What Design Can Do celebrates the power of design and its problem-solving abilities. This two-day event in Amsterdam exposes design as a catalyst of change and renewal and a way of addressing the societal questions of our time.
Report from The Conference:
Interior Architecture Master Students Melina Ferreira and Alexandra Georgescu attended the two-day international design conference in Amsterdam – here is what they have to say.
Text by Melina Ferreira and Alexandra Georgescu
What Design Can Do! is an international design conference where professionals from different creative disciplines share their visions and knowledge to find solutions for today cultural challenges. Created by a group of initiators and designers themselves, the cross-over between professionals was intended to manifest active solutions in this time of crisis, when the world faces a moment of great challenges, including economic and environmental issues, the division of wealth and the crash of cultures.
Designers from all around the world came together in the Stadsschouwburg Theater in Amsterdam to discuss the overall theme for this first edition of What Design Can Do: Access. The theme was then divided into four areas: Access to Basics, Access to the City, Access to Culture and Access to the Public.
In Access to Basics designers reflected on the unequal share of resources and wealth and how creative approaches can help solve some of the problems. The highlights in this area were:
Julia Lohmann (product designer, Germany) shared her approach to design, which rethinks the gap between the origin of the raw material and the final object. She questions the value of things and what is the determinant factor of the value of an object. She presented some examples of her work as her leather couch shaped as a cow, showing that nowadays design became so accessible that people forget where materials come from, consequently fading the emotions carried with it. The main message was to revaluate the value of things around us and redirect our eyes to things we don’t usually see as beautiful.
Rohan Shivkumar (architect and urban designer, India) focused his speech on the slums in India. An informal city that dominates a vast area of the city of Mumbai with numerous housing problems for the poor, these slums house a big portion of the population. He mentioned that the State is giving up and the Market does not really care, leaving the “academia,” educators and researches, to investigate a solution for the housing problem. He is involved in projects to redevelop these areas by trying to understand the challenges and intervene through architecture. He stressed that the design profession and education does not fully acknowledge these situations as a reality of today’s world.
In Access to the City speakers addressed the problems of today’s cities and the increased flux of people to the main urban centers – this increase in urbanization and migration produces many cultural challenges.
Daniel Eatock (artist, United Kingdom) observes the unpredicted situations and coincidences in the everyday urban environment and simply records them through photography. However, by exploring the randomness of life he finds himself with solutions even before the questions have been formulated. The key message, as he said, is to reduce the extraneous and subjective.
Oliviero Toscani (photographer, Italy) as a photojournalist and art director documents the social behavior and the human condition in order to fight hypocrisy and values. The images he creates are controversial but at the same time become a voice that encourages free thought against pre-fabricated ideas. His projects not only aim to enrich the client economically but also culturally.
In Access to the public, the speakers showed strategies to engage people in the process of design thus creating the force of the collective.
Ole Bouman (NAI chief director, Netherlands) talked about the reality of architecture in our times and his research in his book “Architecture of Consequences”. He played with the conference slogan “What Design Can Do!” turning it into “What design must know!” and “What design should do!” providing supporting examples to his adapted slogans. He believes design needs to be more realistic and less conceptual, taking in consideration economic values. On another note, he spoke about the UAR Project, the NAI mobile application for smart phones where by pointing the phone to a certain building, it provides information not only of the building but also the building that was once at that location and future projects. And the most powerful tool of the application is that it becomes a platform where anybody can upload a project for a location on the map.
Scott Stowell (graphic designer, USA) made a presentation around the statement “pay attention”. He believes that everything is connected and everything is an opportunity; if you are paying attention. He designs for people and it shows in various projects, especially in his campaign for the Multiple Sclerosis Society. The logo MS was crossed by the public and because of the movement created by the simple action of crossing the letters tied back to the fact that patients have limited movement. This created a great awareness of ‘celebrating movement’ at the same time the people were involved in the design process.
In Access to Cultures, cultural exchange and cooperation was reflected. In a globalized world the need to protect the national traditions while integrating to a global community is a point of debate. The most significant speakers for us were:
Paula Dib (social designer, Brazil) is a product designer who stimulates the collaboration between trained designers with national/traditional crafters (usually villagers) in order to link these two worlds and maximize positive impact in the communities. Her work in Mozambique was extremely beneficial to a local school, where educators were motivated to design and built toys from materials found around the area. In the end, the students also became involved by creating toys themselves. She ended by saying that design is not just about the end result, but about the process, what it took to get there and how it measures up in the end.
Liu Xiaodu (architect, China) showed an incredible sensibility in regards to traditional Chinese culture and modern architectural expression. In his projects, he takes in consideration the context and cultural diversity as well as social interactions as reflected in the design of a housing complex for migrants in Guangzhou based on residential traditional compounds arranged around a courtyard.
Lidewij Edelkoort (trend forecaster, The Netherlands) talked about man and society and the relationships between people to inspire design thoughts. Her presentation was full of graphical comparisons related to the topic of relationships while she linked them to points to consider in the future as mobility, improvisation, and craft.
The “What Design Can Do!” conference brought together eight hundred designers from the fields of fashion, product, interior, architecture, urbanism and graphics, approaching design from a broader perspective other than form, beauty or trends, but rather focused on real creative solutions to the problems facing today’s society.
Speakers from developed countries together with speakers from emerging areas transmitted the message of social responsibility through design. We, as students, need to be inspired by these individuals and be more aware of the reality, and stop designing in a conceptual, subjective point of view. We are the future of design and have a powerful tool in our hands to have a positive impact in the world. As the creative director Richard van der Laken concluded, ‘the time for lacking of engagement is over’.
