In the last years, the mentality of design has evolved from an anthropological one which creates the Interior design of spaces based on man’s needs, also defined eco-illogical, to an eco-logical mentality whose main concern is the environment and how to preserve its resources. How long will it take before a new generation of consumers, designers and manufacturters ask themselves about the origin of the resources, that are being used, whether the products they purchase are being manufactured exploiting child labour, and how these products will be recycled or disposed of once they are at the end of their lifecycle.
“ ..The challenge is partly cultural. As a culture we are bewitched by a hight entropy concept of quality. It takes astronomical amounts of energy to achieve the pure, minimal buildings and products that we now aspire to as the best. We need new cultural - aestetic ways of looking at - and acting in - the world; new aesthetics of sustainability so that, when we look at things, we instictevely think in totally new ways about whether a thing is right. Aesthetics creates the need, but design provides the means. The sustainability challenge is essentially a design challenge. The old - style top - down, outside in design simply won’t work.
The days of celebrity solo designer are over. Designers are having to evolve from being the individual authors of objects, or buildings, to being the facilitators of change among larger groups of people. The word development too often implies that we advanced people in the north have an obligation to help backword people in the south to catch up with our own advanced condition. It doesn’t make sense! The development model that has made many designers rich is wrongly development from the perspective of sustainability. It’s like looking down a telescope from the wrong hand: we view many countries human, cultural and territorial assets as impediments to progress and modernisation. We wrongly define development only as growth, productivity, comsumption; we assume that technology, automation and self service are inevitable; we habitually devalue human agency; we blindly assume that transport intensity is a measure of succes; and so on. Around the world, from Dubay to Pakistan, you will see that the worst excesses are increasingly fuelled by design vision. We have a lot to learn from the south of issues such as a local value, service intensity, shared use, and the informal economy.
Products - stuff - are a means to an end, not an end in themselves, and that includes buildings. The main objective for design from here on in, is to reduce radically, the wasteful flows of materials and energy that course like deseased blood cells throught the biosphere. We have the tools to design – out the need for many buildings. The most important impact of wireless communications will be on the resource ecologies of cities…”
JOHN THAKARA for DOMUS february 2008.