Core77

The rise and rise of 'anti-design'

By Mark Vanderbeeken - August 23, 2008

in Object Culture

Martyn Perks, a UK design consultant, and a writer and speaker on design, IT and business, is going after the current design and sustainability trend, which he calls "anti-design", arguing that "designers who focus on producing only meek and sustainable things are denying their own creativity and impact on the world."

In the process, he lambastes the new UK Design Council three-year national strategy, the Designers' Accord and Core77's very own Allan Chochinov:

"What underpins the general shift towards green design is a widespread sense of guilt and self-doubt felt by many designers about blighting the world with too much stuff. The paradox is that the big idea they turn to for salvation - environmentalism - means that rather than endeavouring to produce something new to solve the problem, one that makes use of the best possible processes, ideas and resources, designers will attempt to regain a sense of purpose and credibility by preaching to the rest of us to lower our horizons." [...]

"Isn't design always about making an impact? Not according to the green-design movement, or the 'design deniers' who argue for placing limits on human ingenuity and creativity. Put bluntly, they want less of it, not more. Of course, there is no ignoring climate change. While the science, causes and effects are by no means given (as discussed many times on spiked), placing limits on ingenuity will itself deny us imaginative and mature solutions. The greening of design will only contribute to more climate change panic if our hands are tied in finding the best means to deal with a warming world." [...]

"And amongst all the debate about limits, there is something else under attack, something distinctively human that is tied up with the idea of the designer: the degradation of objectivity." [...]

"Every so often, moments do arise which push the boundaries a bit further, or if you are lucky, by a long way. That's called innovation. And when it occurs, it must be seized upon. However, the greening of design 'thinking' only seeks the opposite effect: the deliberate curtailment of that freedom to think. The designer makes a virtue out of doing less and thinking small. This is 'anti-design'. Holding back ideas inevitably means crap solutions. And that affects us all."

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Mauricio Muoz Arbelez

16 years ago

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I think the real problem is, that humans as species have no control over their growth. Countries need to plan for the future on birth control because one day it will be too crowded. First world countries have to invest on space investigation so we can continue with our space discovery. We have the whole universe for us, we just need to start changing other planets as we already changed this one. We have to recreate Earth similar environments in other planets. This way humans can survive and "reproduce" as species instead of drowning in a "glass of water". Humans have to design their different ways of living in other planets. Let the fractal begin, let humans become god, let the real and the unreal, the existence and the unexistence, time and timeless become one. Feel how it flows.
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stiven

16 years ago

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Thanks for wording that so eloquently hughmama, I agree with you completely...

There is nothing anti-design about the green movement. Quite the opposite, we finally have true meaning and reasoning in our innovation processes. Incorporating sustainable variables as a prerequisite in our process is not a limitation but a wonderful challenge for real designers. Anyone who sees this as a limitation knows nothing about design and is sympathetic to the real "anti-design problem", the superficial decorator types previously known as"designers" who capture all the headlines...
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Ruben Anderson

16 years ago

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Great design has always been about shifting the paradigm; destroying our old ideas of what was possible. Sometimes this plays out with objects, like Starck's lemon juicer, sometimes it plays out in audio or cinema or furniture or fashion, but it is always about changing what we thought was possible.

Unfortunately, bleating about lowering our horizons misses this completely. Sustainable design will transform our horizons, in ways we can never imagine. We will look back on our current world and shake our heads at our stupidity, but we will not feel diminished, or that we had to settle.
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hughmama

16 years ago

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I totally rebuke this thesis. What he refers to as 'anti-design' is just the unfortunate vernacular that casts green thinking as political correctness.
Good design is not purely about making an impact as Martyn suggests, only a self-obsessed design romanticist would suggest that. Good design is about negotiating the complex dynamics of the world and discovering the approaches that engender that complex ecology with the best possible outcomes for everything within it. Not just the outcomes that invoke human aesthetic response. While design-led provocations are an important part of discovery that are not its crowing achievement.
Im so sick of design hubris!
Why does design have to suffer so much bad writing?
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niti bhan

16 years ago

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in my humble opinion, designers who primarily manifest their values in the ephemeral space of the virtual bits and bytes are often constrained by the effortlessness of effecting changes, production and distribution online to wholly comprehend the investment of resources, materials, energy and manpower required to produce products in the real world.
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daniel kanitz

16 years ago

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" 'Good design is sustainable design. It results in objects, systems or services that work aesthetically, functionally and commercially, improving peopleï¿½s lives and making the smallest possible impact on the planet.ï¿½
Hang on. Isn't design always about making an impact? Not according to the green-design movement..."

I spot a fallacy. Martyn uses equivocation in his meaning of impact. First it has a negative connotation (as in pollution and waste impact) then the second time it is given a positive one (as in leaving people awestruck and wanting your designs). I agree that 'green designers' want to make a smaller negative environmental impact as he states first. As for the next sentence, yes, making a positive impact on people or the earth is wonderful. Then Martyn states green design movement doesn't agree to this. The opposite is true. Sustainable designers, as well as myself (future sustainable designer), strive to make a huge impact on the earth and people, but in positive and environmentally friendly ways!

I also believe that in the coming years nearly everything we own and use will need to be redesigned if we want to survive. Contemplating this, I do not see any creative blocks, but rather those of exciting growth and opportunity for those interested in sustainable design.

Anyways, I found this article helpful for myself. Thanks Mark.
PS. I think I got a C in philosophy but, meh.
kanitzd[at]uwstout[dot]edu
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