In this issue, which coincides with the Milan Furniture Fair, Domus continues its exploration of geopolitics in design. In particular, on the wave of an observation that started with the sociologist Aldo Bonomi, we have asked a group of intellectuals to give their interpretation of design geopolitics in the light of three approaches.
Designing objects communicating. An initial form, typical of the opulent society and new economy of the globalised world, sees design manifest itself today primarily as a process of communication. As a meta-language that has implications in the sphere of information, human interaction, recollection and desire. Design projects virtually. “In an economic cycle that increasingly consists of services, creativity, knowledge and experience”, design is the symbolic and semiotic plus value of the object for rendering it more desirable and more efficient. Not by chance this paradigm is accompanied by a formidable extension of the fields of application of design (interaction design, strategic design, design of processes, etc.). Design is only a communication practice, it makes the image of companies more powerful and visualises marketing strategies.
Designing objects manufacturing. A second form regards the persistence of design practice linked to manufacturing and the mass production of everyday objects. Design traditionally adds aesthetic value and functional value to the production process that develops large numbers and that still follows a Fordist model. In this case design is at the source of strong production specialisation, still present in the chains of small and medium sized European manufacturers and increasingly widespread in the industrial districts that have risen up in developing countries such as China and India as a result of decentralising processes and outsourcing. They are the territories where design is closely linked to the production process, working in symbiosis towards innovation in the narrow sense of the everyday object.
Designing objects surviving Design that grows in the poorest societies, in communities of immigrants, in niches of social and cultural marginalisation in the great Western metropolises, is an activity that combines bricolage and self-organisation. It produces in limited series, with cheap technology, thanks to informal and/or illegal economies but often has a high symbolic content. Communities of users that are transformed into “designer-makers” suppliers of services or minorities that in semi-artisan practices for producing everyday objects find a way of representing and giving value to their own identity. Places and environments where design manifests itself as human capital, as a form of the “bare life of working to survive, to eat, to keep warm, to move around.”
In the issue of MARCH 2007, Stefano Boeri (director of DOMUS) better describes the idea of GEODESIGN.