Social Innovation Exchange job, “Senior Research Associate: Social Innovation” find out more before deadline 31Jan2012 owl.li/8Hm3q

AND RT @thinkpublic :looking for a Curiosity Tickler to be our Head of Research and Insight. Curious? (links to PDF) bit.ly/wgfTiM

RT @thinkpublic: looking for a Creative Designer/Mad Inventor for new ways to do things. Details (downloads PDF): bit.ly/yCt4Cs

job thursday RT @SIAAssociation: MaRS Centre for Impact Investing in Toronoto is looking for a Director tinyurl.com/7rfu4lc

job…new economics foundation consultancy seeks consultant to help mainstreaming nef’s best ideas, deadline 13feb12 owl.li/8HogA

more #jobs Nike Foundation seeks design innovation director for the Girl Effect program http://owl.li/8J20m

Design Impact seeks applicants for 2012 Design Impact Fellowship to work with Indian communities affected by poverty owl.li/8IbL3

[note: many thanks for comments so far--updates from me are in the comments]

1930s and 1940s

housing and furniture
- Bauhaus and the social potential of design
- Buckminster Fuller dymaxion car and house
- Schindler’s shelters: low cost, pre fabricated housing

1950s

Housing
Buckminster Fuller geodesic domes
Walter Segal self build system

Accessibility
“barrier free” movement (forerunner to universal design) in response to disabled veterans

1960s

Counterculture
1960s design groups: Situationists International, Superstudio, etc.
1966 Drop City community founded
1968 publication: Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand

Environment
1969 Design with Nature by Ian McHarg

Community design & appropriate technology
1965 Intermediate Technology Development Group (Appropriate Technology) founded
1968-69 Community Design Center of Minnesota founded 1969, Los Angeles Community Design Center founded 1968

1970s

Enviroment
1970s Co-evolution Quarterly
1973 AIA Energy committee, founded
1970  Cosanti Foundation began building Arcosanti, an experimental town (ongoing)
1975 Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems
1977  Soft Energy Paths by Amory Lovins
1977 A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein
1979 Passive Solar Energy Book by Ed Mazria

Design for development/consumer safety
1971 Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek

Diversity: religion
1977 Aga Khan award established for architecture recognizing good design in Islamic contexts (ongoing)

1980s

Social responsibility
1981 Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility, 1981

Environment
1981 Structural failure at a major US hotel prompts the conversion of Bob Berkibile to one of the first sustainable design champions in architecture
1982 Founding of the Rocky Mountain Institute by Amory and Hunter Lovins

Feminism
1984 Redesigning the American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life, by Dolores Hayden

1990s

Environment
1990 formation of the AIA Committee on the Environment
1993 founding of the US Green Building Council
1993 Design for Society, critiques of consumerist design by Nigel Whitely
1996 Ecological Design by Sim van Der Ryn and Stewart Cowan
1997 formalization of eco design with publications such as John Gertsakis, Helen Lewis, and Chris Ryan A Guide to EcoReDesign and Han Brezet and C. van Hemel Ecodesign: A Promising Approach to Sustainable Production and Consumption
1996-97 exhibitions of recycled material such as “Re- Materialize” and “Hello Again”

Feminism
1993 Women in Design section founded at IDSA (Industrial Designers Society of America)
1999 Design and Feminism Joan Rothschild, ed
1996 Architecture and Feminism, Debra Coleman, Elizabeth Danze and Carol Henderson, eds,

Affordability/accessibility
1993 Rural studio, University of Arkansas design build studio focusing on poor local communities
1993 Congress for the New Urbanism
1999 Design Corps, US community focus, often rural or migrant groups
1999 The Glass-House Trust begins evolving into The Glass-House Community Led Design in 2006, UK

Humanitarian
1999 Architecture for Humanity
1999 Architects without Frontiers

Alternative education
1998 Ecosa Institute, 1998

2000s

Humanitarian (becoming Social Design or Design for Social Impact)
2001 Designers without Borders
2003 Design that Matters
2004 Article 25 (formerly architects for aid)
2008 Project H Design
2008 Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio conference on design for social impact
2008 Change Observer blog (funded by Rockefeller for initial two years)
2010 IDEO.org, social design offshoot from IDEO

Accessible/public interest
2002 Public Architecture
2003 UK Design Council begins work on design-led solutions to social problems
2004 [Re]design, UK
2005 the 1%, Public Architecture’s initiative to professionalize pro bono work
2005 SEED (Social Economic Environmental Design), US
2008 SEED Foundation social enterprise and design, UK
2009 Design Activism: Beautiful Strangeness for Sustainable World by Alistair Fuad-Luke published by Earthscan

Prizes and conferences
2000, Conference: Structures for Inclusion 1 organized by Design Corps
2006 “ecodesign” category added to IDSA / BusinessWeek IDEA awards program
2007 The Buckminster Fuller Challenge for $100,000
2008 Curry Stone Prize, for design emphasizing social good, reaching wider segments of society, for $100,000
2008 Conference: A better world by design

Environment
2002 Architecture 2030: getting to zero carbon emission buildings by 2030
2002 Cradle to Cradle By William McDonough & Michael Braungart, North Point Press
2006 EcoLabs (developed ecoliteracy teach-in for designers in London 2009)
2007 Designers Accord originally climate driven, now expanded
2009 Living Building Challenge launched by Cascadia Chapter of US Green Building Council

Alternative education models and Politics in design education and research
2005 Biomimicry Institute, US
2005 Goldsmiths, University of London: Center for Architectural Research–design and politics/spatial politics focus
2006 Manchester Architecture Research Center, University of Manchester–design and politics/spatial politics focus
2008 Leeds School of Architecture, Landscape and Design Leeds Metropolitan University hosts “Mapping Design Activism” followed by Leeds Festival of Design Activism in 2009
2009 TU Delft Chair in Politics and Design
2009 academic network DESIS: Design for Social Innovation towards Sustainability.
2010 Austin Center for Design, educating designers for social enterprise

the consumerist scenario — what are elements
of the post consumerist scenario for designers and architects?

The first speaker, Ed van Hinte from NL, will talk about “Harmless Housing” — consumerism, “lightweighted” housing, and a bearable consumerist society with respect to architecture and housing. Ed hails from Lightness Stduios. The second speaker, Steve Broome, will talk about the RSA connected communities project, including the characteristics of social networks and social ties, and preliminary findings about the connection between social networks and physical places. Details for the talk are here, it’s at 6:30 at the Univ of Westminster in London — if you come along introduce yourself!

This paper about how we might define design as activism has been submitted to the Journal of Architectural Education, although I am allowed to share it here on my website with you, my colleagues. Find the paper here: Thorpe-definingdesignactivism (PDF 1.1MB)

Here’s the abstract:

In this article I argue that current conceptualizations of design as activism are often weak or narrow, and don’t stretch to the broader landscape of social movements from which most activism is born. Drawing on concepts of activism from social movement research and conventional activist practice, we can formulate a more useful, robust characterization of design as activism. Such a definition helps designers and social movement actors gain a better understanding of the spatial and material possibilities of design’s role in activism. It makes design activism more accessible within the field of design, and also to wider constituencies

I welcome comments and discussion on the paper’s arguments and examples.

Astoria Scum River Bridge

The other example is not as recent but probably resurfaced due to the disaster in Japan and the implications for nuclear power. In this case artists were enlisted to design markings for a nuclear waste facility that would alert future human beings to the waste’s ongoing danger, long after current civilisation may have been destroyed, forgotten, or even “erased”—for example due to climate change disaster.

This 2001 report from Archaeology magazine gives a short summary, whereas an original report from the U.S. DOE (Dept. of Energy) is available here.

Inspired by significant archaelogical works from the past, designers came up with menacing earthworks, including a large spike field inspired by past archaelogical finds. Although the results of this project were less specific than “scum river,” the project results have resurfaced and further amplified the mounting concerns about nuclear power.

Time and Scale

On the one hand we have a “hyperlocal,” and perhaps also a “hypernow,” project. On the other hand we have a global, 10,000 year project.

The projects raise a host of interesting questions–but they both flag how an actual or proposed spatial intervention can aim to improve things in unique ways, in ways that a petition, a protest march, or a manifesto can’t.

The idea is that you can shift a brand’s value to the community, so that collaboration has the advantage over competition. The team (including Alex Bogusky and Rob Schuham of Fearless Media) want to help organize consumers so that they “demand more” in terms of social and environmental benefit, and in terms of what business organizations give back to a community.

The common brand with its CM “common mark” developed by Fearless Media

In response to their argument that the duties of “citizen” and “consumer” are colliding, they attempt to introduce democratic politics to consumer branding. In an era when the size of multinational corporations overshadows the size of governments, and individual consumerism powers the global economy, they argue that voting isn’t enough anymore. No argument here!

They describe their brand as three main elements. The first is a powerful brand backed by a coherent community (they call it the new capitalism community). Bogusky mentioned the likes of the Virgin brand, and asked, what if, by following some guidelines, you had access to the virgin brand. In this case the guidelines, or rules, would be developed by the community which designs and owns the brand. Thus “Common” is organized as a cooperative, rather than a nonprofit.

Three elements of the Common network, from the launch video

The second element of the plan is a way to facilitate the creation of organizations that will take up the Common brand. This element is where Project M comes in. Project M found that you could release designers into the wild for as little as 2 weeks, and they not only addressed community needs, but often ended up forming businesses inadvertently. This is the model of community-designed and -owned business development that Common would like to follow, encouraged along by an “out-cubator” process. It is in this “out in the wild” out-cubator sense they see a big role for designers and other creatives.

The third element is Bogusky and Schuham’s Fearless Revolution Media, which has the role of spreading the word, particularly aggregating the community’s results and amplifying their work.

By way of explaining how this might look Bogusky used the Virgin analogy. What if you were opening a new pizza place, and you had access to the virgin brand so that you could open as “Virgin Pizzas”? Under the Common brand, this new pizza place owner would have access to a similarly powerful brand. My question is, what if this pizza place is on the low end of the price scale and a high end pizza place opens down the street. Are they also going to want to be “Virgin Pizzas”?

They might, if both these pizza places are owned by the Common cooperative–the new capitalism community. It would be a sort of cooperative franchise model (I guess?). If, by contrast, these are separate businesses, each with different owners but both interested in the Common brand, then Common begins to look more like a rating or labelling system.

Common might be a more holistic label perhaps, but sits alongside more targeted labels such as “organic,” “fair trade,” or “energy star.” It becomes another mechanism through which businesses compete. The Common co-operative becomes the group that decides what standard must be met to use the Common label, akin to how the US Green Building Council (a broad-based nonprofit group) decides (and continually revises) what standard must be met to achieve LEED platinum, gold, or sliver ratings for buildings.

I think Common is on the right track to explicitly address ownership, and I hope that they are proposing a sort of cooperative franchise model. Many more questions arise in that case, but we won’t explore them here.

I was reminded of a discussion I had a few years ago with someone who proposed “branding” the concept of sustainability. Why couldn’t sustainability work as a brand and be “sold” in a similar way? Keeping in mind that the basis of a brand is exclusivity, ownership and control, among other things, the answer is: because you can never “compete” over qualities that make up sustainability, such as clean air or happy families, that have no price, that can’t be “owned,” and whose benefits accrue to everyone, no matter who does the good deed of maintaining and protecting these qualities. Although marketeers might argue that these qualities of sustainability should simply have a price put on them, I don’t agree with that approach.

clean air: can’t be owned, benefits accrue to everyone, no matter who protects or maintains it.

Common seems to be arguing two main points. first, rather than exclusive ownership, we tackle the problem of not being able to keep sustainability’s qualities “exclusive” by mirroring openness in the brand (any individual can join) and turning the emphasis to the collective, rather than the individual. This is a bridge–between individual and community–that is arguable missing in much of modern life.

Second Common suggests addressing the problems of maintaining elusive qualities such as clean air and happy families not through price competition, which as discussed won’t work, but rather through democratic processes, such as discussion and debate, among members of the community, about what is important and how we prioritize.

The danger could be that as qualities such as clean air, healthy food, and restored ecosystems are championed by Common, its prices go up and it becomes, like most other green or ethical businesses, the purview of the well-off, those who can afford it. Arguably this is where broader political action engaging with governments, alongside consumer action, has a role.

Still, Common represents a very interesting experiment, with an ostensible role for design and creative initiatives as a starting point. How will cooperative, values-based ownership affect the commissioning and process of design? I would certainly join the cooperative. What about you?

I wonder if I’m the only one who read Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation (by Tim Brown) and Architecture Depends (by Jeremy Till) back to back. The effect was very interesting in that Brown seems to provide a description of design operating largely as Till suggests that it should, but doesn’t, in architecture.

Till, Dean of the School of Architecture and the Built Environment at the University of Westminster here in London, paints a devastating picture of architecture as a profession largely turned in on itself, desperate to minimize its engagement with the messy world and keep architectural knowledge centered on “the object”. Till argues for the idea of “architectural intelligence” — a position that allows architecture to shift its focus from the object to the task of making social and spatial sense real life problems. (see some of Till’s work on architectural agency over at www.spatialagency.net)

In contrast to the problems that Till identifies in architecture, Brown, head of IDEO (originally a product design firm), presents a picture of design as a process of engagement with real life problems that works not only for designers, but also for business people, governments, and social change organizations. (I profiled some of IDEO’s more activist work here) This is the idea of “design thinking” which in Brown’s estimation is too important to be left only to designers.

Although Brown writes very much in a business context and Till in a more academic one, the two messages are strikingly related…Architectural intelligence—the architect’s version of design thinking. Till explains why architects resist the notion, but Brown goes some way toward showing its contours, as I describe below.

Till skillfully argues that architecture has long thought of itself as “autonomous,” part of the modernist project to “order,” particularly through the manipulation of form. Architecture in this sense fails to engage with the “lived world.” In Till’s estimation, many architects resist engaging with the everyday, with social, political, ecological and other forces that shape and influence their work and its success. These influences are the dependency suggested in the title—a dependency that architects want to deny—which Till describes throughout the book mostly as contingency. It is only by avoiding these contingencies that architects can pretend to create order or have social relevance through the manipulation of form alone.

Brown seems to answer this with his discussion of the Shimano bike company that undertook a human-centered design exploration. Instead of focussing on Shimano’s high end market, the design team tried to learn why 90% of adults don’t ride bikes when 90% of them did as kids, and why most people have bikes in the garage that they don’t ride. Brown comments, “Shimano did not hand us a list of technical specifications and a binder full of market research and send us off to design a bunch of parts. Rather, we joined forces and set out together to explore the changing terrain of the cycling market.” In a sense, this project set out to engage with contingency.

And there’s more to the call and response in these books…

On having a “big idea”
Till notes that architects often prefer to work with one idea, “rigorously carried through from large scale to the detail” and that indeed, “mature” architecture is seen as perfecting one of these big ideas. Architecture critics define “neat packages of styles, method, techniques, and taste. If you fit into one of these categories, you are an architect. If you define one of these categories, you are a great architect. Seminal buildings are those that establish a new category, be it Le Corbusier’s early villas, Foster’s Willis Farber Dumas, Michael Graves’s Portland Public Service Building, or Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim. But if you transgress these packages, these categories, you are dismissed as wayward, immature, self-indulgent, maybe even not a proper architect.”

By contrast, Brown emphasizes the ultimate importance of getting off the beaten path–the importance of not having a big idea, and this often involves failure. An IDEO motto, for example, is “fail early to succeed sooner.” He argues for the central role of social and physical space where people—often from across stakeholder groups—can experiment, take risks and explore. For Brown these spaces are symbolized by the quirky work environments found at companies like Pixar or Google. He describes a process fed by his version of “design thinking” as open-ended, open-minded, and iterative, a process that will feel “chaotic” to those who’ve never experienced it.

On engaging with users
Till wants to see architects move away from merely polishing forms and techniques — the role they are largely trained for–and instead take on the role of gathering the conflicting voices in a given project to “make the best possible social and spatial sense of them.” One idea Till proposes is to widen the sense of “scale” in architecture beyond simply physical size to include social scale. 1:100, a common and preferred scale (detailed enough to seem real, not detailed enough to address the mess of actual users) becomes 1 architect to 100 citizens. The scale of a city, 1: 10,000, becomes a scale of narratives.

As if in response, Brown shows that gathering conflicting voices, which he terms “competing constraints,” is at the heart of the design thinking process. Designers need to be “out in the field” for the very purpose of gathering those voices. Although people often aren’t able to express what they want or need from a design project, designers can learn a lot from observing actual behaviors and listening to what people say (and don’t say) about what they do. “Behaviors,” he comments, “are never right or wrong, but they are always meaningful.” Brown notes that it is not observation of a statistically average user that yields the most insight, but rather observation of incongruous details and amateur practices, along with “the exaggerated concerns” of people at the margins of the intended user groups. This approach moves away from designers creating for people to a model of designers creating with people by understanding, and making sense of their stories.

On forms of knowledge
Till wants architects to see themselves as part of a network of knowledge that “weaves together human and nonhuman, specialized knowledge with everyday insights, rules with instincts, the social sciences with the social.” For many architects, he suggests, this stance would be threatening because it removes the imagined sense of detachment—the purity of architectural knowledge and its neat ordering—and replaces it with a messy, hybrid knowledge. But Till argues that “architectural knowledge, as situated knowledge, should not be applied as an abstraction from the outside, but developed from within the context of the given situation.”

Brown explains how design teams that embrace a more mature design thinking approach typically and by necessity create networks of diverse knowledge. He suggests we can think of a designer as “a master storyteller whose skill is measured by his or her ability to craft a compelling, consistent, and believable narrative. It’s no accident that writers and journalists now often work alongside mechanical engineers, and cultural anthropologists in design teams.”

On innovation
Till argues that not only have architects tended to seek the “ideal” or the “big idea,” and autonomy to pursue it against external pressures, but at the same time architects have tended to think that external forces are so overwhelming there is simply no room to maneuver. But he argues that a central benefit of architecture embracing contingency is that it offers the opportunity for architectural projects to become transformative—the contingency itself gives the maneuvering room—and for architects to shift from a focus on objects to a focus on agency. The shift in focus then brings out “architectural intelligence.”

In Brown’s terms transformation appears as “innovation”–which notably can be as much social as it is technological– and it marks the difference between mostly boring incremental changes and “game-changing” break-throughs that really deliver the “change” of his title. In Brown’s book, real innovation arises exactly from the contingency that Till so badly wants architects to embrace.

Design Thinking/Architectural Intelligence
Brown ultimately argues for “design thinking” to spread and be applied outside studios of design. He is asking for designers to design with people, possibly even facilitating a process where people design for themselves. Till is, for the moment, simply asking architects to step outside the studio, to step outside the ideal and to give up the notion that detachment is a desirable stance.

Sure architecture and ‘product’ (now often ‘service’) design are different. Products, like bicycles and kitchen tools, have to work for the consumer. By contrast an architect’s client can only rarely represent the actual users of any given building. Buildings are big, long lasting, and immobile, whereas products are small, often short-lived, and must flow into the jumble of daily life.

Although architectural projects face tremendous economic pressures, they don’t typically face the competitive “sales” pressure that consumer objects and services do. Indeed, Brown’s focus for innovation is largely for the purpose of corporate gains — to do what industrial designers have always done in terms of expanding existing markets and finding new ones. By contrast Till is more concerned with social change in civil society.

Naturally, each of these design disciplines wants to carve out a niche for itself, but if these two books are any indication, there is some convergence on where that will take design. The two disciplines are being hit by common forces such as global digital connectivity, changing expectations about what design can and should accomplish, and a more prominent social and public focus against a backdrop of global crises. In addition, the boundaries between the object and the structure, the user and the designer, and the design project and its context are all blurring.

Despite skepticism in the design world about design thinking, and the clear resistance that Till describes to the idea of architectural intelligence, I think these two designers are on the right track. In fact, I would have them go further in terms of reframing the design professions — but we’ll save that for later.

Did you read either of these two books? Thoughts?

More results

One of my fellow design activism bloggers (at Social Design Notes) asked if I would share more details of the survey results. Good Idea. I’ve created a list of the sources that people suggested for learning more about design activism. The responses are anonymized in this downloadable file (PDF) which serves as a holiday gift from all of us, to all of us. Enjoy and please comment below if you’d like to suggest additional sources. (A few of the responses in this file mention Worldchanging, but sadly I have to report that Worldchanging is now closing its doors, with hopes of finding a place to archive their past years’ articles.)

Winner

Congratulations to Amanda Bill, winner of the gift certificate drawing for the design activism survey. She teaches fashion and textile design studies at the Institute of Design for Industry and Environment in the College of Creative Arts at Massey University in New Zealand. Amanda says, “what a terrific surprise … I hardly ever win anything!”

When asked to say a few more words, she added, “I love getting students to think about designing for social and economic change especially since fashion is one of the biggest industries in the world, with huge inequities in the value chain, massively complex sustainability issues, not to mention the gendered power relations involved. I’m really pleased that these topics are finally becoming legitimate in designers’ education.” Nice to meet you, Amanda.

See you in 2011. Interesting news is brewing…

About You

I asked you to tick all the categories that applied to you in terms of your relationship to design. About 90% of you work within the field of design, either as practitioner, manager, scholar, researcher or student. Less than 10% of respondents were interested in design activism from outside the field of design. The bar chart looks like this:

Design Disciplines of Interest

Another question asked you to tick the two design disciplines that most interested you. I was surprised that the highest interest was in product design (about 64%) and new media (39%), followed by urban design (30%) and architecture and graphics (both at about 28%). [In response to a comment on the Social Design Notes blog--I think the higher interest from product design (and the disciplines showings in general) say more about who's reading this blog than about how the disciplines are engaging with activism].  Behold the bar chart:

Topics in Design Activism

I asked you to indicate three aspects of design activism that you were interested in learning about. More than 60% were interested in gaining an understanding of how design activism works (where its power comes from, how to leverage it). Also of high interest, at about 50% each, were a catalog of case studies, an understanding of what “design activism” is, and new/emerging areas. More info on the bar chart:

How You Act on Information

And what do respondents do with the information they get about design activism? Respondents chose their top three uses and about 68% of you said you use it in research, while about 50% use it in professional practice. Nearly 50% will teach with it, and 30% will apply it as an individual citizen. About 28% want simply to learn more about it and 22% will use it in studies.

Top Sources of information

I asked what two sources on design activism you would recommend to a friend or colleague. There were 83 individual responses, with only about 10 people saying they weren’t sure what sources to recommend. But 73 responses is still too many to list individually so I can summarize by listing sources that were mentioned more than once. What is perhaps striking is that out of 73 informative responses, only a few of the sources (mostly books) were listed more than twice. So there’s quite a diversity of information out there.

Books mentioned more than once (book links are to Amazon)

Design Activism: Beautiful Strangeness for a Sustainable World By Alastair Fuad-Luke (I reviewed Alastair’s book here)

Design For The Real World: HUMAN ECOLOGY AND SOCIAL CHANGE by Victor Papanek

Eternally Yours: Visions on Product Design edited by Lisebeth Bonekamp, Henk Muis, Ed van Hinte, and Arnoud Odding

The Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability: Charting the Conceptual Landscape through Economy, Ecology, and Culture
(perhaps not surprising since it’s my survey, and this is my book, but thanks!)

Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice
by Tony Fry

Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility edited by Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne

Do Good Design: How Designers Can Change the World by David Berman

Magazines mentioned more than once

Good

Adbusters

Organizations mentioned more than once

Architecture for Humanity

IDEO design for social impact

Project H

Doors of Perception

TED

Thinkpublic

Urban/Act a handbook resulting from the European Platform for Alternative Practice and Research on the City (PEPRAV)

Online sources mentioned more than once

Designactivism.net (again, perhaps not surprising since it’s my survey, thanks!)

Social design notes

Design observer

Core77

Worldchanging

Treehugger

Designboom

socialdesignsite

There were a few interesting comments about sources. For example, one person suggested, “Any design blog should do. Design is being used in an activist fashion even by designers who are unaware they are doing so.” In a similar vein, more than one person suggested online searches, for example typing the term “design activism” into a search engine, into Wikipedia, or Amazon. Perhaps these are a good reminder that the field is evolving and new sources are emerging.

How you would describe it

I also asked how you would describe “design activism” to someone who isn’t familiar with the concept. There were over 100 individual responses to this question, with only about 7 people unsure how to describe it. Here again I’ll have to summarize some of the trends in these many very thoughtful responses.

Most of the responses centered on the idea of design having a role in positive change, but there was an amazing variety of interpretations of these ideas. Some people focused on the idea of raising awareness and communicating about beliefs and values, whereas others concentrated on an explicit political role. For example, contrast the idea of “drawing attention to societal issues” with the idea of taking “a more explicit political stance.” A few respondents seemed to interpret design activism as activism on behalf of better use of design.

There was also a lot of variety in terms of how people characterized “positive change.” For some respondents it was simply a question of “making the world a better place” and for others it had more specific elements such as “advocating for under represented groups” and specific causes such as peace, civil rights, poverty, and the environment. A number of respondents emphasized positive change as requiring a substantial movement away from the goals of commerce and the economic growth agenda.

Formats

I asked about what format would be most useful for new resources on design activism. While more than 70% were interested in some kind of ebook, nearly 50% were interested in conferences or workshops. About 45% were interested in an online video and only about 40% were interested in a traditional book.

Thanks again to all who participated.

In the US licensing varies by state, but one can get a sense of the code of ethics from the AIA’s (American Institute of Architects) code of ethics. Rena Klein has a useful article outlining recent amendments to the code. The code, which had five broad principles of conduct (known as “cannons”) was amended in 2007 when a new cannon, “obligations to the environment” was added. The other cannons deal largely with business conduct and legal compliance, however another amendment encourages architects to offer pro bono work.

AIA members can be suspended for not upholding many of the business and legal aspects of the code, but most of the social and environmental components are purely aspirational. New contract requirements that form part of the code, however, do require architects to discuss sustainable design options with clients in the schematic design phase. “These contract sections are legally binding to architects who sign the 2007 B101 Agreement. This means that failure to discuss “environmentally responsible design approaches” and “consider environmentally responsible design alternatives” could be deemed a breach of contract by the architect.”

Should a hippocratic oath for architecture focus on the health of the city?

Another take on the architect’s hippocratic suggest it is the health of the city that should be addressed, rather than the health of individuals, as suggested by this excerpt on curative building:

“Curative building: in favour of an architecture which soothes and alleviates

Art heightens perception and represents the world. Perhaps it is because of this that many give architecture the artistic mission of delving into the cracks and probing the wounds, representing the fragmentation of society and territory through fractured forms. Perhaps architecture is a medicinal art, and as such, aims to heal rather than describe suffering; or a useful art which is therefore more involved in repairing the world than evoking it.

If this activity were bound by a Hippocratic oath, surely the health of the city, the welfare of its inhabitants and the technical and economic consistency of its factories would be part of it. It happens only too frequently that buildings are an affront to the urban environment or landscape, to the comfort and convenience of the users or to constructive logic and economy. It is reasonable to assume that architecture would blend in more successfully with its service dimension if the shamans were replaced by doctors.

This curative building is exempt from heroic profiles; it assuages the conscience by alleviating suffering; it prefers efficiency to excellence and carefully avoids adventure and risk. An architecture like this will hardly be able to explore the chasms of art; but what it loses in emotion it will make up for in responsibility. Few look to the surgeon for inspiration, yet nevertheless everyone expects him to be skilled and competent. Perhaps the architect should also be judged more for his skill than for his genius; neither the fabric of the city nor the flow of life will be weakened by this.”

[Do you know the source of this passage? If so, please let me know]

Finally, practitioner Sergio Palleroni suggests that a hippocratic oath has “shock value” to some of his architecture students, “Our studio labs have a lot of medical students, because their idea of health is so fundamental to them. The Hippocratic oath is a much more hardcore set of values about how to serve communities. It’s always good to present architecture students with that.” But he also notes that “having students collaborate across disciplines now will lead to a society where disciplines will not be divided along these boundaries but instead will join forces to solve problems.” This reinforces the idea from the previous post that designers probably need a different kind of ethical oath, and that by bringing practices and their oaths together we find deeper, longer lasting solutions.

Don’t forget the survey — its running until the end of November and I’ll announce the prize drawing winner in early December, along with the results.

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/353304/your-interest-in-design-activism

Several practitioners and design observers have pondered the idea of an oath for product designers.

Contributors to Core77

Over on Core77, aimed at product design Emily Pilloton, of Project H and the recent book, Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People, mentions the idea of a hippocratic oath for product designers. The book includes a “designer’s handshake” which she describes as a version of the hippocratic oath. Hers includes items such as:
- go beyond doing no harm
- measure, share, and teach
- serve the underserved
- don’t reinvent the wheel
- put the user first
- be part of a greater whole
Her idea is that people sign this oath and send it back to her, and that taking this action helps people feel the weight of the commitment more.

One of the founders of core77, Alan Chochinov has also developed a version of an oath for designers, although he calls his a “manifesto for sustainable design” (I wrote about design manifestos before here). He starts off highlighting the point that industrial designers don’t just deal with one patient at a time, the way doctors do, rather, “We have to remember that industrial design equals mass production, and that every move, every decision, every curve we specify is multiplied—sometimes by the thousands and often by the millions. And that every one of those everys has a price.”
The points in his oath include items such as:
- stop making crap
- put systems before artefacts
- teach sustainability early
- ensure balance before catering to talents
- put metrics before magic
- put climates before primates
- context before all else

He’s purposefully kept this at 1000 words, which is perhaps a bit long for an oath, but as he says, it’s a manifesto.

Designers Accord

The Designers Accord is more than a “manifesto,” but it is also less than a binding oath. To sign up to the accord, one commits to five guidelines. The emphasis of the designers accord seems to be on institutional signatories, in the same way that institutions such as states or global businesses might sign on to international accords on trade. Interestingly, the commitment for individuals who sign the designers accord reads very differently than the commitment for institutions, and it highlights the difference—some might say the double standard—between what we expect of individuals and what we accept from larger institutions.

Designers Accord Logo

Under the category of individual adopters the accord says: “All adopters, supporters, and endorsers follow a basic code of conduct: Do no harm; Communicate and collaborate; Keep learning, keep teaching; Instigate meaningful change; Make theory action.”

However the five guidelines given for the institutional adopters don’t mention “do no harm,” instead they mention “reducing impact,” which we might read as “lessen harm.” On the one hand this is a very realistic and practical approach for Designers Accord to take. And it’s something I talk about in my book as one of the central debates of sustainable design. To what degree do we need sudden radical change–the kind of change that would require companies to “do no harm”- rather than “lessen harm”- and to what extent do we need to maintain some level of “system stability” to enable cohesive transformation? The book also examines broader implications of “time” for sustainable design.

I notice too that the Designers Accord is now “a five-year project started in 2007″ so one has to wonder what happens to people’s commitments after that period. It’s hard to believe that all practices will be transformed in that time period, so perhaps the commitments will be transferred to the main professional design organizations, or Designers Accord will launch phase 2. Again I don’t fault Designers Accord for setting a limit on their organizational lifetime. It’s an idea that probably should be considered by more groups. (The Dutch have used this model successfully to look at specific issues, particularly through the Eternally Yours project, which also lasted five years and left a lasting mark on the toolbox of sustainable design, with concepts such as design for durability, heirloom design, and graceful ageing of surfaces.)

John Thackara/Doors of Perception

This leads us to a final view on a hippocratic oath for designers that counters the guideline-y approach of Designers Accord. John Thackara (for this link see the post dated May 28, 2009) wisely argues for designers to take a view beyond human life, which is the focus of the medical hippocratic oath. Instead he notes, in his advice to the newly formed Finnish Aalto University, that it should stand for “an unconditional respect for life, and for the conditions that support life.” Thackara writes:
“Such a commitment would be stronger than the hippocratic oath sworn by doctors. Young doctors promise to ‘prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment – and never do harm to anyone.’ Unambiguous respect for human life here – but no mention of the rest of life!”

He traces this line of ethical thinking back to Aldo Leopold’s “land ethic.” Further, Thackara concludes by stressing the notion of an unconditional respect for life. He comments:

If a commitment is unconditional, it does not mean “take account of”; or “pay due respect to”; or “move steadily towards”. It does not mean “minimise adverse effects on nature”, as it says in that proposed scientific oath – it means a target of no adverse effects.

Unconditional does not mean generating “less waste than any of our competitors” – it means a commitment to zero waste, and zero emissions.

Neither does an unconditional commitment to the biosphere mean adding environment courses to a curriculum that otherwise remains untouched.

Aldo Leopold conducts field research in this 1946 photo. (Photo courtesy of the University of Wisconsin archives)

Where does this leave us?

So we have a variety of “oaths” and “commitments” described here. One thing I really like about all of them is the strong component of teaching and learning, just as in the older style hippocratic oath which states, “to consider dear to me, as my parents, him who taught me this art; to live in common with him and, if necessary, to share my goods with him; To look upon his children as my own brothers, to teach them this art.” This is watered down in the more contemporary version with the statement, “May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling.”

We can see a tension that makes a hippocratic-style oath for designers challenging. On the one hand we have the aspiration of “unconditional respect for life,” a sort of all encompassing “do no harm” that makes more sense for designers’ scope of work. On the other hand we have the practical reality of confronting the market place, where most designers work. The market place contains those large, powerful, monied organizations (like businesses that sign on to the Designers Accord) whose primary goal is to maximize financial return to shareholders, at any reasonable environmental or social costs. Design seems to require a hippocratic-type oath that somehow connects the practical end of the spectrum with the aspirational end of the spectrum, but is the tension between these two ultimately insurmountable? What are your thoughts? Are you familiar with other adapted ethical oaths for product/industrial designers?

Next week we conclude this series with a look at architecture.

Finally, quick reminder that I would like to get your input on design activism, through the short survey found here:

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/353304/your-interest-in-design-activism

(you can enter to win a drawing for an Amazon gift voucher).

Thanks