Design in a city

In the past blog, Curitiba, Brazil was introduced as a sustainable place, and I expressed my fascination I have for this place. Now, I want to explain why.

This city went from being an undesirable place to live in to a more sustainable place. Before, poverty was consuming people’s interest for survival. Overpopulation did not help to improve the living conditions in the site. According to the PreDesign Word Press, it “increased by about 900 people each week for a period of 40 years,” and the economy did not improve as the population grew.

The need to redesign the systems thinking (in other words and in this case, the way the government was taking care of their people) of Curitiba was crucial because the quality of the site was declining rapidly. Then in 1965 a Master Plan was proposed by the architect and urban planner, an current major of the place, Jaime Lerner. As many of the past blogs have mention, design plays a role in every field, in this case architecture and the redesigning of Curitiba.

Lerner decided that there was a need of rethink the way society was living in Curitiba. The main goal was to improve the quality of life at the site; therefore the goal was to “provide economic support for urban development.” The systems thinking that Lerner applied was to educate the people about recycling, reusing, and reduce. He changed systems thinking in the site and the people's way of viewing their hometown. They no longer saw their government as an institution that only wanted to take advantage of their people, now they worked along with them.

He re-designed the transportation system, as mentioned past blogs; he created a massive transportation system that involved the reusing of existing buses, instead of building a new underground transport system. But, not only did he improve the transport system, but the quality of living at the site, because he improved the cultural value the community had for their city.

Furthermore, Lerner changed the ethics of the society by providing a better quality of education and by teaching the community to be more sustainable and self-sufficient. He additionally redesign the society's interaction towards its own community; thus, he created more of a sense of community in the city.

Lerner not only redesigned the aesthetics of the site, and the ethics of the place, but his new approach to design transformed the entire place from being an unsustainable place to live, where overpopulation and poverty were the main issues, to being a sustainable model for the entire world.

References:

http://www.dismantle.org/curitiba.htm

http://predesign.wordpress.com/2007/04/17/sustainable-history-of-curitiba-brazil-13/

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/magazine/20Curitiba-t.html

Photos:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2131/2361012405_c87976293d.jpg
http://www.escapeartist.com/efam/69/parkwater.gif

Red or blue??

What’s your favorite color? Mine are pink, purple, beige, magenta, peach, and I can keep going. Colors are a powerful tool to influence the feelings of an audience. For example, Picasso’s painting La Vie, it is a painting in different blue tones. The overall feeling of this painting is a cold environment, depression of the people in the background, and a sense of melancholy. The man in the foreground of the painting apparently points at the woman carrying the baby, which might have been taken away from the couple. These “cooler blues” give us a sense of tension and sadness; it can be also associated with “quieter, less-outgoing feelings” (Lauer, 283).

In contrast with the Picasso's painting the first impression of the painting by Nancy Dias, who called her piece Harlequin Macaw, is happiness. It made me think of a promising, enjoyable, exciting trip this bird is going to make. The life this bird is starting once he leaves his nest is a life full of exploration and new discoveries. The colors are radiant; the bright red, yellow, and green creates this painted bird. Lauer states “yellows, oranges, and reds give us an instinctive feeling of warmth and evoke warm, happy, cheerful reactions” in their audience (283).

So, how can some simple colors create this important effect on our emotions? We tend to associate our feelings and emotions through colors. The warm colors are the vibrant and exciting colors like yellow and red, and the cooler colors blue, gray, and black. Another reason for these effects is the way we observe our surroundings, a tendency we have to relate blue with water and ice or red and orange with fire. Therefore, we realize that blue is cold while red is a warm color.

References:

Design Basics by Lauer and Pentak

Photos:

http://www.nancydias.com/artwork_2007.htm

http://www.artquotes.net/masters/picasso/pablo_lavie1903.htm

Design Sustainability might exist!

Today, I realized that sustainability design does exist! Well, not completely, because the idea of design being sustainable is still in development. This realization is thanks to Nathan Shedroff, a guest speaker, who addressed the issue of how designers need to find solutions that will help society be more sustainable through services and system thinking.

Shedroff started by explaining how business, sustainability and design are normally considered to be three different fields. But, according to him, in order for the community to achieve a higher level of sustainability these three fields need to work together. These three fields can be fused together through serviceable design (which creates the experiences the customer will acquire) and systems thinking (the process required to create a project).

But then, how does sustainability play a role in design? Well, first, three questions need to be answered: “What does a more sustainable world look like? What does a more meaningful world look like? and What does a post-consumer world look like?” (Shedroff, Nathan). Many places around the world are more sustainable than the USA; these places include Brazil, Cuba, and India. What all these three places have in common is that they are developing countries that have less access to mass production than the USA community has.

For example, in order for Curitiba, Brazil to organize a livable place for the large community they had to plan their budget carefully. They found a way to create a massive transportation system by recycling their busses, instead of creating an underground subway. They divided their streets into three parts, two for cars and the middle only for buses to come and go. (This is a really interesting sustainable site, it would take me the entire blog to explain how amazingly Curitiba works, so if you want to know more see this web page: Yes! Magazine)

So, going back to the questions, it is difficult to create a meaningful place that is equally important to everyone, since everyone has a different definition of what meaningful is. It is important to say, though, that Shedroff pointed out that now, this society has a higher tendency to give meaning to connections with objects. Finally, to answer the last question, “even with the recession, it hasn’t changed consumers' outlook” on acquiring items they might not need (Shedroff, Nathan). So what are we going to do? Well, that’s for us, the new and existing designers, to find out.

Additionally, according to Shedroff, designers need to considerate the sustainability principles of systems thinking that will help us achieve our goal of being more sustainable. On the other hand, although there are existing tools like National Capitalism, National Step, and Cradle to Cradle for us to be “sustainable,” they are not very helpful for designers because the procedures are incomplete. Finally,the broad list of tools that can guide us to a more sustainable design, unfortunately, are not fully developed and therefore not as useful as we would wish.

As mentioned, sustainability design is a developed concept that needs to go through a polishing process in order for us to understand it more.

However, there is a bright picture too! Some of the strategies that Shedroff mentioned were to create a design that is “useful, useable, meaningful and accessible” to the community (Shedroff, Nathan). Designers can be more sustainable by creating products that can dematerialize (like the aluminium Macbook) are durable, reusable, easily disassemble, or restored.

References

Nathan Shedroff presentation "Sustainable Innovation"

Yes Magazine = http://www.yesmagazine.org/

Photos:

http://ecolocalizer.com/files/2008/12/curutiba1.jpg

http://www.notempire.com/images/uploads/minimahuella.jpg

Objectified by Gary Hustwit

Do we ask ourselves why an object is made like it is? I didn’t until recently. I took for granted every item I used, from a pen to a computer, until I saw the movie Objectified. The movie helps viewers to understand the purpose of designers and how they impact the society.The director, Gary Hustwit, communicates his argument that contemporary designers and design emphasizes mass production of product more than before.

Hustwit communicates his inquiry through a collage of interviews with well-known designers like Alice Rawsthorn, Andrew Blauvelt and others. In the film Rawsthorn explains how the goal of designers was in the past to create or alter a product in order to satisfy society’s needs. This movie shows society a way to communicate with designers. It demonstrates to us how each item that we are used to seeing and using involves a long process and designer expertise to arrive at the final product we know. One example is the toothpick shown by Andrew Blauvelt; he explains that the toothpick design came from Japanese designers. These designers created a multifunctional purpose for the toothpick, since it not only includes the normal functions of the toothpick, but it also fulfills other purposes like breaking the top off the toothpick and using it as a toothpick stand. I just learned this little detail from watching the movie; it was really interesting because we take for granted that designers just decided to create a really small and slim stick that we can use to enhance our dental hygiene, when it is much more than that.

In the movie, Hutwit demonstrates how design in a contemporary period has evolved through time. It is now focused on a elaboration of mass production (which I think is mainly influenced by the global marketing and capitalism). Design now is in a constant inner war that keeps looking to enhance the "new design" to even a "newer design" to a "newest design," and creating a non-cyclical chain that might not come to an end, because we as humans will always search for perfection. This assumption has been proved by the way designers are always in search of improving existing items, like the potato peeler shown in the movie. It evolved from a metal piece with a simple design, to a more "sophisticated" version that includes a plastic handle that will be more comfortable to use and thus improve the experience of peeling potatoes.

Hutwit's film, Objectified, shows how design is a complex field, where the correlation between the end products of designers and society are closely related. Additionally, it instructs people in society to be more aware and more curious about their surroundings.

Defining the imperative: design

The goals throughout this blog have been to explain the diversified fields in design and eventually understand why design is important and how it affects society. So, in order to understand the importance of design in society, we need to recognize the definition of design. Design is in everything we see, every single item that we touch, see, and sometimes smell is created through a process of design. Design is imperative in today’s society. It is simple yet overwhelming, because in order to achieve a successful product, most designers conduct research, experimentation, in a trial-and-error process, as professor Housefield mention in class “90% perspiration, 10% inspiration." Finally, design is the way designers develop an idea into a form.

Now that we know the definition of design, we can understand why it is important. We live surrounded by materials/products created by designers for the people, where a concept has been transformed into a visual and tangible product that satisfies society’s needs. Designers observe society's needs, analyze them, and then they try to find a solution for that problem. For example, we as human beings need food in order to acquire the energy our bodies needs, then designers created utensils so we could use while eating. Then, this is the reason spoons are like spoons and forks like forks.

The way we eat, dress, and behave are all being defined by different fields of design. What we eat or the utensils we use for eating were created by designers, the way we dress is determined by the seasonal clothing manufactured by fashion designers, and the way we behave towards materialism is molded by the democratization of design.

The main goal of design is to create materials and products that will satisfy human needs. Alice Rawsthorn mentions in her article, What defies defining, but exists everywhere?, that design is a “process of conceiving and creating things in the hope of making life easier and more enjoyable” for society. People created design in order to solve problems the society encounters in daily life.

References:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/18/arts/18iht-DESIGN18.1.15327742.html

Photo:

http://forkometry.wordpress.com/silver-fork-pendants/

Simplicity + Functionalism = Bauhaus.

Furniture is an importance piece in designing a space. We look for comfort and functionality. We, as a society, don’t like complexity. That is where the Bauhaus Institution comes into play.

To give you a bit of history about this institution, it was created by Weimar in Germany, in 1919. The main goal was to make student designers “recognize social responsibility to the community.” Thus, designers had to realize how the society was living and acting, what the problems were.

One member of this institution was Ludwig van der Rohe. He was a well-known architect in Germany, but after WWI he wanted to create a universal icon that revolutionized the way we see chairs.

He used this ideology of satisfying people’s needs and took it to the next level. He designed a modernized version of the chair in the 1920’s, called the Brno chair. This chair was specially invented for the owner of the Tugendhat House, in Brno. You can see more information in the Daily Icon web page.

The 1920’s chair evolved from being big, heavy, and spacious furniture that apparently was meant to be in the living room to a more simple, versatile, multifunctional chair. Van der Rohe invention has influenced the way we design furniture today, because he opened his concept of society and created a more universal item that could be used almost in every space of one's house. The Brno chair can be used in the dining room, living room, workspace, and so on. Its simple tubular form gives it a more classical and elegant look, while providing the functionality of a chair, a place to sit comfortably.

Additionally, if the Brno chair is considered to be an art piece, then it is successful art, because it not only serves functionality, but it is also aesthetically pleasing. Also, since “the artist [has] the potential to lead a viewer’s eye movement,” van der Rohe managed to guide our eyes through his piece of art through the smooth tubular frame, meaning that the object has a visual connection (Lauer, 132).

The Bauhaus institution influences today’s way of design because it emphasized the need to understand that “form is determined by content and function is priority” (Lauer, 12). It is important that the designed product executes its function, otherwise it does not matter how well the product is packaged; it would not succeed.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Mies_van_der_Rohe

Photo:

http://www.chairmaker.co.uk/stock/easy%20chairs/1920's.htm

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWdTQn8xfz8ZRoQ39LgutL0f-Vc7q9-Ra3W-6s7tLeJXvWaxfGZZeCFXSLTbJjQ6Xm-vHmFGPb7hTakIcyr0X0uKg14kRmMOWSMzU-axXK0mnI4UCzGrTGupNzNxugikSKNhzUEqvgvos/s320/brno-chair.jpg

Circles and sewing

What things are considered to be a design and what not? EVERYTHING and does not have to be create by a person with a paper saying they are Designers, why? Because design is an action and a procedure where a final product can be successfully achieved by almost everyone. The procedure is called design thinking, where the designer will notice that there is a problem (field research), then it will analyze it (understand the problem), will start to think solutions to the problem (ideas), will create a 3-D version of the solution (prototype) and will test the product. Thus, that is what the African Americans with these quilts.

It also creates a unity object by using repetition colors and patterns. Each little circle has its own form and the pattern is repeated throughout the quilt. Then, the colors also follow a pattern, where every two purple circles a series of 4 different colors of circles will follow and so on. The rhythm on this quilt is a legato rhythm because it does not cut our visual experience, our experience flows along the quilt.They identified the problem, which was that their families were suffering from cold. They thought of different ideas and create quilts from reusable materials. This is another quilt exhibited in the Richard L. Nelson Gallery & Fine Art Collection at University of California, Davis, and is called Slave’s Popcorn Quilt by the great-grandmother of

Avis Collins. You can appreciate this quilt differently from the mentioned before, in this case each unique circle was hand made, piece by piece was sewn and then put together. In this case the design offers to perceptions to the viewer: haptic and optic. It is a haptic design because, we can feel different textures, so we can apply the use of tactical sensory that helps us to get involved with the design. Also, is an optic design because we can appreciate the beauty of the design by observing the detail sewing of the material.

Therefore, is that considered to be a design? You bet! It is unique. And each person might be creating something new out of necessity, like these women, and are not even thinking of it as a piece of art. But it is, so don’t unappreciated every new thing your hands, mind, and soul create. You do not need to have a degree, or a paper, stating that the person is a Design major; every person in the society can be creative enough with restrictive materials and build designs.

References:

Richard L. Nelson Gallery & Fine Art Collection

Photos taken by Weijing