Simpletribes

Archive for June, 2009

To Be Or Not To Be……..That Is The Question!

I Would Like To Hear Your Comments On This Antimatter.

We Cannot NOT Change The World!

Everything we do we constantly shapes the world we live in.

Within the design world social design is sometimes defined as a design process that contributes to improving human well-being and livelihood. The agenda of social design is inspired by the idea that designers and creative professionals have a responsibility and are able to cause real change in the world through good design. Designers can contribute to designing more ecological products by carefully selecting the materials they use and designing for people’s needs rather than their wants. Responsible design includes many directions and one of these is design for the Third World. Designers have responsibility over the choices they make in design processes.

Social design thinking within the design world joins developing human and social capital with new products and processes that are profitable. Profitability and ownership of the processes are the cornerstones of sustainability that underpins human well-being. The designer’s ability to envision and give form to material and immaterial products can address human problems on a broad scale and contribute to social well-being. In this view social design is an activity that should not be framed with connotations of charity, aid donations, help etc. It is not voluntary work but it should be seen as professional contribution that plays a part in local economic development or livelihood.

Another dimension of social design focuses on designing systems that join the elements of communication, new product development and the environment. No single area of design is sufficient to drive sustainable social development. A system of design that covers all areas of design, with multiple and complementary factors, aims for a vision of a common goal.

Outside the design world social design appears in a number of professional environments. There are a growing number of artists, especially in Scandinavia, that use the term social design to describe their work, though the work is exhibited within the art world. These are artist like FOS and Superflex. They come out of a tradition of social art that can be led back to the Futurists and the Dadaists.

Together We Change!

A clever new polemic submitted to the Congress for the New Urbanism has earned first place in that organization’s 2009 video contest.  Written and produced by the team of First + Main Media and Paget Films, Built to Last posits that the world’s greatest threat is not war, global pestilence, or even the swine flu. No, it is the cul-de-sac.

Okay, so it may not be the cul-de-sac per se, but the filmakers rightfully make use of the ubiquitous 20th century artifact as a primary symbol for what could indeed be the world’s greatest threat: the organization of America’s middle class lifestyle.  And while many Americans may continue to have difficulty even with that idea (isn’t America’s lifestyle non-negotiable?), I hope that more of our country’s citizens are tiring of the ongoing media blitz surrounding the seemingly trivial issues of how one can shop ‘green’ to save the planet.

Fortunately, as the above video displays, hundreds of built projects exist and the know-how is fully in place. Thanks to the new urbanists and smart growth advocates, we can now fight global climate change intelligently. However, just like it’s the singular cul-de-sacs in aggregate that create the problem, it will be the singlular policy changes in aggregrate that will provide the solution.

Thus, whether you live on a cul-de-sac or not, please take that message with you. The more educated we become, the more likely we are to participate in the debates that will slowly shift our culture to a more sustainable lifestyle. And as the videographers suggest, we can start by building things that last.

Thanks for the insight Mike!