Design is Empowerment

Design is Empowerment planting flowers in the night Taylor Blair

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Design is Empowerment planting flowers in the night Taylor Blair

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Collection curated for Iowa State University IDSA Merit Awards 2020 Printed March 2020

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Contents

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My Search for Meaning

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Flower Chord

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Public Space / Public Scars

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Community Vines

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Design is Empowerment

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Over the last four years, I have spent a lot of my time in the political world. Whether as a volunteer, campaign organizer, campaign manager, president of the ISU College Democrats, or with the county and state Democratic parties, what kept me rooted there was not party or policy, but empowerment.

I learned that I, with others, could make change in important and tangible ways. The more I experienced this, the more I felt lost within industrial design.

I was lost because I knew that design is powerful, but it seemed that too often it is not used to incite positive change, but simply to generate profit at the expense of our planet and people. I struggled to see myself in the field.

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Will I simply be a tool used by others to make more things for people to buy? Do I truly have agency if I must use what I learned in university to support systems I do not believe in?

The projects in this collection are outbursts of creative energy in response to this internal conflict. All were done outside of class, on my own, and before now they were anonymous interventions in public space.

This collection is my search for meaning.

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Flower Chord

November 2016

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This is the sunken garden that sits below the entrance to the College of Design building, unnoticed and neglected. I immediately fell in love. It deserved attention, so I decided to act.

That fall I would plant my favorite flower, daffodils.

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After daydreams and sketches I decided on a simple, straight line through the circle. In geometry a line that connects two ends of an arc is called a chord. In music, a chord is a combination of notes that is more than the sum of its parts. This dual meaning is embodied in the project An unnatural form intentionally placed, constructed out of delicate, ephemeral living plants.

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I waited until Fall Break, and decided to plant at night to reduce the chance of being seen. Planting in the darkness was going to be a challenge. That afternoon I found twigs and set them up as stakes to guide me across the circle. Come darkness I wore black and brought a small shovel. The soil was moist and cold. I was not seen.

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The subtle evidence of my noctural activities.

I told no one. Not even my good friends.

Then I waited.

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Spring 2017, new life entered the space.

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Each morning as I walked into the College of Design I would peek over the railing to check on the flowers. One day I was shocked to find that someone had put wood shavings down. I was initially upset because this altered my intended aesthetics, and in a way institutionalized what was meant to be spontaneous. But then I realized that this was exactly what this project was about: I had chosen to make a change, to love this neglected space, and that had spurred someone to take their own initiative to nurture fledgling plants they had no connection to.

Action inspires action.

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The Flower Chord at its peak in the Spring of 2017. The chord draws your eye into the space and towards the soft pink blossoms of the cherry tree. Perhaps you will choose to follow your eyes with your body, moving into a space you usually pass by unnoticed.

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A photo from early Spring 2020. For the third time, Daffodil sprouts reach upwards from the brown grass. Perhaps without the strong start provided by the anonymously-placed wood shavings, the daffodils would not have gotten as strong a start, and woult not have made it to their third season.

Together, even anonymously, we can shape our world into a more beautiful place.

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Public Space Public Scars

June 2019

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Ames, Iowa, United States.

Images from Google Earth.

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Campustown, Ames’ majority student neighborhood. Lincoln Way runs east-west and divides Iowa State University’s campus from Campustown.

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1950s / 2019 Corner of Lincoln Way and Welch Avenue, looking southeast. Camplin Building, built 1908, and the new Kingland Building, built 2015. Images from Ames Historical Society and Google Streetview.

2007 / 2019 Welch Avenue, mid-100 block, looking southeast.

Commercial building replaced by a parking lot and an easement serving the new Kingland Building.

Multiple businesses displaced. Trees on the east side of Welch Avenue that were removed for construction and never returned.

Images from Google Streetview.

2007 / 2019 Welch Avenue, mid-100 block, looking east.

Commercial building replaced by a parking lot and an easement serving the new Kingland Building.

Images from Google Streetview.

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We live surrounded by scars on our built environment.

This project is about seeing.

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Within this parking lot what really caught my attention, and my imagination, was this door - or what used to be a door.

A scar.

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I wanted more people to see this scar for what it truly is. So I searched architectural salvages around the area until I found the perfect style and color doorknob... and glued it on.

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This and following photos by Ebere Agwuncha

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This simple object interrupts the pattern of everyday existence and forces people to actually see details that normally would go unnoticed. It asks people to turn around and notice the parking lot they are standing in and ask whether it is better than what used to be there. Just because you can see something doesn’t mean you perceive it.

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This doorknob, a simple object, intervenes to force a new context onto an otherwise unremarkable rectangle of brick. It elegantly layers time into our everyday lives, forcing us to consider where that door used to go, why it’s now six feet in the air.

It asks us to turn around and examine our place and consider what used to be. Is it better now?

Objects have power beyond their intended function.

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Snapchat story, October 2019

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It is interesting how designs return to you once they have left your control. A few months after I had put up the knob, a friend sent me this video of her friend’s Snapchat story. The video zooms in and out on the door and knob, ending with a selfie.

She said:

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Okay, this obviously looks like a door and it’s not a door but then why is there still a door handle on it?

Like, I’m so confused!

Why would they not take that off!?

‘Cause it’s obviously sealed up... maybe it’s like National Treasure and there’s a secret treasure.

“ I was thrilled. This the exact type of conversation I was hoping to provoke. I wonder how many other people saw the doorknob and in so doing thought about their built environment in a new way.

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Objects are more than things to be used. They are capable of asking questions, reframing conversations, instigating change, and forging stronger communities.

Industrial design, then, must be about more than just creating pretty, inanimate objects. We should design this social life into our product.

Then we should learn from and embrace their lives evolve once they leave our hands.

Objects speak. Are we listening?

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The doorknob dissappeared during the 2019-2020 winter, leaving only yellow glue as a clue to its prior existence. Whether dislodged by the freeze-thaw cycle, pulled off by drunken picture-taker, or removed by the buillding owner, it is a reminder that we don’t own our ideas once they enter the world.

I hope the knob is asking new questions, wherever it is now.

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Community Vines

February 2020

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Photo of Design Atrium in the summer of 2010, Guillermo Thompson

At its most basic level, the goal of this project was to restore the hanging plants that used to live in the College of Design atrium. In the past, there was a single caretaker of the vines. When she left her vines left with her. This project also seeks to purposefully build community, and to explicitly tell others that they can and should take action too.

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Photo by Claire Kilfoyl

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I designed the planter to reflect and respect the architecture of the atrium. The vertical supports for the railing inspired the keystone brace that is essential to the cantilever. The planter does not damage the building, and while it could be easily removed, it is held safely in place.

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1 - planter 2 - cantelivered loop 3 - keystone brace 4 - aluminum support

The cantilevered loop was painted white and the keystone black so the planter will recede into the architecture and allow the foliage to become the focus. As it grows, the vines will hang free from the planter and away from the wall.

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Photo by Kasturi Khanke

The planter was installed over a weekend, around midday.

1 - Using the curve of the railing, swing keystone into place. It should be a tight fit.

2 - Slide the cantilever ring into its place beneath the keystone.

3 - Insert the aluminum support into the rear and screw securely together.

4 - Place planter into the ring, careful to avoid pinching the leaves.

The entire process took about five minutes.

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Photo by Claire Kilfoyl

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Photo by Claire Kilfoyl

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These vines are cuttings from the plant that grows on my grandmother’s kitchen table. She consulted her Farmers Almanac before we made the cuts to ensure it was a good time to do so. This is not the only plant I have inherited from my grandmother. I am the current caretaker of her mother’s Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera x buckleyi), and her grandmother’s asparagus fern (Asparagus aethiopicus).

This lineage imparts a deeper meaning to these plants and inspires the community-building aspect of this project.

What will happen after I leave?

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I am just the first caretaker. Each caretaker is responsible for finding the next, intentionally creating a community of caretakers. We are reminded that the College of Design does not disappear once we leave it.

Like the vines, we are all merely caretakers of this world. When we put this mentality into action we will not only safeguard the future but build intergenerational community.

What are you doing now to ensure there is something left for future caretakers to nurture?

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While the other projects left their origin up to interpretation, with Community Vines I wanted to explicity state its anonymous origins and philosophical intention. To do this I included an “artists statement� that communicated to passersby three important pieces of information: 1 - How to care for the vines 2 - That vines cuttings root easily in soil 3 - That they should take a cutting and build their own planter.

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This guerilla action brings life and beauty shared equally by all to our public space. Taking direct action, and encouraging others to do the same, forges community through the creation and caretaking of our collective, intergenerational agency.

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Our collective agency, like living plants, will die if not intentionally sustained.

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These projects all ask the same questions: who owns public space, who is empowered to act on it, how do we build community, and most of all, what is the designer’s role in this conversation?

Are designers interpreters or actors?

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To be human is to design.

Yet so much of our world has been institutionalized, depriving us of our innate human impulse to shape the world around us. Change does not need to be meticulously planned. Permission doesn’t always needed to be asked.

Ad hoc reclamation of our physical, cultural, political, and educational space should be encouraged. These projects are not born from rebellion, but from a deep belief that all of us should feel empowered to act upon our world to improve it. I hope these three projects are the beginning of a change in our culture.Â

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Through these projects, I reaffirmed my passion for design. I proved to myself that design can not only make the world more beautiful, but a tool to ask questions, to spark change, to bring people together, and to empower ourselves and others.

Empowerment can be running for office, changing the culture of your workplace, advocating for an issue you are pasionate about, or even planting flowers in the night.

When we empower ourselves we combat the isolation and disenfranchisement of our modern world and forge new purpose and power.

A future built by an empowered people is optimistic, beautiful, equitable, and just.

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Design is empowerment.

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Take action.

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Special thank you to Ebere Agwuncha for her empathetic, critical eye.

But most of all for her friendship.

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