspot.de/2009/03/this-is-not-manifesto-towards.html, viewed September 29, 2016

"It is no longer enough today to lock ourselves in our studios and produce culture. We must engage in our world in as many ways as possible. We need to ground our artistic production in the realities of our lives and those many others around us."

—Realizing The Impossible: Art Against Authority

If graphic design is understood as the expression and reflection of a particular set of values, systems and interests, then most artistic practice today tends to express the interests of the class that controls and profits from society. It is these interests that dominate the standards of value in design, defines its emphasis, and excludes its more subversive, egalitarian alternatives. As a result, graphic design is the tool that communicates, beautifies and commodifies the interests of those in power. Its communicative strength is overwhelmingly used in an economic/commercial sense—consciously or unconsciously used to exploit; to raise profit margins and material wealth for the benefit of a select clientele. While graphic design sometimes lends its talents outside of the commercial realm in the form of an informative and communicative visual language, and in academic, self-authored, or research-based practices, the primary role of graphic design is that of the visual instrument of the powerful—the seller of sales, the convincer of consumers. Its strengths are employed by the corporate body (or state-sanctioned by capitalist/socialist totalitarian governments) in order to reinforce their position of power. And while design academia can wax poetic about the virtues of graphic design and its specialised visual language (conveniently side-stepping more tangible issues) the design industry practitioner, whether one chooses to acknowledge his/her role or not, must realise that their labour is nothing more than the harbinger of consumerism, used in the service of monolithic capitalism and all of its ails. Without the aid of graphic design, those who sustain the ills of society have no face, no visual identity, no point of reference, and most importantly, no effect.

While recognising in the libertarian tradition that no individual designer, group, institution or government has the right to define the role in which graphic design should play,[1] it is important to encourage alternative design practices in an attempt to counter the exploitative position it has consciously stepped into. Analysis of the capacity inherent in design practices to alleviate current exploitation, and to aid in more alternative modes of social organisation is needed (and has begun in limited pockets of the design world).[2] Design then, must explore the peripheral space outside of advertising totally devoid of any commercial use—or more specifically, for the movement towards a humane and libertarian society, that is to say, a more autonomous existence based on self-management, mutual aid, solidarity and direct participation and control over one's affairs. As the potential producer, educator and visual face of social change, graphic design could weld its creative future with more pressing concerns than market shares and profit margins.

"One cannot, in the nature of things, expect a little tree that has turned into a club to put forth leaves" — Martin Buber

It is interesting to ponder the power graphic design holds within the current capitalist system. Corporates and their friends in government have all tapped into the powerful and almost unrivalled marketing resource that is graphic design. Better By Design,[3] hand-in-hand with business interests, has marched towards a better future for consumerism. And no wonder—what other non-physical coercive technique can instill a company logo in the mind as early as two years old?[4] Unchecked, the increasing role of graphic design as advertising's lackey will continue to have irreversible effect on our mental, visual and physical environment.

In 1964, and again in 2002, the concerns of above were brought forward in the form of the First Things First Manifesto, signed by designers, photographers, artists and visual practitioners interested in steering their skills along a more social and worthwhile path. "Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention... charitable causes and other informational design projects urgently require our expertise and help." Calling for a shift in graphic design's priorities, the signatories of the manifesto recognised the potential for their skills to aid more humanitarian causes. The 2002 manifesto, as a tentative step in reviving Ken Garland's original ideas for today's practitioners, and as a step towards visual 'reform', is greatly noted. However, regardless of how well meaning and sincere the ideas brought forward in these documents were, it is necessary to critique their statements in more radical terms.

While proposing “a reversal of priorities in favour of more useful, lasting, and democratic forms of communication”, the manifesto falls short in recognising any kind of tangible, radical change. The First Things First Manifesto of 2002 fails to recognise that the 'uncontested' and 'unchecked' consumerism they wish to re-direct is so engrained in the social relations of capitalism that anything short of the complete transformation of those social relations will never effect true change. Proposing the shifting of priorities within the system rather than the shifting of the system itself—as history has proven in both state socialism and the farce of parliamentary democracy—will do nothing more than file down the rough edges of our chains. The fact that rampant globalisation and corporate hegemony go hand in hand with the current system is the real issue concerned graphic designs could be questioning. In fact these systems, "far from being a guarantee for the people, on the contrary, creates and safeguards the continued existence of a governmental aristocracy against the people."[5]

With this in mind, the following text proposes to explore the graphic designer’s role (if any) in revolutionary, direct action towards the transformation of society, in specifically anarchist terms.

"It is said that an anarchist society is impossible. Artistic activity is the process of realising the impossible." — Max Blechman, Toward an Anarchist Aesthetic.

The basic ideas of Anarchism have been misinformed, misinterpreted, and misunderstood throughout its existence. For many people, the anti-authoritarian stance of Anarchism coupled with negative press on the part of those threatened by it, associates it with chaos and disorder. However this is far from the truth.

Anarchist communism (or libertarian communism) is the belief that no one has the right to control or exploit another, and that coercive authrotiy (as opposed to voluntary association) is the mainstay of inequality—socially and economically. Anarchists strive for a social system of human beings living, interacting, and relating in a way that is the most fair, equal, and free of any kind of exploitation. This includes the many forms that oppression takes—economic or political, patriarchal or racial, and more.

"A mistaken, or more often, deliberately inaccurate interpretation alleges that the libertarian concept means the absence of all organisation. This is entirely false: it is not a matter of 'organisation' or 'nonorganisation', but of two different principles of organisation... of course, say the anarchists, society must be organised. However, it must be established freely, socially, and, above all, from below."[6] The idea of non-hierarchical forms of organization are central to anarchism—only through direct action and self-management will we enjoy complete emancipation in our lives and the daily decisions that they entail. These ideas are far from utopian, as those who fear its potential would lead us to believe, and as the millions of men and women throughout history who have subscribed to, and lived out, anarchist ideas. They are no more utopian than the thought that far-removed, parliamentary 'representatives' can intimately and effectively answer our many wants and needs as individuals and communities.

Anarchist communism is not a fixed, self-enclosed social system but rather a definite trend in the historic development of society, which, in contrast with the intellectual guardianship of all clerical and governmental institutions, strives for the free unhindered unfolding of all the individual and social forces in life. For anarchists, freedom is not an abstract philosophical concept, but a vital concrete possibility for every human being to bring to full development all the powers, capacities, and talents within them, and turn them to social account. The less this natural development of people is influenced by religious or political guardianship, the more efficient and harmonious human personality will become, the more it will become the measure of the intellectual culture of the society in which it has grown.[7]

"As anarchists, we have seen our politics denigrated by other artists; as artists, we have had our cultural production attacked as frivolous by activists." —Realising the Impossibe: Art Against Authority

It would be wrong to view this text as some kind of blueprint for anarchist design action. This is not a manifesto. Nor is it the justification for graphic design as a specialist, elitist profession to continue in its current form in the 'aid' of social change. As the early anarchist Proudhon wrote to Marx, "Let us not make ourselves the leaders of a new intolerance. Let us not pose as the apostles of a new religion, even if it be the religion of logic, of reason".[8] And while there is a definite place for the graphic designer in an activist role, both in an educational and provocative sense, designers must not make the mistake of becoming some kind of vanguard group of directors. Whereas Marxism is often justified in both political and academic fields in this respect —defending the role of a necessary vanguard party to lead the ignorant masses to liberation—anarchism vehemently refutes and rejects this concept.

It is the responsibility of anyone with an understanding of visual communication to consider the effect their work has on the lives of others, especially the most marginalised, and the most oppressed. Instead, the design practitioner, through the basic act of joining their moral principles with their material production, should, and could, greatly contribute to the transformation of everyday life—towards a more just and humane society. The conscious graphic designer could instill in people's minds a broader sense of possibility, using the communicative powers of artistic imagery to empower, encourage and enrage. It is important to shift societies' many urgent concerns from the fringes and into the public realm, in a direct and unavoidable manner. However, purely negative and angst-ridden critique (while sometimes useful) can only go so far—it is the sense of positive possibilities that need to be associated with the ideas of revolutionary change. The marginality of alternative social relations must be overcome—its ideas rendered public, transparent, and shared.

Mainstream media do a rather convincing job of keeping our private critical thoughts isolated. It is an important task to illustrate that the critical and questioning ideas we may be having individually are, more often than not, shared by others, rather than letting them be diffused and disarmed by those in power through religion, politics, education, and popular media (including, of course, graphic design). Graphic design can publicly and prolifically become the visual manifestation of these shared ideas. "Ideally, art can inspire hope, encourage critical thinking, capture emotion, and stimulate creativity. It can declare another way to think about and participate in living. Art can document or challenge history, create a framework for social change, and create a vision of a more just world. When art is used in activism it provides an appealing and accessible entry point to social issues and radical politics".[9] Graphic design can act as one catalyst for further involvement in social alternatives, and social struggle. “Artists speak out against the war for one week but serve the capitalists all year.” —Black Mask #4

However images alone are not enough. It is not just what the work of a designer says or does that perpetuates the dominant social relations of today, but how that work is made. Design is an overwhelmingly individual act. Yet further exploration of collective participation in the design process can set the basis for future non-hierarchal, collective organisation. Ways of working with others when making work could essentially form patterns and guides for the self organization of a more libertarian society. Therefore the act of making work could be as empowering as the visual message itself, pointing the way towards social relations on a more macro level. This exploration has exciting and liberating possibilities: "Anarchism is no patent solution for all human problems, no utopia of a perfect social order, as it has so often been called, since on principle it rejects all absolute schemes and concepts. It does not believe in any absolute truth, or in definite final goals for human development, but in an unlimited perfectibility of social arrangements and human living conditions, which are always straining after higher forms of expression…"[10] Allowing anarchist inspired design to collectively explore and illustrate those 'higher forms of expression' can do nothing but broaden the scope and awareness of more just social relations between people.

Endnotes 1. In relation to the anarchist concept of 'no gods, no masters'—or, that ‘the exploitation of man by man and the dominion of man over man are inseparable, and each is the condition of the other’. 2. Design collectives such as Justseeds, The Street Art Workers, Drawing Resistance, the Beehive Collective, Paper Politics, Taring Padi, and the Prison Poster Project are just a few examples. See Realising the Impossible: Art Against Authority by Josh Macphee and Erik Reuland (AK Press, 2007). 3. A government initiative aimed at helping New Zealand companies 'increase their exports and profits through the better use of design in their products and services'. Check it out at www.betterbydesign.org.nz. 4. See Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (Penguin Books, 2002). 5. Michael Bakunin in Anarchism by Daniel Guerin (Monthly Review Press, 1970). 6. Voline in Anarchism by Daniel Guerin (Monthly Review Press, 1970). 7. Paraphrased from Rudolf Rocker's Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice (AK Press, 2004). 8. From Anarchism by Daniel Guerin (Monthly Review Press, 1970). 9. Colin Matthes, Realising the Impossible: Art Against Authority by Josh Macphee and Erik Reuland (AK Press, 2007). 10. Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice (AK Press, 2004).

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