Implementing Advanced Knowledge
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7 .4.1 Interview
Ronen Kadushin
Interview: Ronen Kadushin
(The text that here follows is an extract from an interview prepared by Jordi Vivaldi and executed by Aldo Solazzo.)
In this interview Ronen Kadushin is mainly talking about the relevance of open source resources in the field of design, specially on those aspects that have been crucial for the competition RESHAPE. Along the text, Ronen will use many references related to other topics and will focus on how can we import the research done in those fields to the notion of design. One of the key ideas of the emerging technologies is the capacity to offer open source methodologies. In this regard, which are the benefits that open design protocols can provide to innovation processes? That’s a good question, I though a lot about it and I would argue that yes, open design protocols can offer many advantages to innovation processes. In this sense, one of the main points is that open design is capable to produce an inclusive and transparent design. If you can apply it to other methodologies, it makes it much easier to have a lot of people sharing their ideas and therefore innovation can take place in many locations. Is not very different than open source software, actually it is just an adaptation or a modification of that.
In the traditional productive paradigm, the correlation Designer - Product - Producer - Market is a dogma in which the designer is at the bottom of the hierarchy. However, in the open design network things seem to be different. Where industrial design it’s gonna fit inside this new paradigm? We are quickly becoming a global network. After 100 years of mass production, things are turning into a situation where designer can straightly produce for the market. But in cultural terms it means that the designer can quickly and freely react to anything he wants, and therefore there is much less control and censorship, leaving more space to creativity. It means that if you have a network which is used in a clever way, you will see how many ideas are quickly becoming products in any node of the network, which is really important to integrate your work in the cultural debate of nowadays. Cover - Chair prototype, IaaC Archive Figure 1 - Chair prototype, IaaC Archive 2
In the Open Design scenario, designers, consumers, producers and retailers are communicating in an equal environment. It seems that the only thing that connects them is the product. But what do we exactly understand by an Open Design product? My definition of an Open Design product is very simple. It mainly refers to two points: The first one consists in that the product itself becomes a digital object that is uploaded, and the second one consists in the fact that production is made with digital fabrication and therefore the product is not connected anymore to any specific producer: it is open to modifications in scale and proportion, so at the end is a very flexible set of rules. As you know, there are many different open design interpretations, and sometimes people tell me that open design consists in developing collaborations or sharing certain platforms. My point of view is that it is not that important to enter in specific detail to define what Open Design means: if it is online and if you can download it and modify it is enough for me. I don’t want to be a fundamentalist of definitions, and in this sense I would prefer to wider the definition rather than closing it. We are in a networked culture, and meanings, processes and techniques are quickly going forward and therefore the best is to keep it open and see what happens.
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One of the biggest challenges of RESHAPE is the relation between the restricted rules of the “Market” and the freedom that every researcher needs to succeed in his task. Is it possible to merge and balance these two realities, converting those differences in an added value? I would say that if you want to focus on the market, focus on the market: you can have the expertise of other people and you can make the market more friendly to your product. But it is very important to keep in mind that Market doesn’t need to be a “must”, Open Design does not need to be necessarily seen as a “market product”. I don’t like to understand every kind of design as a money driven design, because the situation forces you to basically understand the market in the same way as a traditional industrial designer, and you will have to play in the market with its players: distributors, sellers and so on. Once an open design product is on the market, it is in the same position than anyone else. However, if you make an open design with the thought that this is the way for you to be more expressive and creative while keeping the ability to produce objects at any scale, and on the top of that, your design is friendly with the market, perfect. Because it’s all about opening options. Nevertheless, there is not yet a specific market for open design, it is not really happening. Design is
Figure 3 - Fabrication, IaaC Archive 6
understanding that the world is changing, and of course it can change in many directions, and when you choose to do something in an open manner, it means that you are politically designing which shape the world will have. It has a long term vision, a political statement embedded in it. It is a choice that you take and that is going beyond the mere though of making money in the market.
According to this answer, and specially taking in account how creativity is being developed in our digital era, how can innovation reach the market? Innovation is innovation, it does not need to reach the market or to be tested by the market to be validated as innovation. The market will take the open design or open source of that innovation if it see its advantages. The fact that it is open means the development is ongoing in terms of hardware and software, and the market will look at open design in a positive way if it offers certain advantages over other options in terms of price, quality, accessibility, distribution, manufacturing… Big part of this innovation should repose in understanding how is the market and which are its directions. Arduino its a great example of that: open hardware that turned into standard industry. This is the success history of a product that was initially made to avoid buying more expensive products that were already on the market. Actually, If you look at my work in the website, you can see that a lot of my products are not for the market. It is the first time that in my professional career I’m doing products that I don’t feel that the market is its destination. Most of the opportunities that my work gave me where not focusing on the objects that I produced, but on other activities like consultancy or teaching. The object itself was just a place to put effort, but the money was coming from other sources, not the one of the objects. Market is a very multifaceted space, it is not as linear as the traditional mechanism of designing a product and selling it to the market. It’s also important to notice that the market can appear in very different forms, and it does not need to focus on the product in all of them. Basically you could say that open design is a process that generates a market of knowledge and that it can go in all kind of directions because it is open. And open means, overall, that sometimes there are certain things that happen which were not expected. Designing a chair can give you money in two ways, in the first one you can sell the chair, and in the second one, which is the most usual, you take money by teaching how to do the chair, so consequences are open as well. So you end up selling your skills more than your products.
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ADVISORY BOARD: Areti Markopoulou, IaaC Academic Director Tomas Diez, Fab Lab Bcn Director Mathilde Marengo, Academic Coordinator Ricardo Devesa, Advanced Theory Concepts Maite Bravo, Advanced Theory Concepts
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IAAC BIT FIELDS: 1. Theory for Advanced Knowledge 2. Advanced Cities and Territories 3. Advanced Architecture 4. Digital Design and Fabrication 5. Interactive Societies and Technologies 6. Self-Sufficient Lands
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