And now here is a post, and you may also be thinking, “oh no, ethics is too heavy for a holiday.” But at heart, activism is an ethical undertaking. So this 4-part series will explore a few of the ethical dimensions of design, and based on my observations so far, the types of design activism that arise in response.

My colleague at the Open University, Tim Jordan, describes how activism is in many ways a moral undertaking, in that it seeks to put forward a vision of what constitutes a “good” life, for example, activists might suggest that a good life is free of oppression, injustice or war (Jordan 2002).

making ethics unavoidably public, courtesy of flickr

In addition, Jordan explains how activism works: many activists attempt to make ethics (typically in the form of an injustice or oppression) unavoidably public, thus forcing those who witness it to “decide if they can live with the moral deficit produced in themselves in the face of an unavoidable demonstration of what is better” (Jordan 2002, 58). In this sense, activism often emerges in the context of ethical failures.

The range of ethical dimensions in design is actually quite broad. For example, in a very thought-provoking piece for ID magazine (later reprinted in Utne Magazine as “The Devil Wears Camo: Or does he? Cultural confusion over a military motif” ), Mark Dery suggests that there is something ethically distasteful in the current fashion fad for camouflage, which he calls “the paisley of the Iraq war era.” More explicitly he asks why American consumers are “parading around in military drag at a moment when most of us think US troops should haul ass outta Baghdad before the insurgents hand us our heads, on video.”

camouflage boy, courtesy flickr

On the other end of the ethical spectrum we have the ethical duty of care associated with the potential failure of designed objects, for example product safety or the structural failure of buildings or bridges. In between lie issues such as fair trade, the treatment of vulnerable populations and environmental ethics.

In this part of the series let’s look at the duty of care, or professional ethics. One place where this issue arises is when a structure fails, such as the 1981 Kansas City Hyatt Regency Skywalk collapse (114 dead) or the 2004 roof collapse at Charles de Gaulle airport in France (4 dead). These are two cases cited by Eugene Kremer, in his piece, “When Buildings Fail: Ethics for the Worst Case Scenario” (pdf from Architectural Record, October 2006).

Kremer points out that in balancing a great deal of competing criteria, architects inevitably face risk. But the architects’ professional association, the American Institute of Architects, does not have ethical guidelines that guide architects in the face of a disaster, or looming disaster. In general, the author suggests, most architectural firms are ill prepared.

Partial building collapse in New York City, by Sarah Lillian, 2007 on flickr

He references the Boston Society of Architects’ Ethical Forum, which proposes a sort of ethical framwork based on the principle of “others first.” In this framework the hierarchy of professional responsibilities goes as follows: “always serve the public first, then client, then craft and colleagues” last in the hierarchy comes “service to self.” Victoria Beach, who was involved in developing the hierarchy, comments, “if keeping a professional secret serves only yourself and harms others, you should tell.” And, “You should tell if your client’s interest endangers the public interest.”

Amid struggles to develop an ethical framework that addresses the more profound ethical dilemmas in architectural work, the failures of design in themselves provoke activism. As Kremer notes, they often result in professionals and others lobbying for improved laws, regulations and standards.

A similar range of activism often results from product failures, with examples ranging from faulty, exploding automobile gas tanks to chemical exposure in children’s products (such as recent cases of painted toys and plastic bottles). In addition to conventional lobbying, product designers also take action by demonstrating alternatives that avoid the failures.

On the whole, this activism tends to be reactive and reformist, rather than visionary, meaning that it looks to our existing systems of policy and regulation and our existing sets of relationships (such as professional associations or other institutions) to correct failures, rather than offering new visions for overcoming failures.

In the next post I’ll look at the some of the ethical issues associated with the producton of products. In these cases the products don’t fail in terms of safety or function, but they raise other ethical concerns.

References
Jordan, Tim. 2002. Activism! Direct Action, Hacktivism and the Future of Society. Edited by B. Bullen and P. Hamilton, Focus on Contemporary Issues. London: Reaktion Books Ltd.

“A Better World by Design asks the question today’s designers, engineers, and economists should be asking. How can we use technology to improve the world? Hear answers from 25 world-class professionals and academics.”

The second resource is a new publication called The Measure of America: American Human Development Report 2008-2009. The report takes the traditional UN human development form that is typically used to assess progress in developing countries and applies them to the United States. It finds and illustrates striking differences in the levels of human well being among states, congressional districts, gender, race and ethnic groups.

This last resource picks up on a couple of themes I detected at the “Changing the Change” Conference (aimed largely at product design) that I attended last week in Turin, Italy. First, A number of the presentations looked at how we can redeploy our existing infrastructure in innovative new ways. The American Human Development Report, as an example, takes the existing framework of “human development report” and redeploys it in the context of a developed country to question “progress” in the American context. Conference examples included:

- urban hitch-hiking project in Belgium where riders and drivers sign up to a “hitchhiking service” in which cars are clearly labeled and riders can specify, for example, the gender of drivers and preferred destinations
- intergenerational housing in Paris where students who can’t afford central accomodation are paired with seniors who already have central accomodation but might otherwise be isolated (both covered in one conference paper).
- an examination of existing service infrastructures in india, such as rag pickers, street vegetable sellers, and so on, whose services could be updated and redeployed in the face of “hypermarkets” and “supermarkets” arriving in India (conference paper).

The second theme was about the changing relationship between so called “developed” and “developing” countries. Historically there has been a tendency to think that industrialized countries have the answers or have done development “right” (after all, they’re called “developed countries” aren’t they?). But now there is increasing recognition that developed countries actually got a lot of elements of development “wrong” in environmental and even human terms.

At the same time, even in the face of crushing poverty and exploitative trade (among other things), developing countries may in fact have some of the answers, concepts, or models that could benefit industrialized countries. It strikes me that deploying the model of the Human Development Report in the American context is a step in this direction. Conference goers seemed to recognize this direction and everyone seemed all too aware that as “developing countries” industrialize, their taking a “westernized path” would be catastrophic. The conclusion: we all need new development paths and they could come from anywhere.

There are a number of interesting papers available from the conference, including my own entitled, “Design as Activism.”

Although I don’t entirely agree with Thackara’s criticism of Architecture for Humanity and $100 computer initiatives, I do agree that activism can go wrong, or be perceived to go wrong. Here are a few examples.

The Red Cross
The San Francisco, Bay Area chapter of the Red Cross ran a campaign on earthquake preparedness with the tagline, “what do we have to do to get your attention.” They used portable billboards to create the illusion of well known buildings destroyed by earthquake. Karrie Jacobs , in a report in Metropolis Magazine, noted that at least one viewer did not appreciate the “scare tactic” and said, “It almost makes me regret the many times I’ve given money to them.” The point was to get people’s attention, because despite repeated earthquake preparedness campaigns, surveys show that only 6% of Bay Area residents are ready for a big one, and the figure stubbornly refuses to climb. Activists generally strive for media attention to bring their message to the target audiences –those who can enact change or change their behavior. But did the Red Cross judge their audience well enough?

Jill Palmer, Courtesy Red Cross Bay Area

Recycled Materials
A number of design activists stress the value of recycling and using recycled materials, but more than one critic has pointed out the potential inconvenience of creating supply chains that rely on streams of waste material. Does creating products out of recycled waste material basically guarantee a waste stream? A conflict of interest could arise when producers need a steady stream of waste to produce their products, and so wouldn’t want consumers to create less waste. I originally heard Pete Grogan, then at Weyerhauser (the forest and paper company), suggest this back in the late 1990s. McDonough and Brangaurt pick up on this idea in their book, Cradle to Cradle, by investigating how recycling perpetuates undesirable chemicals that find new life in inappropriate uses when one material is recycled into another that it was not intended for. Have design activists in this case been thinking too small about the changes that are needed?

PET, commonly recycled into other products
it was not initially intended for

Postwar Reconstruction
As urban civil conflicts become increasingly common, more architects are taking their activism into the effort of reconstruction. But Esther Charlesworth, founder of Architects without Frontiers and author of a book of the same name, notes that this arena is fraught with difficulties. In her own experiences in Bosnia, designers were involved in efforts to recreate iconic monuments (such as the Stari Most Bridge in Mostar), while many more significant design needs were ignored. She writes of her disillusionment with foreign architects (activists by another name), working in post-conflict cities, “Generally, they had little experience of working in divided political and physical landscapes and, as a result, tended to produce (and impose) quick fix design strategies that are attractive to international donors but which invariably denied or, in some cases, accelerated the underlying causes of conflict.” Charlesworth even has a term for this, “Trauma-Glam,” which she attributes to Richard Becherer. Have some humanitarian-aid architects gotten priorities wrong?

Conclusion
Activism can go wrong for any number of reasons, and we’ve seen a few here. Activists can answer the wrong question – as Thackara thinks some design activists working in development have. They can misjudge likely responses, as the Red Cross may have done. Activists can think too small, in the way that some critics think design using recycled materials may be doing. And activists can lose sight of priority issues, as some foreign architects might do when they get involved in post-war reconstruction.

One difficulty we have in assessing design activism is that although “actions” are often reported as news, we don’t necessarily find out how effective the actions were in moving the cause forward. If $100 laptops were to appeal to international funders to buy for third world schools, and not as Thackara suggests, for individual families to buy, then perhaps they would do some good. If the Red Cross shock tactic did get more people to prepare for an earthquake, then they achieved their aim. These reports that assess the outcome of activism are often missing, just as assessments of how various designed products and buildings perform in real life are also often missing.

Do you have any cases of “design activism gone wrong” to share?

Q: What is the state of education in sustainable design at the university level?

A: It’s changing quickly. Ten years ago there were few programs that emphasized it, now there are many more. Some programs make it a particular focus, like the BA Product Design Sustainable Futures program where I used to teach (University College for the Creative Arts, U.K.). Other programs are maintaining a more “neutral” overall design focus, but adding individual classes or design briefs, on sustainability. Over the next decade I think we’ll see a lot more change as people gauge the expertise, emphasis and delivery needed for sustainable design.

Q: What’s the difference between green design and sustainable design, and how do these play out in the educational context?

A: “Green” or “eco” design is the practice of reducing or eliminating environmental impacts of design, whereas sustainable design is concerned with the environment, but also with social and economic issues. Design schools that take sustainable and green design to heart will ultimately have to articulate a vision for their program, not only in terms of the expertise they want in the faculty, but also the types of students they recruit and the employment their graduates gain.

what types of students will we recruit?
what skills should they learn?

For example, will your design program turn out business and legislative minded eco-designers that specialize in market competitiveness and compliance? Will it turn out social designers schooled in open source methods to facilitate “co-design” within communities? Will it turn out “service” designers (following the notion of replacing products with services) with special knowledge of hospitality and customer care? Ultimately I don’t think one program could offer all that and do it well. Eventually we’ll see specialties arising, particularly at the graduate level.

Q: What is needed to improve programs in this field?

A: There are a few things we need to think about. First, who can do the teaching? Although many design faculty members are interested and concerned about it, which is great, not many could turn around and deliver an astute, compelling class on it starting next week, the way they might be able to on “human factors in design” or “craft and materials.” A lot of people are now trying to “get up to speed,” and my teaching guide is meant to help that group as well as specialists. My experience is that sustainability isn’t a specialty that you can easily “buy in” to a faculty because for now, there aren’t that many specialists. Schools that invest in helping their faculties become experts will gain a long term advantage as prospective students and the wider economy assign higher value to sustainable outcomes.

Second, where will sustainable design graduates find jobs? Jobs in this field within industry are still relatively rare. That’s partly because many values associated with sustainability, such as social capital and natural capital, are not well reflected in the marketplace. Businesses have difficulty making money from it, so they don’t pursue it. The situation may change with more regulation or consumer pressure. Meanwhile, students who take sustainability to heart, who want to transform our current systems, immediately run up against a resistant industry. Yet there are other career paths for these graduates and we need to suggest more diverse models for design practice, models such as not-for-profit design studios, social enterprises, and public agencies.

Third, how long will it be before students arrive at college with a solid understanding of the ideas behind sustainability? Currently we have to begin at square one in teaching sustainability, which is difficult given the already crowded design curriculum. Over time elementary and secondary schools will probably include more on sustainability. But what message could we send now to prospective students about pre-requisite knowledge?

Q: What are some of the best examples of products that have been designed with sustainability principles in mind?

A: That’s a difficult one (see related post: “Q: best sustainable design examples?“). A design solution may hit the right cultural notes while overlooking significant ecological issues, such as a package design that helps elderly people but performs poorly in ecological terms. In my book I try to provide a framework for thinking about what makes a given example sustainable or not, on ecological, economic or cultural grounds.

Green design gets a lot of coverage, so let me highlight cultural sustainability, especially equity and long term well being. First, there’s humanitarian design work. This ranges from the eco-design housing solutions proposed for survivors of Hurricane Katrina to humanitarian products proposed by Project H Design or Design that Matters. Second, we’re seeing more investigation of design for the long term, from hundreds to thousands of years. An example is the Rosetta Disk, an analog object designed to last 2000 years to record the thousands of languages currently used on earth that are likely to be lost in the next 100 years. Third, fair trade and ethical sourcing are also surfacing more constructively with projects such as Rugmark, an effort to eliminate child labor in rug making, and “fashioning an ethical industry,” aimed at fashion design.

The long lasting Rosetta Disk

Q: Now that many design education programs are making strides toward sustainable design, what is the next big trend?

I think the next trend will be “social innovation” derived from improving our overall social capital (e.g. trust and social relationships). People are recognizing that we actually have a lot of good technology, but we don’t have the social means to apply it well. Energy efficiency is an obvious example; it saves money—yet many organizations aren’t doing it largely due to social and political obstacles.

Social innovation recognizes that even apparently technical and econonmic problems often have social solutions, so it looks to social relationships and social organizations for innovation, as opposed to relying on business and technology. We are already seeing “social enterprises,” organizations with primarily social agendas, oriented toward doing good without losing money, hence “non-loss” instead of “for profit” companiese (see related post “is there a fourth sector“). At the same time there are more new social “tools,” ranging from social networking to open source.

Consumption is a problem that requires largely social solutions

Social innovation poses a real challenge to designers who have traditionally focused on things (consumer goods, buildings) and selling things. I think we are going to see a shift toward exploring how design can facilitate relationships and social capital, perhaps using a “non loss” business model. Sustainable consumption is a good example of a problem that designers can’t solve by creating and selling more things. Consumption comes down to issues of meaning and identity, issues that have to be resolved primarily through social relations, not things. The question is, what kind of training do designers need to understand and enhance social innovation? We are just starting to ask that question now.

I love the idea behind this site, but in looking through a few of the projects it becomes clear that they are about designing social interactions and interventions, not about applying traditional design disciplines (eg architecture or product design) to social issues. Of course, there is some overlap between these two approaches, and a few of their social marketing examples (such as retired weapons graphics) illustrate the application of traditional design disciplines to redesigning social frameworks.

But to see what I mean, consider this example of the global village school that I found under keyword “conflict.” The school offers “an accredited, customizable K-12 homeschooling program via online and text-based curriculum, complete with individualized teacher services. Their curriculum integrates peace, justice, and diversity studies with the core subjects. ”

Still, I think the site will interest and inspire designers, as long as they know that it is not aimed explicitly at the traditional design disciplines, and rather, is aimed at the notion of redesigning social life using a variety of disciplines.

“The exercise of estimating values and stating preferences can itself be revealing. ‘One of the difficulties with people,’ Ranney notes, ‘is that they position themselves in a relative sense—you know, they’re either pro-immigration or anti-immigration. Because if you think the immigration rate is 10 percent and you want it reduced to 8 percent, you’re anti-immigration, right? But if your friend thinks it’s 1 percent and should go to 2 percent, he thinks he’s pro-immigration, even though he’s advocating a rate that’s four times lower than what you’re advocating.’ In fact, Ranney says, the real immigration rate is just 0.4 percent.”

And:

“To illustrate the practical impact of such a shift, Ranney recounts another experiment in which he asked subjects to divide $100 between research on breast cancer and research on heart disease in women. ‘Initially, the mean allocation for breast cancer research was around $63. Then we showed them a figure, which is that, according to the data, eight times as many women die of heart disease as die from breast cancer. Once they knew that, they ended up giving more like $37 to breast cancer research and the rest to heart disease.’ That marks a significant policy shift, says Ranney. ‘I sometimes call this the most minimal educational intervention; that is, people think one way, you give them just a single number and suddenly they’re thinking another way.’”

to reduce environmental impact, how much
should we invest in “end of life” vs. upfront design

It got me thinking about which types of statistics might affect design activism. Below are four of the statistics that came to mind. Although these statistics aren’t necessarily the kind that would prompt designers to action – they do make you think about the nature of design with respect to social issues.

– percent of environmental impact decided during design stage

Using the formula that Ranney developed, we might ask policy makers and social campaigners how they think investments should be made along the lifecycle of a product in order to reduce it’s impact. How would they allot investment among design, manufacture, distribution, use and end of life? How would their investment decisions change when they find out that the statistic says that as much as 90% of a product’s environmental impact is fixed during the design stage.[1] This number is becoming fairly well known (or at least, well published) among industrial designers, as far as I can tell.

– percent of internships for designers that place students in public or community service organizations

How can we expect architects or other designers to pursue community service when it’s never even presented as an option? What percentage of postgraduate internships should reflect this option? According to recent findings published in Architecture Record the architecture profession provides far fewer opportunities for students to undertake internships with public or community service organizations than do the medical and legal professions. In law the estimate is that about 10% of internships are with the public sector as law clerks in public courts. This does not count other types of legal work such as legal aid and the like. In architecture, the two main programs that formally offer nonprofit and public internships account for 10 places among 4000 professional degree graduates, or about 0.3%! No figures found yet for other design disciplines.

– number of people living in physically “broken” places eg post war zones that need physical and social reconstruction

What is the level of need for community service design? How would we gauge training of designers to meet this need? Although there are probably many ways to estimate this need, one stark way is to consider cities in conflict.

“the greatest number of civil wars in history has occurred in the past two decades,” reports Esther Charlesworth.[2] And as wars move in to cities, she continues, more and more civilians are affected. During WWI about 43% of battle-related deaths were civilian, rising to 59% during WWII, but reaching 74% since then as civil conflicts increasingly occur within cities. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees and others estimate that there are 15-20 million refugees worldwide, many displaced by civil conflict. Charlesworth suggests that even many cities of the developed world are now in conflict with divides among the rich and poor and among racial and religious groups.

– percent of women and minorities practicing architecture and other forms of design

what’s the desirable range of diversity among designers?

If we are interested in a representative diversity among designers, what do we think the percentage of women or minorities in their ranks should be? Although I haven’t found numbers for other types of designers, the AIA estimates that in 2006 women make up 26% of all architectural staffs, although only 13% of all licensed architect members of the AIA are women. People of color make up 16% of all architectural staffs, although only 1.5% of licensed architects (about 1600 people) are African American and there are no statistics on Hispanic architects (America’s fastest growing group). Black women make up only 0.2% of licensed architects, according to Architect magazine, although the make up 2% of attorneys.

Now, where can we get figures for some of the other design disciplines? What other statistics can we add to the list…?

References

1 recent sources for this statistic are Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1999), and Helen Lewis and John Gertsakis, Design + Environment: A Global Guide to Designing Greener Goods (Sheffield: Greenleaf, 2001).
2 Esther Ruth Charlesworth, Architects without Frontiers : War, Reconstruction and Design Responsibility (Amsterdam ; Boston: Architectural Press, 2006).

social enterprises seem to ask,
“how much is enough?”

As one organization, B Corporation describes it, “B Corporations™” are a new type of corporation that are purpose-driven and create benefit for all stakeholders, not just shareholders.” To become an official B Corporation, which is a play on the familiar “C Corporation” structure, a company must actually change its governing documents, “to incorporate the interests of employees, community and the environment.”

So in these companies shareholders are not the primary stakeholders, they are one group of stakeholders among many. Interestingly, there are about 20 US states that currently do not allow corporations to broaden the corporate documents (and thus their interests) in this way. (Currently B Corporation recommends incorporating in one of the states that does allow it, although lawyers are working on the problem.)

There are some other examples around, such as the Social Ventures Network, a group of businesses that are also committed to furthering social and environmental goals explicitly, along side business goals.

What’s the question?
I was recently talking about this issue with some of the folks over at Inkwell when we were discussing my book in their author’s forum. In the discussion someone pointed out that many companies would like to “do the right thing” but feel that they can’t “afford” to since their competitors won’t. These would-be “good” companies would loose out on profits to the “bad” companies.

This question of cost frames the conventional business world where profit and speed are king and queen. I think many of us involved in design would accept this cost framing of the issue – we can’t afford to be “good” because:
- Our services will become too expensive and clients won’t hire us
- It takes too much time (and therefore costs too much) to find out what actually constitutes “good” in any given context
- Even though lots of people say that they want to consume better goods and services, for many reasons they don’t, so if we are “good” we’ll loose out on market share
- And so on
[for a more detailed explanation of why being “good” typically costs more than being “bad” given our current economic structure, see my book’s section on economy]

Social Ventures seem to be asking different questions. On the one hand they are asking, “how can profits be aligned with other good outcomes?” And they are seeking strategies to make that happen. On the other hand, I think these enterprises are also ultimately asking another, more sacrilegious question: “how much profit is enough?”

Can Good Actions be Profitable?
There is some evidence that many “good” actions actually offer profitable returns. A classic example that designers encounter is energy efficiency. Another well known example is the Garmeen bank, which makes micro loans to poor people who have no collateral. The bank is financially self sustaining.

Another recent example comes from one of Germany’s leading supermarket chains that developed a “design-led” supermarket for the elderly in Berlin (Germany is Europe’s “oldest” country but other western countries are not far behind). The resulting accessible design (reported in Metropolis) has generated a 25% increase in profits –the improvements make the store more appealing to everyone, not unlike the Oxo good grips kitchen utensils.

There are a range of new business models arising that try to better align values and business. The now-defunct Nau clothing business aimed to allocate what it would have spent on marketing to charitable causes chosen by customers. Some service businesses operate sliding scale fees for services (a practice that many designers probably informally use).

Still others, like Garmeen Bank, are looking at different markets and structures – ranging from earning many small payments rather than fewer large ones to charging for network systems rather than hardware (like the “free” cell phone that comes with a service subscription). This latter model has been proposed for cars, where users pay energy surcharges but get the car for free. In a forthcoming post I will look more at how designers might be able to utilize some of these models.

How Much is Enough?
A few weeks ago BP and Shell both announced quarterly profits of more than £3 billion (that’s roughly $6 billion). Not bad for three months, at $2 billion per month! One has to ask if companies like these truly cannot afford to “do more good,” or if they simply choose other priorities as the market dictates. If a company on the scale of a BP or a Shell put 5% of annual profits towards innovative social and environmental initiatives—some of which might be profitable and some not, but all considered more risky than the norm—that would be about $1 billion dollars annually towards being “good.”

When a B corporation writes “all stakeholders” into their governing documents, however, how do they decide what constitutes “good” for those groups? Do we want this decision in the hands of businesses such as BP and Shell, rather than in the hands of more public- and socially- oriented groups? B corporation group has provided standards against which to audit “good” behavior and the process they used to develop the standards appears credible. But do we, in the end, need this form institutionalized, by regulation, in order to get consistent performance.

The Nobel-prize winning founder of Garmeen Bank, Mohammad Yunnus begins to address this. Rather than urging a form of “philanthrocapitalism” which generally follows the maximization principles of business, he suggests a new class of enterprises that pursue a non loss strategy. He envisions a social stock market where these businesses would be listed and that there would be stringent rules about what qualifies for this listing. In general he notes that at the moment these types of enterprises fall through the cracks of our system, they are not supported, recognized or nurtured—sometimes, as mentioned above, not even allowed—so it’s no wonder they are barely seen.

making a living, or a killing?

For designers and others looking to become part of the fourth sector, the message is that someone running a 4th sector enterprise or working for one could earn a competitive salary – but probably not multimillion dollar bonuses or golden parachute share options. In other words it is possible to make a “good” living, not a killing.

Conclusion
So the outlines of a 4th sector do seem to be in place, but I agree with Yunnus that it can’t really exist until we start to recognize it much more boldly.

Day Labor Station
The first project is a day laborer station devised by a nonprofit architecture studio in San Francisco, Public Architecture. Covered in an article by Kirstin Palm in Metropolis Magazine (June 2007), the project grew out of observations by one of the studio’s members, executive director Tom Panelli. Upon seeing day laborers on street corners waiting for builders, contractors and homeowners to seek them out, he wondered about the whole system.

Portable “Day Labor Station,” courtesy Public Architecture

In addition to lacking basic amenities during their wait, the workers did not appear “as the skilled people they are. It looks like guys hanging out on a corner.” Public Architecture began combining their observations with interviews of day laborers asking what they could use, and the result was a portable day laborer’s station offering some comfort, humanity and dignity to this workforce. The station includes basic amenities, but also includes an open air meeting room for workers to take classes, meet or confer with employers.

Liz Ogbu, of Public Architecture, notes that some cities have set up worker centers for day laborers, but Day Labor Station constitutes a new model for the worker center. In contrast to conventional stationary and enclosed worker centers, the new station’s portability suits many workers and employers who see their work as “off the grid.” In addition, the station’s sheltered, yet open air structure provides visibility of the workers to the employers, another vital element in this system. The flexibility in the design allows for variations such as storage boxes under benches, a mini kitchen (to make food, possibly for sale “to go”).

Anatomy of the Day Labor Station activism
Recall that activism, for the purposes of this blog, is taking action (typically within the context of a contentious issue) intended to bring about change on behalf of a wronged, deprived or excluded group. In this case the designers took action on behalf of a typically excluded group (the article estimated there were about 117,000 day laborers in the US and most are from Mexico and Central America). They took action to bring about change – in this case improve workers’ access to basic amenities and offer legitimacy for a skilled workforce.

Did these activists succeed? The design proposal was unveiled at Cooper Hewitt’s show “Design for the other 90%” but at the time of writing had not been built. The designers are searching for the right fit – an early adopter. The fact that the design is getting major national exposure trains the spotlight on the issues, which increases the likelihood of getting the project built.

Hyperborder
Mexican architect Fernando Romero was initially an activist for hire, commissioned to design a footbridge across the Rio Grande that would also serve as a museum of immigration. Also reported in Metropolis Magazine (December 2007 by Rebecca Cavanaugh), this story ended with Romero and his firm becoming much more interested in the notion of borders. They began exploring border issues far beyond architecture’s mediating role.

Bridge Museum across the US Mexico Border
courtesy LAR/Fernando Romero

In the end they propose a range of long term scenarios that demonstrate just how rich the relationship between the two counties might be if politicians could get beyond their reductive stances (unlikely in the near term). The research and proposals are presented in their book, Hyperborder: The Contemporary U.S. – Mexico Border and Its Future (Princeton Architectural Press, 2007).

(link to Amazon page)

Anatomy of hyperborder activism
Initially Romero’s activism for hire was on behalf of a group, immigrants and migrants, who have historically been deprived, if not actually excluded. The action of creating the bridge was ostensibly to improve understanding and appreciation of immigration issues (the museum) and provide an improved physical link between countries for all who cross back and forth. How successful was it? Like the portable laborer station above, it has not yet been built.

With the Hyperborder project, Romero and his studio entered into the role of proper activists. They started with the same immigrant/migrant/”guest worker” group, but their call for change became broader and more radical. In itself, the call to look at long term, big picture issues is radical and ranged across issues such as health care (should US retirees seek healthcare in Mexico because it is cheaper, the way British people seek health care in continental and eastern Europe because it is speedier – “healthcare tourism”?) and energy (should the US work with Mexico to concentrate development of low cost renewable energy there?) and so forth.

The book is also highly visual with side-by-side graphical comparisons of the two countries, humanizing portraits of individual migrant workers. In this way the designers’ actions makes a great deal of information visible, and therefore accessible in a way that it has not been before. How successful is it? The aim of this kind of activism is to build solidarity around an issue—to change the terms of the debate, reframe the language in the discussion. Success is hard to gauge, but their work was a runner up in Metropolis’ Next Generation Design Awards, suggesting that the message, the issues and the questions are, by virtue of becoming “news,” reaching a wider audience.

Conclusion
In their effort to humanize the migration and immigration issues, both these projects used portraits and profiles of real people to expand the story of the structures they were proposing. And in terms of their stories of activism, both cases raise some interesting issues.

First, what constitutes “success” for this activism? Is it enough to generate a proposal and get the issue widely covered? In some senses this coverage does help to frame public debate about immigration and migration issues, and changing the debate is the first step toward changing practices and policies, if not attitudes. It demonstrates that the “future visions” which designers are well suited to present can, without even being built, contribute to change. Do we rate the success more highly if the projects take the next step toward “built” change? How do we balance “design” criteria with criteria for social change?

Second, how are these instances of activism linked to broader social movements? This is something we don’t necessarily see in “design” coverage. But we know the issues of migration and immigration are not new and that there are a number of social movements addressing migrant and immigrant worker issues. When and how should design activist efforts link back into these social movements?

Third, in many cases we find that design activists start out as activists for hire. Some go on to become activists in their own right. Others don’t. How can designers balance an activist agenda within their own work? The examples above show that one group formed a “social” practice with activist intentions at the start. The other group gained a commission that launched their own, original activist project.

link to it over on the right side there, under the “pages” heading…

can a chair act for change?

I see two main ways that people argue this case (both for and against): first on the basis of form and second on the basis of program or use (program being an architects way of describing “use”). I would like to add a third, on the basis of their “composition” although I’m not entirely sure this is the right word.

Artifacts and politics
The question of artifacts and activism is typically explored through the lens of politics and power. In this case the question is not simply whether artifacts lobby for change, but rather, what kind of power, if any, artifacts have in and of themselves.

This long running question jumped on to the modern stage with some gusto in 1980, with the publication of Langdon Winner’s article, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” Winner suggested that Robert Moses designed low bridges in New York for the purpose of excluding public buses from parkways that led to beach areas, since the buses could not fit under the bridges and typically carried less well-off, ethnic and racial minorities. Partly on this basis Winner suggested that artifacts do have politics, they do exert power (Winner 1980).

Winner created a very popular (eg often repeated) “parable” of “discrimination via things.” Bridges discriminate against buses and the people on them, narrow airplane seats discriminate against overweight people, ballot papers discriminate against those who cannot read or understand them, and so forth.

Bernward Joerges later refuted Winner’s example in, “Do Politics Have Artifacts?” Joerges suggests that Winner did not fully investigate the facts. For example, bridge height was typically kept low by regulation, and buses, trucks and commercial vehicles weren’t allowed on parkways at that time anyway (Joerges 1999).

Other investigators echo Joerges when he concludes that, “the power represented in built and other technical devices is not to be found in the formal attributes of these things themselves.” In other words, form alone cannot discriminate. Dovey agrees, “power is not lodged inertly in built form” (Dovey 1999). Rather power is mediated by built form. So Robert Moses’ bridges mediated the power to discriminate that was embedded in building regulations, traffic rules and other systems.

Architecture
Leach suggests the politics of any building are only in the semantic readings of the building—what it represents or is associated with, “while a building through its associations might appear as deeply political, it must be understood that these politics are not an attribute of the architectural form itself” (Leach 1999).

For example, a building might start out as a fire station, then be remodeled into a night club. Those who remember it as a fire station may associate it with public authority and protection, but that memory gradually fades and the form takes on associations relevant to the building’s current use. A building can be big or small, heavy or light, thatch or marble, but it holds power over us only if it is associated with those who have authority.

power by association

For this reason both Leach and Dovey suggest that architecture, rather than offering a politics of form, may instead have a politics of “use.” Dovey notes that the internal, spatial organization of a building does affect the relations among people using the building. For example, spatial organization affects which areas are private and which are not–who can see or be seen. It determines whether spaces are highly linked, facilitating sociability, or if they are linear and segmented. So the spatial organization, or programming, of the building may give certain groups of people power over others.

Seattle library’s spatial organization

Products
In the area of product design, Dan Lockton has also been looking at the politics of use in a project he calls, “architectures of control: design with intent.” He has profiled cases where a product directs or restricts user actions for commercial or social benefit. On the commercial side he cites digital rights management that prevents you from copying a DVD or CD, but also printer cartridges that have an expiry date, upon which they stop working, regardless of how much ink is left in them. He suggests that in the digital realm, architectures of control for profit are gaining momentum, and argument pioneered by Lawrence Lessig (see for example Koman 2005).

digital right managment
may increasingly affect use

There are also analogue examples such as public seating or benches that cannot be laid or slept upon. He cites the Audi A2 engine hood; the owner of the car can’t open it, but an authorized dealer can. He also mentions many types of “lock ins” where one must buy a specific replacement razor blade or toner cartridge, for example, in order to fit the razor/printer. Lockton speculates that as digital control capability increases, we may see more products that simply stop working or “expire” at a predetermined time. If these digital controls could be tuned to preference choices for change, for example to make sustainable options the default rather than the “alternative,” perhaps they could be seen as activist.

Niedderer, a product designer, has also explored how objects can force certain uses, although her work aims for social outcomes rather than commercial ones. For example she’s done several projects such as “social cups,” a group of champagne flutes that only stand up when linked three or more together (Niedderer 2007). In this scenario we could see the contentious issue as: how should we build social capital? Through their functional use requirements the cups answer: create opportunities for people to work together.

These examples seem to echo the arguments made about architecture that no form can inherently lobby for change, but artifacts do have power over us in terms of how we use them.

Two sides to power
Dovey notes that power has two sides. One side is power over others; in this way a person can be controlled or oppressed. This is the power that has primarily been discussed so far. But the other side is power in terms of capacity and influence, to get things to go your way; in this way a person can be empowered (Dovey 1999).

This suggests to me that artifacts may also be activists in terms of symbolizing the capacity to change, and as such symbols, they may be empowering. Artifacts do this through their composition. Composition here is matter and energy, but at the scale where it does not greatly affect form or use. I can have a battery powered radio or a freeplay, wind-up radio. They come in a variety of forms (styles) and to operate them I must “charge” them one way or another, turn them on and adjust the tuner and the antenna.

this is how it could be done

The composition of the freeplay radio (let’s imagine that it’s also made of recycled plastic) symbolizes an intentional action to bring about change on behalf of the environment. In their composition, LEED platinum-rated buildings, or contemporary buildings that are naturally ventilated (no HVAC system) do the same thing. These artifacts are demonstrating capacity to do things differently. In a sense they’re saying, “this is how it could or should be done,” and they’ll go on saying that, long after the client and the designer are out of the picture.

In the case of these buildings, the symbolism remains, regardless of their form or their use. For example if the building were to shift from police station to office, the symbolic value of its reduced ecological footprint stays with it. The same may be said of a product such as a Toyota Prius hybrid car. Whether it’s a taxi, a police car or a family car; whether it’s the 2002 model or the snazzier 2008 style, its composition still argues for a change.

These compositions do not usually represent the status quo or power embedded in existing systems. They typically represent struggles against those systems to create alternative artifacts that, if successful, raise the bar and become the new “status quo” against which the next round of activism will struggle.
References

Dovey, Kim. 1999. Framing Places: Mediating Power in Built Form. Edited by T. A. Markus and A. D. King, The Architext Series. London: Routledge

Joerges, Bernward. 1999. Do Politics Have Artifacts. Social Studies of Science 29 (3):411-431.

Koman, Richard. 2007. “Remixing Culture: An Interview with Lawrence Lessig”. oreillynet.com, 1 June 2007 2005 [cited 1 June 2007]. Available from www.oreillynet.com—lessig.html.

Leach, Neil, ed. 1999. Architecture and Revolution: Contemporary Perspectives on Central and Eastern Europe. London: Routledge.

Niedderer, Kristina. 2007. Designing Mindful Interaction: The Category of Performative Object. Design Issues 23 (1):3-17.

Winner, Langdon. 1980. Do Artefacts Have Politics? Daedalus 109:121-136.