Bruce Mau

Design visionary Bruce Mau has called upon the international design world to combat the world's economic and social ills.

Canadian Mau, founder of the Institute Without Boundaries, issued the call to arms at last week's Design Indaba conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

Mau says, 'Crisis is a terrible thing to waste. The new design is not only visual. The new design is forever.'

Mau adds that he is considering 'the possibility of a sustainable America'. He has been invited by the Mayor of Denver to stage a biennial in the city from 2010, which will pick up on Massive Change - an international project looking at the 'new capacity, power and promise of design' which was set up by the IWB in 2003.

Developing sustainable communities was a common Indaba theme. New York designer Stephen Burks of Readymade Projects ran a workshop to show the waste generated by 1500 plastic bags.

He is looking to reuse the bags to create footballs for children in the South African townships in the run-up to the 2010 World Cup.

Burks is a consultant to non-profit organisation Aid to Artisans and works with local makers in South Africa and Peru. He is now working in Senegal.

'I want to make things more connected to people,' Burks says of his work, which includes furniture, products, interiors and packaging. 'It is such a pluralist time. Everyone is getting out there and doing it.'

Ed Barber and Jay Osgerby, who also spoke at the conference, referred to the woven furniture they created in 2001, working with basket weavers from the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal.

Frank Tjepkema, of Amsterdam-based design group Tjep, showed concepts for a sustainable city farm incorporating a restaurant and an abattoir, providing fresh food and recycling waste. Royal College of Art graduate Revital Cohen, meanwhile, is using biotechnology. One idea is to rear animals to match the blood type of kidney patients to provide living dialysis.

Design Indaba is an annual conference and expo of local designs, organised by Interactive Africa.

Bruce Mau
• After studying at the Ontario College of Art, Mau worked briefly for Pentagram in the UK in the 1980s

• He is the creative director of Bruce Mau Design and founder of the Institute Without Boundaries

• He has been named inaugural artistic director of the Denver Biennial of the Americas

retirado do site da design week

Social Design Notes

Apresentando-se como "Social Design Notes", o backspace.com/notes é um espaço onde se publicam "notas", como intitula o seu autor, acerca de Design Social. As "notas" abordam diferentes exemplos de Design Social em vários campos - design (gráfico e de produto), arquitectura, etc. - numa constante busca de aperfeiçoar a definição de "Social Design".

"It is an exploration and a work in progress" como refere o autor.

Apresenta ainda alguns itens que considera relevantes para a sua definição de projectos "Social Design":

"•are affordable and sustainable
•are made of renewable materials
•use energy from renewable sources and increase energy efficiency
•reduce consumption and waste, are reusable or recyclable
•are produced and developed locally
•are universally accessible to people of all ages, abilities, and physical conditions
•are developed at the initiative and with the participation of the communities they serve
•facilitate mobility, communication, and participation in civic life
•decentralize political power and facilitate transparency and accountability."

ColaLife - ajudando com Coca-Cola

A ColaLife.org é uma campanha que opera através da rede de distribuição da Coca-Cola e que surgiu em 1988 pela mão de Simon Barry quando trabalhava numa organização britânica de solidariedade:

"What about Coca Cola using their distribution channels (which are amazing in developing countries) to distribute rehydration salts? Maybe by dedicating one compartment in every 10 crates as ‘the life saving’ compartment?"

Levar bens de necessidade extrema a países afectados pela pobreza e onde as pessoas vivem em grande dificuldade para sobreviverem é a grande tarefa a que esta organização se dedica - sobretudo a crianças. Contudo durante 20 anos foi complicado difundir esta ideia até que Simon Barry, aproveitando a força difusora da internet, deu a conhecer empenhadamente a sua ideia a todo o mundo através do seu blogue.

Os resultados foram largamente satisfatórios. Desde 2008, o blogue conseguiu criar uma enorme comunidade em redes sociais como o Facebook, tendo assim sido determinante para as actuais conversações com a Coca-Cola para desenvolver esta campanha. Barry conseguiu mesmo uma pequena exposição da sua ideia a Bob Geldof, um importante rosto da ajuda humanitária internacional.

Uma das formas da ColaLife concretizar a sua ajuda humanitária é o "AidPod". Trata-se de uma caixa que se coloca entre as garrafas de Coca-Cola que são transportadas em grades.

Design Social - Definições

Wikipedia

O autor deste artigo acerca de Design Social neste sítio na internet desmonta uma definição em alguns campos acerca do que esta vertente do design deverá seguir. Para tal foca-se em quatro pontos: responsability (responsabilidade), strategic thinking (criação de estratégias), designing systems (desenvolvimentos de sistemas), social world (consciência social).

"Responsibility

(...) The agenda of social design is inspired by among others' Victor Papanek’s idea that designers and creative professionals have a responsibility and are able to cause real change in the world through good design. Papanek writes about responsible design. Designers can contribute to designing more ecological products by carefully selecting the materials they use. Papanek also remarks on designing for people's needs rather than their wants. Responsible design includes many directions and one of these is design for the Third World. Designers have responsibility over the choices they make in design processes.
Social design thinking within the design world joins developing human and social capital with new products and processes that are profitable. Profitability and ownership of the processes are the cornerstones of sustainability that underpins human well-being. Another author that contributes to the development of this definition of social design is Victor Margolin. He writes in "The Politics of the Artificial" about the "designer's ability to envision and give form on material and immaterial products that can address human problems on broad scale and contribute to social well-being." This ideology is something that social design is built on. In this view social design is an activity that should not be framed with connotations of charity, aid donations, help etc. It is not voluntary work but it should be seen as professional contribution that plays a part in local economic development or livelihood.

Strategic thinking
Another starting point for outlining social design is strategic thinking of design. Creating policies and implementing them on civil level. The two poles: tradition and the market economy can, in one of the models for social design, be placed in interaction, rather than in competition, with each other. An author that has to be mentioned here is Jacque Fresco and his Venus Project. He proposes that the future of the social systems needs to be designed by the scientific method. Social design can then be seen as a process that leads to human capabilities that in turn contributes to their well-being. As Amartya Sen writes, poverty is seen as deprivation of capabilities. By focussing on capabilities, rather than e.g. income, Amartya Sen suggests that development within various social aspects of life can contribute to general development. Understanding and using social design processes can contribute to the improvement of livelihood.

Designing systems
Another dimension of social design focuses on designing systems that join the elements of communication, new product development and the environment. It is argued that no single area of design is, by itself, sufficient to drive sustainable social development. What is needed is a system of design, one that encompasses all of the areas of design, towards an open system with multiple, self-adjusting and complementary actors that aim for a vision of a loosely defined common set of goals. (...)

Social world
The term social design is also increasingly used to describe design of the social world. This definition implicates a perception of a man-made reality, which consequently can only be changed by man, and is changed by man all the time. In this view social design is inescapable, it is there whether people are aware of it or not. The social reality is created as a result of the sum of all our individual actions. There is an emerging discussion of this concept of social design, which encompasses all other definitions of the term, e.g. in the online community at SocialDesignSite.com."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_design#cite_note-2

Nota inicial

Sendo esta a primeira mensagem neste blog convém aproveitá-la para explicar alguns dos objectivos deste blogue.

Em primeiro lugar, surge em resposta a uma proposta de trabalho de Semiótica, Unidade Curricular do 2º ano do curso de Design, na ESAD - Matosinhos (enunciado da 1ª fase em http://semiotica.esad.pt/?p=107). Para tal iniciarei uma série de publicações on-line que demonstrem o resultado da pesquisa acerca de Design Social e Co-Design - definições, entrevistas, projectos de design, opiniões, etc.

Num segundo ponto, pretendo que de alguma forma este blogue me possa suscitar uma inquietação e curiosidade acerca de questões relacionadas com o Design, permitindo-me assim prosseguir publicações no blogue após a conclusão deste trabalho e incentivando-me a aprofundar conhecimentos nesta área.

Por fim, e dependendo do segundo ponto, gostaria que este blogue também suscitasse a quem o visita algum tipo de reacção e reflexão, tendo toda a liberdade de expressar-se deixando comentários úteis.