WDCD 2013 – The Era of the Designer by What Design Can Do

INTERNATIONAL EVENT ABOUT THE IMPACT OF DESIGN

THE ERA OF THE DESIGNER 2013

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SPONSORS

THANK YOU

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SPONSORS

THANK YOU

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR PEOPLE

CREDITS INITIATORS Richard van der Laken Graphic designer Co-founder of De Designpolitie Pepijn Zurburg Graphic designer Co-founder of De Designpolitie Femke van Gemert Textile designer and trend forecaster Tirso Francés Graphic designer Co-founder of Dietwee Ontwerpers

Ole Bouwman Creative Director at Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture

PHOTOGRA PHOTOGRAPHY RAP RA APHY Leo Veger

David Snellenberg Founder of Dawn

BOOK & WEBSITE IT DESIGN ITE De Designpolitie

Rob Huisman Former director of BNO EDITORIA EDITORIAL ORIAL ORIA IAL BOARD BOAR ARD AR RD Richard van der Laken Pepijn Zurburg

Laurens van Wieringen W Product and furniture designer Founder of Studio L Laurens van Wieringen

Femke van Gemert

GENERA GENERAL ENERAL ENERA AL DIRECTOR DIRECTOR OR / CREATIVE CREATIV RE REATIV E DIRECTOR Richard van der Laken

Bas van Lier

BUSINESS LEAD LE LEADER ER Lisette Schmetz SCHMETZ E Projectmanagement ETZ & Consultancy in Design FOUNDATION BOARD BOAR ARD AR RD Job van der Pijl chairman Liesbeth in ’t Hout secretary A Arnoud van Dommelen treasurer WDCD AMBA AMBASADORS AMBAS SADORS SAD Melle Daamen director of Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam Mark de Kruijk K director of Westergasfabriek Renny Ramakers co-founder and director of Droog S Sjarel E Ex Director Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Timo de Rijk Professor of Design Cultures T Reuver Tet Owner/initiator Labminds L Els van der Plas Director of The Amsterdam Music Theatre, De Nederlandse Opera and Dutch National Ballet

Laurens van Wieringen W Lisette Schmetz

Tirso Frances Jeroen van Erp Founder of Fabrique van der Sluis W Willem Founder of Customr Tim Vermeulen The New Institute Marten Kuijpers K The New Institute Robert-Jan Marringa Former director of Capital D PRODUCTION Chris van Bokhorst CVB Productions & Projectmanagement for Creative Industries Remco Wagemakers W Sonora productions Krista te Brake K STAGIAIRES S STAGIAI RES Jolien Grent Rob de Vormer Lotte de Jong Bo Lantinga BOOK & WEBSITE IT EDITORS ITE Bas van Lier Billy Nolan REPORTERS/EDITORS REPOR REPORT TERS/EDITORS TERS Brendan Cormier Pao Lien Djie Cassandra Pizzey Rosa te Velde

COMMUNICATION AND A D PUBLICITY AN L LICITY De Designpolitie PR RPPR R Rhiannon Pickels Come Office for strategic & creative presence Bob Witman WEBSITE IT FRONT-END ITE FRON END FRONTDEVELOPMENT DEV E ELOPMENT EV ENT & CMS EN CMS PMS72 PRINTER PR PRI NTER NT TER LenoirSchuring REX R RE EX International EX Part of this book was printed and bound during the event PAPER P PA APER APER A Antalis Coloraction WHAT HAT DESIGN DESIGN CAN AN DO FRIENDS A FRI R ENDS RI Dawn T Thonik A Arco Ontwerpwerk W What Design Can Do! is made possible by the cooperation of our partners and sponsors mentioned on the previous pages. © 2013 What W Design Can Do! Amsterdam. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Although every effort was made to find the copyright holders for the illustrations used, it has not been possible to trace them all. Interested parties are requested to contact W What Design Can Do! Graaf Florisstraat F 1a, 1091 TD Amsterdam, The Netherlands, info@whatdesigncando.nl www.whatdesigncando.nl

CONTENTS 6 2011 / 2012

Reactions to earlier events

16 WHAT DESIGN CAN DO! 2013 18 THE ERA OF THE DESIGNER Introduction by Richard van der Laken

20 DISSECTING THE EVENT WDCD in numbers

22 2013 TOPICS What is it all about

24 MINE KAFON, YOUR KAFON By Timo T de Rijk

30 FUNCTIONALITY ISN’T ALL

By Louise Schouwenberg

34 IN PRAISE OF EXPLORATION By David Kester K

38 DESIGNERS ARE MISSING A BIG OPPORTUNITY

Interview with Kees K Dorst

44 IN THE MEANTIME A look at some side events

52 SPEAKERS 2013 Who they are

64 WDCD REPORT What they had to say

INSPIRING REFRESHING EEXCITING EXC ITING Since the WDCD launch in 2011, many people have expressed their enthusiasm and encouragement for this initiative, as the following pages demonstrate.

‘What Design Can Do should definitely pour themselves a good Dutch beer and cheers to a job well done! They’ve taken a simple and straightforward concept and crafted something that will hopefully grow over time into Holland’s nucleus of inspiration for designers around the world.’ Design Indaba blog (South Africa), A reporting on WDCD11

THE AUDIENCE IN 2011 AT WDCD / PHOTO: LEO VEGER

‘What Design Can Do was a great success – informal enough to be accessible and extensive enough to answer and raise plenty of questions about what design can do.’ Grafik magazine (UK), reporting on WDCD11

FASHION F FA SHION DESIGNER NER BAS BA S KOSTERS PERFORMING AT WDCD11 / PHOTO: LEO VEGER

‘When you bring a lot of people together and they talk about what they believe in, and what they have done and that with great humility, that is wonderful. It makes you think. In the end, life is about how we confront the kind of situations we are put in. So if you see how people come up with their solutions, that is very inspiring. That is what matters.’ Dinesh K Korjan ((India), India), designer, on WDCD11

OLIVIERO TOSCANI SPOKE AT WDCD11 / PHOTO: LEO VEGER

‘WDCD12 was very inspiring, even for me as a non-designer. The overall message of “do it yourself and do it together” appealed to me very much. I attend many gatherings that are largely limited to one-way communication and where there is a lot of complaining about the changing world and everything is doom and gloom. At WDCD it was so refreshing to hear that all these changes offer new chances, and that by acting together we can actually do something about it.’ Bjorn Schipper (Netherlands), lawyer

‘WDCD is not one of those sit-backand-let-others-do-the-thinking events’ Eye ((UK), E UK), reporting on WDCD12

BREAKOUT SESSION AT WDCD12 / PHOTO: LEO VEGER

‘Designers have an important role. They create new things. Sometimes I think about designers as Gods. They create from scratch, as God is said to have done. They have the power to change mindsets, change lives, change faith. Designers answer needs, the needs of people, groups, society, planet. They can change the course of things if they observe and study closely what is going on.’ Andreia Rocha (Portugal), SecondSight, on WDCD12

ARCHITECTS AND FOOD DESIGNERS DUO HONEY & BUNNY AT WDCD12 / PHOTO: LEO VEGER

‘It was interesting to see that most of the projects and ideas presented were actually realized and tested, most of them the result of years of work and research. The event proved an exciting and critical moment that showcased new ideas, realized thanks to the multitude of opportunities design can offer.’ Domus (Italy), reporting on WDCD12

CAMERON SINCLAIR, FOUNDER OF A ARCHITECTURE RCHITECTURE FOR HUMANITY, HUMA NITY, AT WDCD12 / PHOTO: LEO VEGER

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO 2011 / 2012

UPDATE

INA JURGA: JURGA: ‘THE TOILET REVOLUTION GOES ON!’ B LOTTE BY L VAN GELDER WASH United initiates projects worldwide to raise awareness about the importance of sanitation and hygiene. At WDCD12 Ina Jurga presented The Great Wash Yatra, a colourful travelling caravan programmed to roam around India during the autumn of 2012. We caught up with Ina to ask how the project had unfolded. So Ina, what was this Yatra Y all about? ‘Did you know that in India more people have a mobile phone than a toilet? That is 626 million people who have to defecate by railroads, in fields or behind bushes. As a result, 1000 children die from preventable diarrhoea every day, making the country the undisputed world leader in child mortality from diarrhoea. To tackle this crisis, WASH United – together with its Indian partner Quicksand – developed The Great WASH Yatra. In fifty days the Yatra (festival) travelled over 2000 km through the country and pitched tents in six cities for two days each time. We had thematic games, dance performances, artists and a school education programme. The success was beyond our expectations: more than 160,000 visitors, and 230 million people reached through national and international media. We trained 8400 students and 200 teachers.’ In what way was design involved in the project? In other words, what did design do for this project? ‘Besides creating a unique visual identity consisting of logo, icons, typology and colours, we included design in two areas. We developed almost twenty educational games that transmitted

the core messages of washing hands with soap and “putting the poo in the loo”. We also promoted hand-washing station designs in the Soap Lab and in the school programme. The ultimate winner was the TippyTap: a simple station that can be built with a few sticks, some string and an empty container – even by school children themselves – and that is really fun to use.’ What was the most memorable or rewarding experience of the project? ‘A particularly memorable moment was on Global Hand-Washing Day, when we had an elephant distributing soap. It was a crazy idea from the beginning that everyone smiled about, but then there was this really big elephant with red soap in its trunk. At that moment I thought: ‘We did it! The craziest ideas can come true!’ What are you working on now? Any exciting updates you would like to share? ‘Oh, we always have lots of crazy ideas. WASH United set up its own office with a young talented team in India. We are currently planning so-called ‘pop-up’ Yatras – smaller versions that draw on the experience of the big event and that are more flexible and able to travel more flexibly to more places.’ Lastly, were there any connections made during WDCD that were of use for the Yatra? Y ‘WASH United had a breakout session about the design of a hand-washing station, and the best submissions for our later SOAP IT UP! design challenge linked to the participants at the session. What’s more, one of the participants became our social media intern, so it was really worth coming!’ www.wash-united.org

SONG DANCE AT GREAT WASH YATR A / PHOTO: SONJA OCH

CAN WE REDESIGN OURSELVES?

CAN INTERACTIVE DESIGN HEAL AUTISM?

DO FASHION MAGAZINES ALWAYS REQUIRE GLAMOUR?

CAN FOOD DESIGN OUR CITIES?

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR THE DESIGN PROFESSION

THE ERA OF THE DESIGNER BY RICHARD VAN DER LAKEN It is time designers regained control of their own profession. Their profession isn’t just about beauty and aesthetics. It’s also about proposing alternatives, charting new avenues, coming up with solutions for pressing social issues both large and small, breaking taboos. It is about deeds, not words. That’s why designers should take over from the administrators and start shaping their own sector themselves.

Especially since I started What Design Can Do, I often find myself talking to people about what exactly design is. Since when has design included ‘food’? And what is ‘social’ design? Isn’t all design social? So is architecture design too? Well, everything is design. Except nature of course, although creationists might challenge me on that. Everything that man has touched is, in essence, designed. Step out of bed in the morning, check the time on the clock, sit down at a wooden table to eat your breakfast cereal out of a blue or white bowl, then bike to work and send messages via WhatsApp. Exactly: every single item was designed. On that basis, we can establish that the society in which we live is design, and that we cannot overestimate the importance of designers. That’s why the increasing emphasis placed on the creative sector in Europe is enormously welcome. In the Netherlands, the creative sector has even been identified as a spearhead of economic policy. The more the creative sector is stimulated, the better I think it is. Creative thinking has so much to offer the world. Designers can contribute to many more fields than those with which they are traditionally associated. And demonstrating that

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR THE DESIGN PROFESSION

RICHARD VAN DER LAKEN / PHOTO: LEO VEGER

was one of the reasons for initiating the What Design Can Do conference. What strikes me in this context is that in the many advisory and implementation bodies set up to carry out this incentives policy, professional administrators take decisions on behalf of the creative sector. The same is true when it comes to design education. In many cases, designers are simply passive onlook onlookers. This is astonishing, because space for personal development and unbridled creation is precisely what should set the tone in the creative sector. Maybe it is going too far to demand that designers rule the world, although I would like to witness that happening. But at least allow designers to shape their own sector themselves. If the government really wants to take the creative sector seriously, then designers should be in control. There is every reason for a reappraisal. The crisis that has reigned for five years has also shaken designers into life. Things will never be as they were. And that irrevocably raises a couple of existential questions. Why do I do the things I do? What have I to offer? How can I change things for the better? Designers are posing those questions more and

more often. Their profession isn’t just about beauty and aesthetics. It’s also about proposing alternatives, charting new avenues, coming up with solutions for pressing social issues both large and small, breaking mem-taboos. It is about deeds, not words. Former F mem ber of the municipal executive board of the City of Amsterdam Jan Schaeffer summed it up when he said, ‘you can’t live in bullshit’. He is right. The beauty of it all is that designers are doers. It is in their genes. F For designers, a problem amounts to an invitation, a taboo is a challenge. Designers combine conceptual and abstract thinking with idealistic visions and practical feasibility. Everything is design. So perhaps the era of The Designer, in capitals, is now upon us. The era in which designers themselves gain control of and shape their sector. And, in the process, they can change society in partnership with government, trade and industry, consumers, users and the public. We are ready for the challenge. Richard van der Laken, Director What Design Can Do

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR STATISTICS

15% CREW 11% SPEAKERS

65% VISITORS

9% OTHER

PEOPLE

5% BOOK PRESENTATION 5% PUBLICATIONS

20% C CATALOGUE

25% CONFERENCE

5% MASTERCLASS 5% P PARTY

DELIVERABLES

5% KICK-OFF 5% EXHIBITIONS

25% BREAK OUTS

WHAT IS WHAT DESIGN CAN DO MADE OF?

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR STATISTICS

TWO DAYS IN SPRING

A THOUSAND VISITORS

TWENTY-TWO TWENTY TWENTY-TWO SPEAKERS -TWO

THIRTY BREAKOUT SESSIONS

16 & 17 MAY 2013

NINE NATIONALITIES, EIGHT DISCIPLINES

FORTY-TWO FORTYRTY-TWO RTY-TWO PARTNERS

750 VISITORS PER DAY, DAY 1000 UNIQUE VISITORS IN ALL

HOSTED BY 23 ORGANIZATIONS

FOUR LOCATIONS

31 SPONSORS, 11 MEDIA PARTNERS

STADSSCHOUWBURG AMSTERDAM, DE BALIE, APPLE STORE & MELKWEG

THOUSANDS OF FOLLOWERS

ONE AFTERPARTY

FACEBOOK (7000), LINKEDIN (2000), TWITTER (2000)

WITH 700 GUESTS GUEST HAVING FUN

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR TOPICS

BUBBLE BUILDING BY DUS ARCHITECTS

With our world and society in a transitional phase, What Design Can Do this year focussed on several topics where transitions are taking place. In this context international speakers from different disciplines discussed the designer’s role in the fields of publishing, education, research, food and the digital world. Different breakout sessions elaborated on these subjects in smaller groups.

2013 TOPICS

WDCD FOR PUBLISHING With social media, blogs, online magazines, as well as printing on demand, everybody can become a publisher. Everybody can make their voice heard and connect with likeminded people. Out of that, groups can emerge with the power to change things. As a result, the pinnacle of individualism leads to social cohesion and social change. Designers are part of this development, but from way back they have also played a crucial role in disseminating information. Designers are often the ones who set the wheels of renewal in motion. That’s exactly why it’s opportune to shed light on the role of designers within the wider domain of publishing.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR TOPICS

STUDENTS WHO CONTRIBUTED TO KIR AN SETHI’S DESIGN FOR CHANGE CHA NGE CHALLANGE

EDUCATION

FOOD

If we agree that we are increasingly dependent on innovation and the creative economy for our survival and our welfare, then we will have to do something about our education. Stimulating creativity should play a much more important role in that field than it currently does. Education at present is largely geared to cognitive development, even though mental ability in that area varies greatly. But everybody has creative potential, and stimulating it can unlock so much in us and have a massively liberating effect. Designers and thinkers all over the world are busy finding ways to do so.

What Design Can Do cannot lag behind when it comes to developments in the realm of food. The discussion there focuses on small-scale, local and possibly organic production versus the international food business on an industrial scale. Designers, and food designers in particular, pose questions about the origins, production and appeal of food. In the process, they make statements about future developments in food supply and production in a world that wants to eliminate hunger while the population is growing exponentially. Casting a creative eye on food offers us insight into the meaning and value that food possesses for us.

RESEARCH

THE SCREEN

Our progress, maybe even our survival, depends on innovation, on new ideas and solutions for the major problems of our time. Many of those innovations come from scientists and technical experts. But designers also play a major role here. There’s a good reason why the creative industry has been put forward as a key sector of Dutch economic policy. Designers keep a close track of new developments and are often the ones who find ways to apply technical discoveries in practice.

The social significance of the digital world is undeniable, and designers also play a critical role here. The design and use of information and communication technologies – as well as the information itself – has a huge impact on our lives and the way society and businesses are shaped. Today, for instance, 75 percent of world population possesses at least one mobile phone. Understanding the full potentials of the digital realm and consequently using them in new, smart ways to improve people’s lives or businesses’ performance is a designer’s task.

MINE KAFON, YOUR KAFON Todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s design schools focus too much on the artistic T value of design, Timo T de Rijk, professor of design cultures, recently wrote in the Dutch newspaper NRC R RC Handelsblad (12 February 2013). His provocative remarks raised a fierce debate within the Dutch design world. Since education is one of the topics of WDCD13, we decided to reprint the article here in English and asked Louise Schouwenburg of Design Academy A Eindhoven and WDCD13 speaker David Kester K to respond.

FOR ART

MINE K AFON, DETAIL L / PHOTO: ERWIN ER N VAN DE ZANDE ERWI

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MINE KAFON, YOUR KAFON BY TIMO DE RIJK

‘By nurturing the ambition of designers to exhibit their work preferably in museums and galleries, schools of design have transformed into producers of mediagenic design,’ writes Timo T de Rijk, professor of design cultures. The worldwide admiration for the Mine Kafon, a dysfunctional mine clearing device, makes the point. Design schools should turn to learning again and strive for genuine social significance. In the world of the creative industry and far beyond, the Mine Kafon has been the talk of the town of late, enthusiastically shown and admired everywhere, even on the BBC and CNN. The Mine Kafon is a sphere, the height of a person, that can defuse landmines. Made of easily produced, cheap materials, it has the form of giant dandelion seed head that is set rolling by the wind. For the basic idea, the Afghan-Dutch designer F Massoud Hassani returned to the problems that afflict his fatherland and, at the same time, drew inspiration for his solution from the self-made toys of his youth. The Mine Kafon has both artistic and social meaning, and such is its irresistible feel-good factor that it’s obvious why Hassani has become practically world-famous just months after finishing

his studies at Design Academy in Eindhoven. But let’s get one thing straight: the Mine Kafon aims to save lives, yet the designer promises more than he will ever be able to fulfil. For F the device only works when the wind blows, and despite the integration of a GPS system, there is not even the slightest expectation that it will ever deactivate all the mines left on a battlefield. ‘Every landmine destroyed means a life saved,’ states the designer on his website. That is of course utter rubbish, since up until the moment that all such tools of war have been removed from a site, entering it amounts to playing Russian roulette. The Mine Kafon is like a wonderful car that only brakes at random.

ISN’T ALL DESIGN SOCIAL? My annoyance with the Mine Kafon, and everything surrounding it, stems from the noncommittal nature of the concept and the supposed social relevance of the device. What particularly amazes me is the almost caricatural attention given to the social dimension of the design, in the same way that I find the interest in social design that surfaces everywhere so peculiar. After all, wasn’t design always social design in the first place? Yes, of course it was. Except at schools like Design Academy Eindhoven, which abandoned the social intentions of design some years ago in incomparable fashion.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR ART R RT

‘In many artistic designs the user and the consumer have been taken out of the equation, and function and use are replaced by discussion and raising awareness’

Back in the 1990s, the personal approach of Dutch designers like Jurgen Bey, Hella Jongerius and Richard Hutten propelled them to world fame. Yet although so much Dutch design appeared radical, the work largely confined itself dutifully and obediently to the vase, lamp and armchair, the holy trinity of traditional industrial design. Encouraged by that success, many other design schools followed the Design Academy’s example and nurtured the ambition of designers to exhibit their work preferably in museums and galleries. In the process, schools of design transformed into producers of mediagenic design. That this situation could no longer continue was acknowledged even by the management boards and teaching staff of artistically inclined design schools, the very people who now mollycoddle the Mine Kafon as an example of design that not only is personal and conceptual but also represents an emphatic social ambition. Seen in that light, you could say that the recent establishment of Depart Departments of Social Design within artistic design schools in general, and at at Design Academy Eindhoven in particular, is no more than an exercise in catching up.

BORROWING FROM ART If only it were that simple. In their quest to make design socially relevant again, the management board and teaching staff paradoxically didn’t dis-

tance themselves from design’s safe yet largely uncritical relationship with the artistic world. On the contrary, it still borrows roughly and with full conviction from the methods and codes that apply in the art world to generate ideas, the results of which can be displayed and discussed within the context of gallery presentations. No wonder, therefore, that these feebly communicating vessels fail to generate any interesting discourse and, instead, demonstrate a lack of clarity in thought, inane concepts and vagueness in communication. Take the example of the Mine Kafon again. There is nothing at all odd about basing a design on personal experience. But simply taking the personal as the guiding principle, as often occurs in art, and then aesthetically blowing up the ideas that are strongest in communicative terms, is a technique that may work well when it comes to public presentations, but it is disastrous for a genuinely powerful design. Good designers know very well that a rich concept always relates to the demands that are ultimately placed on the design, so that serious research into the framework conditions can be conducted at every desired level. Even though the user and the consumer have been taken out of the equation in many artistic designs, and function and use are commonly replaced by discussion and raising awareness, that does not necessarily have to mean that relevance or social meaning has disappeared. In cases where the form reinforces

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR ART R RT

the message, such as the beautiful Pig book by Christien Meindertsma, design does indeed contribute to a social debate. It should be pointed out, however, that this example concerns a book, a type of product that by its nature has been generating debate and awareness for some 500 years. It is, however, almost inexplicable that discussion must preferably be provoked within a cultural setting, and preferably with the help of the grammar of art. There exists an historical and dynamic dialectic between ‘useless’ art and ‘real’ society that has proven fertile in many respects, but that dialogue has little or no effect on design. And what is even more problematic is that the significance of the art museum, once a haven and self-evident setting for debate and polemics, has gradually been hollowed out, and the museum has been reduced to a place whose existence is merely tolerated by society.

AWARENESS AND DEBATE A Please don’t get me wrong. I recognise the many ways in which art can inspire. And more than anyone, I understand the cultural role that design can play in society. But I oppose the supposed potency of the romantic notion of a designer’s artistic calling and of the pursuit of the corresponding cultural habitat for his designs. It was therefore with mixed feelings that I regarded the presentation of the Mine Kafon at the

Museum of Modern Art in New York and its definitive instalment on the top of the Olympus of Art. Although some critics are totally uninterested in the faulty functioning of the Mine Kafon, they do counter with the argument that design should largely be about debate and awareness. But the question, then, is what sort of awareness should design contribute to, and whether design and designers are even capable of contributing to awareness. Just like the subjects of many Eindhoven design projects, their intentions are often strictly personal. But in practice they are usually so general and triv trivial that we can scarcely speak of any contribution of substance to a social debate. Some fictional public at large is instilled with awareness of such issues as undesirable mass tourism, water wastage, ignorance of nature, or the poverty of contact among the elderly. To be sure, all of these are worthy causes deserving of attention. But should designers, of all people, take on these subjects in a stylised, metaphorical or other way? It seems to me that journalists, politicians and scientists are much better qualified to tackle these issues, and have proven their ability to accomplish them with outstanding results. Just how powerless, not to say poorly schooled, many designers are in engaging effectively in debate and getting a grip on the social effects of their work is illustrated not just by the Mine Kafon. Last year Studio Job caused the Dutch design community to experience vicarious shame with its

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29 T imo de Rijk is Professor of Design Timo Cultures at VU University Amsterdam and Associate Professor of Design History at Delft University of Technology. He is also chairman of the Association of Dutch Designers (BNO). This article, however, was written in a personal capacity.

television appearance in which these darlings of the Design Academy tried to explain the reference to a concentration camp in their design for a garden fence. Studio Job entered public space with a fence adorned with symbolism that elicited no reaction at all in the museum but had immediate consequences on the side of the road. Job evidently has a biased preference for the empty resonance of the white gallery, where nobody answers back and his ‘objects’ are given no other meaning than those he gives them. That’s up to him of course, but with his recent faux pas with his Holocaust fence he inadvertently proved that the meaning of design in the world outside the culturally conditioned gallery space is so much more complicated, dangerous and interesting. That’s why I find it inexplicable that budding designers allow themselves to become marginalised by opting for an unconditional commitment to high culture. Incidentally, I do have every reason and confidence in thinking that the best designers certainly don’t let that happen to them. They unerringly grasp that neither architecture nor art but products and systems change the world and everyday life, and that they as designers can make a decisive contribution in those areas.

AN HONEST VIEW OF DESIGNING To achieve that, the Design Academy, as well as the many soulmates and imitators it has attracted, must

once again position itself as a fully-fledged institute of learning. The Design Academy can boast of a wonderful history in which it has reinvented itself time and again, and it has proven capable of constantly attracting the best tutors and, thanks to its highly international character today, a steady influx of very talented students. Just like some comparable international artistic design schools, however, it has become ‘misguided’ by its own media success. Owing to the hard fact that the majority of its students will never build up a decent existence as designer, the Design Academy argues that it adopts a critical and independent position. But its dependence on warmhearted public attention is a sign that the school is much more marketoriented than it would care to admit. That said, I would be the last person to argue that the value of design is simply financial. Nor would I claim that all design must be functional. In fact, I don’t think I’m even capable of finding a good definition of that notion. What I’m arguing for instead is an honest and critical view of designing, one in which means and ends are not switched around, and in which methods and knowledge are applied intelligently and self-consciously so that the full force and value of design can be deployed. That integrity is simple and difficult at the same time. It concerns the sincere pursuit of genuine social significance that a design school claims it aspires to, and the clearance of mines that a designer promises.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR MENTALITY CHANGE

THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF FUNCTIONALITY B LOUISE BY L SCHOUWENBERG

Design and the wider world need designers who have the courage to look beyond the limits of the profession and what the market demands from them, writes Louise Schouwenberg, head of a Master programme at Design Academy Eindhoven, in response to Timo de Rijk. Design opens new perspectives on reality, and base functionality is not always the most pressing prerequisite.

Drop a random bombshell on the Dutch design world and success is certain. Timo de Rijk experienced the sweet taste of success after publication of his article in NRC Handelsblad newspaper, in which he wiped the floor with the Mine Kafon, the design with which Massoud Hassani graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven in 2012. The gist of many reactions to his piece was that at last somebody had exposed the empty rhetoric surrounding many design products by simply subjecting them to a much-needed reality check. Hassani graduated with distinction for his minesweeper, and both the national and international media heaped praise on it. Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more, the MoMA in New York purchased the object for its prestigious design collection. How much proof of quality does a design need? Nonsense, argues De Rijk. After all, the minesweeper is no good. Its illusion of safety will only cause many casualties if it is deployed in a war zone. De Rijk ends his crushing verdict with a seemingly logical conclusion, namely that something is fundamentally wrong with Dutch design education if it allows projects of this sort to pass by uncensored. De Rijk is right of course. The sculptural object does not yet satisfy all technical and functional requirements. At present, the Mine Kafon is not

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR MENTALITY CHANGE

‘Design innovators are seldom found among designers who respond directly to market demand, no matter how useful or relevant their products.’

liberating Afghanistan or Iraq from their deadly landmines. But is that necessary? Must a design satisfy all requirements this early in its development? De Rijk’s crusade should not go unchallenged. He passes judgement according to the only criterion he embraces — immediate usefulness — and in the process he dismisses a significant portion of the Dutch design world with unsubstantiat unsubstantiated arguments that border on populism. Coincidence or not, the crusade launched by De Rijk, a professor at Delft University of Technology and VU University Amsterdam, appears aimed largely at designers and design academies that have earned widespread international recognition for the Netherlands. Although he admits he is not blind to other values that design embodies, such as cultural value, in his reasoning there is just one reality in which design much prove itself: the market reality, which demands that designers solve problems (or the illusion of problems) with well-functioning products.

A AVANT-GARDE But what products can survive that examination? Wouldn’t every innovative design end up in the bin if it were assessed too soon according to such a one-dimensional criterion? If that were the case,

the first designs by Jurgen Bey, Hella Jongerius, Piet Hein Eek, Bertjan Pot, Maarten Baas, Christien Meindertsma and many others would never have seen the light of day, and their wider social significance would never have reached us. At the time of their conception, the tree-trunk seat (Bey), the technically flawed service (Jongerius) and the furniture made from discarded materials (Piet Hein Eek) threw up images that touched the imagination and performed excellently in the media and in museums. Years later, we see that these very same designers have become trendsetters in changing our ideas about consumption, globalisation, locality, industrial versus craft production. What was discreetly recognised and acknowledged in the media and museums in the 1990s, has now become generally accepted. Design innovators are seldom found among designers who respond directly to market demand, no matter how useful or relevant their products. The market follows and is by definition conservative. Further, innovators are seldom found among designers for whom instant functionality guides the design process. The Mine Kafon still displays flaws and, in its current form, cannot be deployed in war zones. But because of its potential, it is currently undergoing further development in collaboration with industry

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR MENTALITY CHANGE

‘Design departments within academies of art educate designers who are guided less by constraints and are prepared to push back boundaries, stir the imagination and take a leap into an uncertain future.’

and experts. Was the plan for a low tech, affordable minesweeper presented to the public prematurely? And has it thus gained recognition in the wrong places? I do not think so. Even at this stage it is clear that the design opens new perspectives on possible solutions for problems that plague many current and previous war zones.

REVISING FUNCTIONALITY Design and the wider world need designers who have the courage to look beyond the limits of their profession and what the market demands of them. In so doing, they justify the many existing and new meanings we can attach to the term ‘function’. For that term denotes as many meanings as there F are social urgencies, pragmatic solutions, technical innovations and cultural developments. Practical use is just one of the many guises that design can assume. Design solves fundamental problems. Design represents how people want to live. Design possesses the power to facilitate and discipline our behaviour. Design reflects our age and the social and cultural context in which it is born and functions. Design opens new perspectives on reality that often involve other fields of study. Accordingly, there no longer exists just one

‘natural’ habitat for design products, and certainly no natural habitat for experimental prototypes that possess an independent value. It is therefore only right that design today is presented in arenas that until recently were the preserve of the visual arts. The diversity of the profession is also reflected in design education. Courses in industrial design, offered by universities and institutes of technology, educate designers to develop anonymous products demanded by the market on the basis of precisely defined requirements. Design departments within academies of art educate designers who are guided less by constraints and are prepared to push back boundaries, stir the imagination and take a leap into an uncertain future. Here we celebrate the idea of Homo Ludens. Students learn to let their work express their intuition, experience, artistic talent, confronted by the hard facts of reality made up of so many layers.

DESIGN CRITICISM Isn’t it the task of design critics to uncover and analyse the layers of meaning contained explicitly or implicitly in designs and to anticipate possible future social and cultural spin-off from experimental, narrative and visionary projects? To judge according

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR MENTALITY CHANGE

33 Louise Schouwenberg chouwenberg is head of the Contextual Design master programme at Design Academy Eindhoven and head of the Material Utopias master programme at the Sandberg Institute Amsterdam. She studied psychology, sculpture and philosophy. After establishing a career as visual artist, she has focused since 2000 on theory and, on occasion, exhibition curating. She writes for Dutch and international art and design magazines and has contributed to a range of books, one of the latest of which is a monograph on designer Hella Jongerius (Phaidon Press, 2010) and a monograph on artist Robert Zandvliet (NAi Publishers, 2012)

to just one criterion — does it work? — is to blind oneself to those meanings. The volume of discussion stirred up by De Rijk with his tough talking proves how much debate and critical voices are lacking in the design world at present. Just as recognition from the museum world accorded the profession greater standing, it seems evident that the profession can only take itself seriously if a respectable measure of analysis, criticism and formulation of theories takes place. F For too long, design has been confined to the glossy mags and lifestyle sections of newspapers. De Rijk’s article rightly appeared on the opinion page of a daily newspaper. Of course it is commendable that he took a close and critical look at a much-praised design and confronted noble intentions with the requirements that the product will ultimately have to satisfy. Perhaps his criticism even contains relevant advice for the designer. For De Rijk, too, I have some advice. Take into F consideration all criteria that a design merits and broaden your view beyond the blinkered, predictable and unattractive perspective so characteristic of the flood of problem-solving products that swamp the world. Design offers so much more to experience.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR EXPLORATION

DESIGNERS MAKE NEW THINKING REAL B DAVID BY D KESTER

There is more to the design profession than delivering finished products. In exploring solutions for the problems of our times, designers can be the agents of pro-social change at scale, David Kester, K former head of the UK Design Council, argues in reaction to Timo de Rijk’s denouncement of dysfunctional, mediagenic design.

faith? How much support did he receive when he created the world’s first blood bank? Exploration should not be lonely and good companions can help with success. Designers make great fellow explorers in almost any new territory. They help connect creativity (the generation of ideas) and innovation (the exploitation of ideas). Quite literally designers make new thinking real.

What Design Can Do is an unbeatable title for a design conference because implicit in this simple phrase is humility (design can’t do everything) and challenge (but it can do more than you expect). It embodies the design spirit of our age: exploration. It’s no surprise that we’re in Amsterdam for What Design Can Do. Holland is not just a great centre of design, it is also historically a home for explorers of all kinds: explorers in boats like Abel Tasman without whom us Europeans might never have found the southern hemisphere. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek whose exploration with lenses was the beginning of lifesaving microbiology. Explorers in philosophy like Spinoza who opened the door to modern rationalist thinking. Explorers are inevitably single-minded and sometimes bloody-minded too. Willem Kolff created the first ever dialysis machine at the height of WW2 out of an old Ford F car, a downed German fighter and cellophane sausage skins. When his first patients died did everyone around him have

I’ve experienced this over and again through a decade of work leading the UK Design Council. When the head of the police in the UK wanted to explore how to reduce the human cost of attacks with glasses in pubs, we said we could help and went to work with the Royal College of Art. The breakthrough was a bio-resin film for glassware that minimises the risk of lethal shards from a broken glass. The idea came from material scientists and product designers at Design Bridge and is now sold in the millions around the world by Europe’s largest glassware manufacturer. When Oxford University wanted to explore new ways to get its discoveries out of the lab and into the market, again we offered designers as companions. The first project we worked on was an algorithm for a smart energy metering system. The final design clips on to any energy source (water, gas, electricity) and within days can identify and monitor every connected device. The University has claimed this project is their most successful spin out to date.

UNBREAKABLE BEER GLASS

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR EXPLORATION

‘The The territories for T exploration are as endless as the problems we all make for ourselves on our crowded planet.’

We have created hundreds of similar multidisciplinary explorer teams with designers in a central role. We explored dementia, food, MPs, sexual health, unemployment, hi-tech start-ups, modern manufacturing – the list goes on. Some projects sunk without a trace. There are quite a few patents gathering dust and ventures wound down. Perplexingly, there are also plenty of brilliant ideas with no takers – like the hospital mattress that spreads colour when it’s punctured to spotlight the risk of human waste passing on infection. This great concept, which works, is still languishing in a University. Even with so much seed falling on stony ground, the average return on investment has continued up and is now around £28 for every £1 spent.

ON THE WINDS OF THE MEDIA Based on this experience I was intrigued to read recently about Mine Kafon – the exploration into low-cost mine detonation at the Eindhoven Academy by Afghan designer, Massoud Hassani. In this case it seems that the sum of the parts may be greater than any individual aspect of the current concept. A young well-spoken Afghan using design to restore safety in his homeland is a powerful and redemptive story. The fact that the design looks like a giant dandelion flower gives it visual appeal. No surprise then that everyone from MoMA to TED has blown the idea somewhat out of proportion on the winds of the media.

However, the hype does not diminish the relevance of the project. Instead it reflects rather poorly on indiscriminate media. It does not diminish either the designer or Design Academy Eindhoven. When I looked last on Kickstarter, Hassani had raised more than the team’s £100k goal. Who can say where this will lead and what good it may do? Maybe they have opened up a new and important territory for design exploration. Time will tell and a round of applause to the Academy and Hassani for daring to explore, even if this first attempt doesn’t work. It takes a certain set of qualities to make a really useful design explorer. You have to be intrepid, pushy and very nosey and keep scouting for new territories where, at least, some of the natives are friendly. You’ll never succeed where you are totally unwelcome, which also means you have to be good at making friends. Consider the cautionary tale of Captain James Cook (the one who sailed in 17th Century). He was completely unwelcome and uninvited to his last port of call in Hawaii and was eaten as a consequence. At the Design Council, we did some work on homeland security. In this case it was critical that we were welcome. I daresay the security services would not have tolerated an exploration without invitation.

OPTIMISM REQUIRED Design explorers need to be optimistic and see problems as opportunities. More often than not

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR EXPLORATION

‘I consider an exploration to be worthwhile if it offers the potential for pro-social change at scale.’

within a so-called social problem lies the source of an inventive commercial idea. One of our recent expeditions with the UK’s Technology Strategy Board explored social isolation in old age. A resulting venture, called The Amazings, is growing fast. It is a low-cost service that acts as a broker for elders to offer and trade skills, like jam-making, musical skills, ball room dancing and wood-turning. It’s been a big hit in the London area with huge credit to the design team at Sidekick Studios. Topping the list of qualities for a design explorer, is the ability to sublimate your ego and work seamlessly within a multi-disciplinary team. I consider an exploration to be worthwhile if it offers the potential for pro-social change at scale. In such cases the questions that you are asking will require complex and nuanced answers. As we live in an increasingly specialized world, each journey requires its own careful mix of specialists and companions. Our exploration into anti-crime measures meant co-opting domain experts such as academics, maxillofacial surgeons (glass injuries), victims of crime and so forth. This group could be likened to local guides – they know the territory. There are other specialists with whom you may regularly team up on journeys because, like you, they have transferable skills. These are fellow professional explorers. For F instance, I have now journeyed with the same brilliant team of anthropologists (Robin Robin and Becky at the research R company ESRO), on several explorations from

re-designing Accident & Emergency wards to rethinking the future of physical books in a digital age. The territories for exploration are as endless as the problems we all make for ourselves on our crowded planet. I have often found that politicians, and their friends and detractors in think-tanks and pressure groups, make for good scouts. Despite being much maligned in the media (often rightly), good policymakers are a lightening conductor to the wider concerns of the public at large. For F designers, they recast knotty issues like energy, waste, bioscience, ageing and education as possible territories for exploration. For MOOCs F instance, the recent growth of M OOCs (massive open online courses) may end up as one of the most profound responses to the United Nation’s Millennium goals to eradicate poverty and deliver gender equality. Designers can play an important role making such connections and turning concepts into effective user experiences.

TEAM UP WITH PHILOSOPHERS In the spirit of asking What Design Can Do, I would like to offer up a territory for exploration. I think an important new partnership could be between designers and philosophers. Arguably we live in a more secular world. The independent Pew Research Centre in the US analysed of over 2,500 censuses and population reports. This indicates that one-in-six people around the globe (around 1.1

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR EXPLORATION

37 David Kester K is CEO of Londonbased publishing firm Thames & Hudson, since 2012. Previously he was chief executive of the Design Council in London and before that head of the British Design and Art Direction (D&AD). Kester is a council member of the Royal College of Art, and a council member of the Home Office Design and Technology Alliance Against Crime.

billion) have no religious affiliation. In a European country, like, Holland, that figure rises to about 42%. Modern philosophers are stepping forward in an attempt to provide answers for this group. In the UK Professor AC Grayling has established an independent University – the New College of Humanities. He has also published an alternative to the bible called The Good Book, drawn from over a thousand texts and hundreds of writers. The philosopher, Alain de Botton, in his book Religion for Atheists, argues that most people want to do good and that secular society needs to learn from religion. In particular, he argues that religion has evolved behavioural approaches to remind us to do good. These include artefacts, symbols and rituals that have called on mankind’s creative skills over millennia. He has sought to put his ideas into practice with bold initiatives such as Living Architecture and The School of Life. As a counterpoint to the Gideon Bible that appears unsolicited in most hotel rooms, the School of Life has proffered a design idea: the Minibar of the Mind. It’s a little box of enriching thought provocation, selected reading and writing material. Recently, De Botton published a list of Ten Modern Virtues, such as Resilience and Politeness. They could be your next design brief. Design & Virtue: can design help us do good? Is this a new territory to explore? Is this an example of what design can’t do?

‘DESIGNERS ARE MISSING A BIG OPPORTUNITY’ Social design is popular, but most designers are working on too small a scale. That’s according to Professor Kees T K Dorst of the U University of T Technology in Sydney S and Eindhoven University U of Technology. T If designers really want to make a difference in the world, they have to get involved in the design of infrastructure. ‘The The problem, however, is that designers T are unable to cope with the complexity of infrastructure very well.’ B BAS BY B VAN LIER

FOR INFRASTRUCTURE

THE CITY OF M MELBOURNE ELBOURNE STARTED START R ED A PROGR AM OF WAT RT WATER ER COLLECTION COLLECTION IN THE CITY / PHOTO: ADRIANO ROTOLO

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR INFRASTRUCTU INFRASTRUCTURE R RUCTU RE

SCHEMATIC VIEW OF TH THE E WATER ER COLLECTION COLLECTION SCHEME DEVELOPED BY THE VICTORIAN ECO-INNOVATION LAB

Y say the design profession is neglecting You some elementary questions. Can you explain? ‘I think the design field should focus more on infrastructure. If you analyse a lot of problems the world faces today, you see that so many of them concern infrastructure. Whether we’re talking about environmental deterioration, food production, energy or social deprivation, the major problems have to do with infrastructure. For too long we’ve left the infrastructural design F to engineers who focus solely on technical optimisation. Instead, infrastructure should be designed much more from a human perspective. Designers should embrace the challenge of these large-scale systems, and WDCD could be the place to start talking about that. This year’s presentations by Carolyn Steel and Urban-Think Tank seem like a step in the right direction.’ Do you think designers tackle the wrong issues? ‘I think they are certainly missing a big opportunity in the field of infrastructure. Designers often see problems very broadly. But the solutions they come up with are extremely small, very localised. So while designers do recognise problems, they are clearly incapable of dealing with them. They struggle to deal with the constantly increasing

complexity of the world. That’s already true of industrial design, and is especially true of social design, where the complexity is so much greater.’ What is social design to you? ‘Social design, to me, means designing for groups of people on the basis of commitment to society. We’re then talking about shaping a particular section of society. The good thing about that, I think, is that it specifies the designer’s responsibility. With the tools the designer makes for society, for example the infrastructure created for a city, he influences what can happen there to a great extent. ‘Product designers have a responsibility for the user at an individual level. But when it comes to social design, the responsibility is to society on a more general level. The difference with the latter is that designers encounter a level of complexity they have never faced before. Which means they will have to change to cope competently.’ How should they do that? ‘That’s not easy. Most designers work very intuitively, but the huge complexity of social problems calls for a different quality of intuition. Ultimately, we will have to cultivate a subtler and better informed intuition among students by teaching them to understand complex, social research and better

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR INFRASTRUCTU INFRASTRUCTURE R RUCTU RE

‘‘Artists ‘A rtists seem better able to deal with the increasing complexity of things’

visualisation skills. We can do that by presenting them with a very wide range of problems – precisely the sort of problems that are normally not regarded design problems. That doesn’t happen often in schools of design. In a traditional design course, students tend to solve the same type of problem over and over again.’ Do you know of designers who do address complex problems? ‘I have few heroes. Cameron Sinclair of Architects for Humanity, who spoke at WDCD last year, is a very inspiring example. He really does think differently. In Designing Out Crime, by the way, I work quite often with artists. They seem better able to tackle complex material than most designers are. Sometimes that’s even a surprise to the artists themselves. One of them realised that his – socially inspired – work up to that point had really only been symbolic, and that he had now done something with the same design skills that really made a difference for people. Which makes you think that a lot of social design is also symbolic. And it’s so safe and so self serving.’ Do you know examples of design projects that do deal with infrastructure? ‘In Victoria, in the south of Australia, there is the

DOUBLE DEGREE The university in Sydney asked Kees Dorst to set up a Double Degree programme in which one hundred of the best students from other professions can take a second bachelor’s degree in design. Dorst: ‘The aim is to teach the students techniques from design practice so that they become better within their own professions and also learn to think beyond the confines of various disciplines and to collaborate. The idea is that design, as a relatively open creative process, can complement the way various professions now deal with their own development and innovation. And conversely, this programme should also enrich design. Lawyers, for instance, can teach us so much about recognising, recording and interpreting precedents. This programme should yield results back and forth.’

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR INFRASTRUCTU INFRASTRUCTURE R RUCTU RE

‘Building a good context is crucial for a successful social design project’

RAIN GARDEN IN MELBOURNE RNE / PHOTO eGUIDE ET TRAVEL RAVEL

Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (VEIL) L) headed by L Chris Ryan. R Good things happen there. One of the most interesting projects deals with potable water, which is in extremely short supply in Melbourne. Potable water comes out of reservoirs in the mountains. The problem is that it doesn’t rain much in the mountains, and it does in the city. ‘So the obvious thing to do would be to collect water on roofs and roads, but you’d then get water of varying quality. What they do now, therefore, is place a biofilter under every new tree planted in Melbourne. Every tree even has its own internet connection and IP address. The biofilter contains sensors that allow you to read the quality of the water on that spot at that exact moment. We can then determine what water to use for potable water or for irrigation. ‘One of the reasons for using mountain reservoirs was that it facilitated central quality control. Now internet has created the possibility of decentralised control. Suddenly we can make totally different systems. The nice thing is that they’ve turned it into a sort of card game that helps local councillors in deciding what to buy or in configuring the system. ‘What’s so good about this project is that it’s really been thought through completely for all stakeholders. You often come across ideas that make you think: yes, this is very good, but it demands a very

big change from a stakeholder who really has very little vested interest in the solution. Then it’s just not going to happen, and so it wasn’t a good idea to start with. Designers often simply leave it at that. Social design then amounts to simply stating that the world should be different. And that’s exasperating.’ But is this a project by designers or by engineers? ‘Things are thoroughly mixed at VEIL. It includes sustainability researchers, designers and hardcore engineers. And they also deal with the human dimension very well. One of the reasons why designers find it difficult to deal with infrastructure is that it’s big, and is linked to big companies, big authorities. Once you can start to decentralise infrastructure, however, you bring it closer to people and turn it into something resembling a design object. That’s why I think designers can now seize a wonderful opportunity, brought about by technical developments. We can now make infrastructure that is much smaller and local, in which the human dimension has to be well designed.’ OK, but how should designers set about it if they want to improve something in the world? Where should they start?

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR INFRASTRUCTU INFRASTRUCTURE R RUCTU RE

43 K Kees Dorst orst Industrial designer and design theorist Kees Dorst is professor at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). He also heads the Designing Out Crime Research Centre (DOC) in Sydney, a joint operation by UTS and the NSW Department of Attorney General and Justice. At WDCD12 Dorst presented some results of DOC and introduced the frame creation method he developed as a new creative approach to solving problems. ‘Once you’ve changed the frame, the solutions present themselves,’ he told the audience. The method is presented in full in Dorst’s book Frame Creation, due to be published later this year by MIT Press.

‘What I spend most of my time doing is building the context within which a project can take place, in such a way that the project receives support from all parties involved so that it achieves the desired result. In advance of a project, you have to set up a network that enables you to find out what’s going on and take on board the needs and characteristics of the different stakeholders early in the process. All that can easily take a few months or a year. That’s a question of being meticulous. Many designers, however, have a tendency to jump straight into a project and aim directly for a result. It doesn’t work like that in the complex projects.’ Could building that context perhaps become a new discipline within design? ‘Yes, it’s work centred on substance. It’s not project management or anything like that. You have to tackle matters of substance with people. In Sydney I work with a very experienced 70-year-old designer who’s so shrewd that he can take on things like that. He’s forever building contexts and knows exactly when a context is ready for a project. I’m looking for someone just like him now in Eindhoven. I’ve so many parties there who are bursting for a chance to carry out projects, and I have students who are willing to join in. But I still need someone who can shape a project.’

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR THE OTHER 363 DAYS

IN THE MEANTIME

What Design Can Do staged several events in recent months in the run-up to the main event on 16 and 17 May. More of these events are planned over the next year. Check the website and Facebook for updates.

COVER OF CRAS BY STEPHAN DOITSCHINOFF

2 OCTOBER 2012

DOITSCHINOFF: LIVE PLENTY ‘Don’t let the true matters for tomorrow, practice the things that you believe right now. Death is on your left side all the time, so... live plenty.’ With these words, Brazilian artist Stephan Doitschinoff explains the deeper meaning of the title of his book CRAS, which literally means ‘tomorrow’ in Latin. So we made the presentation of his book a nice party on a Tuesday evening early in October at the Athenaeum Bookstore. CRAS is a collection of recent paintings, sculptures, installations, and public performances by Doitschinoff, a friend since his performance at WDCD12. His work is based on a deeply symbolic code language and iconoclastic religious and folkloric elements. He offers acid critiques of our modern society that provide glimpses into another political and philosophical dimension. But in the meantime, he is a fun guy to have a party with.

STEPHAN DOITSCHINOFF NOFF / PHOTO: LEO VEGER

1 MARCH 2013

WDCD KICKKICK OFF FF P PARTY: PA R TY: RTY TY: CHEESE AND HALF A SHARK Maybe the cheese wasn’t as yellow as we would have hoped for, but the fondue tasted great. Around a hundred people gathered at Hôtel Droog in the centre of Amsterdam on Friday 1 March for the kick-off to What Design Can Do 2013. The venue was perfect, and even though an Internet disruption hit most of the city centre, we managed to have Skype talks with three speakers at this year’s event: Pedro Reyes from Mexico, John Bielenberg from the US, and David Kester, the former director of the British Design Council. Just when John wanted to explain the principle of his ‘Thinking wrong’ concept with an example about a surfer who was bitten by a shark, the connection was interrupted. Even if we would have wanted it, we couldn’t have come up with a better cliffhanger to raise the interest for the conference.

WDCD KICK OFF AT HOTEL HOTEL EL D DROOG ROOG / PHOTO: LEO VEGER

18 & 19 APRIL 2013

A MASTERC MASTERCLASS R LASS RC L WITH HELLICAR & LEWIS F creative minds there is nothing For more contagious than the spirit of Pete Hellicar and Joel Lewis. At the invitation of What Design Can Do, the British creative duo infected Amsterdam’s creative community with their boyish wit and enthusiasm. In a sneak preview at the Stadsschouwburg, they argued in favour of open source working methods. ‘Everything we do is open source for ethical reasons. Designers should take more moral decisions of this kind,’ Joel Lewis said. The two lure the public into playful interaction using equipment and software they create with the open source community. The goal is to give people memorable experiences that are so enjoyable they forget their worries for a while. At a masterclass for the Sandberg@ Mediafonds programme the next day, Hellicar & Lewis introduced participating journalists and designers to the advantages of paper prototyping, which is their way of generating ideas quickly. ‘We always use this. It gives room to the imagination without anything getting in the way,’ the two told the participants.

‘HELLO GUYS’

PARTICIPANTS P PA R RTICI P NTS OF TH PA THE E HELLICAR R & LEWIS MASTERCLASS

PETE HELLICAR RA AND ND JOEL LEWIS AT THE STADSSCHOUWBURG / PHOTO’S: LEO VEGER

INTRODUCING THE

SPE AKE RS

BAS VAN ABEL

DAVID KESTER

CARLO ANTONELLI

MIKE KRUZENISKI

JOP VAN BENNEKOM & GERT JONKERS

BEN LANDAU

JOHN BIELENBERG

RAHUL MEHROTRA

ALFREDO BRILLEMBOURG

NEXT X XT NATURE

DUS ARCHITECTS

PEDRO REYES

ANTHONY DUNNE

NICOLAS ROOPE

LIDEWIJ EDELKOORT

KIRAN SETHI

CARLA FERNANDEZ

CAROLYN STEEL

HELLICAR & LEWIS

MARIJE VOGELZANG

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SPEAKERS

BAS VAN ABEL OWNERSHIP IS NOT ABOUT PROPERTY BUT ENGAGEMENT

THE NETHERLANDS TECHNOLOGY, THEORY WWW.FAIRPHONE.COM

Interaction designer Bas van Abel is passionate about changing how people relate to products. He heads the Open Design Lab in Amsterdam and also established the community-maker space FAB F FABLab. Lab. Van Abel is co-author of the book Open Design Now, on the transformation of design into an open discipline. He is also CEO of FairPhone, F Phone, a social Fair enterprise to launch the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first fairly designed smartphone, produced without harming individuals or the environment.

CARLO ANTONELLI IS THE EDITOR IN CHIEF OF WIRED ITALY

ITALY DIGITAL, TECHNOLOGY WWW.WIRED.IT

Music and magazines run like a thread through the career of publisher, writer and producer Carlo Antonelli. He reigned over the Italian edition of Rolling Stone for a decade before moving to the Italian edition of Wired. Originally a sociologist, Antonelli has contributed to DOMUS, Fantastic Man and Frieze magazine, released a collection of essays entitled Gli anni Zero, lectures in the sociology of fashion, and founded cinema production company First Sun.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SPEAKERS

JOP VAN BENNEKOM & GERT JONKERS ‘LIFESTYLE IS A DREADFUL INVENTION OF THE 90S’

FANTASTIC MAN

THE NETHERLANDS/ UNITED KINGDOM ART, GRAPHIC WWW.FANTASTICMAN.COM

Editor Gert Jonkers and art director/designer Jop van Bennekom are the minds behind a series of influential and increasingly popular magazines. After launching the frank and humorous ‘fagazine’ Butt in 2001 they have since introduced Fantastic Man, The Gentlewoman and COS Magazine, all of them more stylish and philosophical but with the same basic approach defined by wit and interest in people. Despite the experimental edge, their publications enjoy increasingly widespread appeal.

JOHN BIELENBERG IMPROVING THE WORLD BY THINKING DIFFERENT

UNITED STATES EDUCATION, GRAPHIC, THEORY WWW.COMMON.IS FUTUREPARTNERS.IS

John Bielenberg from New York is the founder of Project M, which inspires young creatives to ‘think wrong’. That means ‘breaking the biases and known pathways to generate many potential solutions before you select and execute one’. Topics addressed have included micro-financing in Ghana and New Orleans after Katrina. In 2011 Bielenberg also co-launched COMMON, which connects entrepreneurs and creatives to accelerate socially beneficial businesses and ideas through rule-breaking innovation.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SPEAKERS

ALFREDO BRILLEMBOURG ‘INTEGRATE THE PAST INTO AN INTELLIGENT FUTURE’

AUSTRIA/VENEZUELA ARCHITECTURE, THEORY WWW.U-TT.COM WWW.U-TT.ARCH.ETHZ.CH

F Founded in Venezuela by Alfredo Brillembourg, Urban-Think Tank solves problems caused by the growing pains of the 21st-century metropolis. The agency advocates a blend of formal planning and informal growth as a way to create viable cities of the future. Trust in the self-reliance of inhabitants and informal initiatives is espoused by U-T T, who won the Golden Lion at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale with the installation Torre David/Gran Horizonte.

ANTHONY DUNNE ‘DESIGN IS A WAY OF HAVING CONVERSATIONS’

UNITED KINGDOM DIGITAL, EDUCATION, PRODUCT DUNNEANDRABY.CO.UK DI12.RCA.AC.UK DI.RESEARCH.RCA.AC.UK

Researcher, educator and designer Anthony Dunne explores the social, cultural and ethical implications of emerging technologies. In his work with Fiona Raby, the narrative and ideas are as important as the designs, whose purpose is ‘to facilitate reflection on the kind of technologically mediated world we wish to live in’. Dunne heads the Design Interactions MA programme at the Royal College of Art in London.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SPEAKERS

DUS ARCHITECTS STRIVE FOR UTOPIA. DESIGN THE FUTURE

THE NETHERLANDS ARCHITECTURE WWW.DUSARCHITECTS.COM Amsterdam-based DUS S Architects is anything but an architecture firm in the traditional sense. Its portfolio is a creative cocktail of event organisation, art installation and hands-on construction that challenges people to use public architecture in new ways. What all the projects share is the underlying credo ‘Design by Doing’. DUS has been described as ‘frontrunners for a new generation of architects: ambitious, socially committed, artistic and internationally oriented’.

LIDEWIJ EDELKOORT A VIEW ON FETISHISM

THE NETHERLANDS FASHION, THEORY EDELKOORT.COM WWW.TRENDUNION.COM WWW.TRENDTABLET.COM

Paris-based Lidewij Edelkoort has pioneered trend forecasting as a profession, providing design and lifestyle analysis for leading brands. Edelkoort’s work has evolved into humanitarianism through the Heartware craft foundation she co-founded in 1993; into curatorial work for exhibitions around the world: and into the realm of education at Design Academy Eindhoven, which she chaired from 1999 to 2008, and since 2011 at the School of Form F she established in Poznan.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SPEAKERS

CARLA FERNANDEZ PRESERVE CULTURAL TRADITIONS THROUGH INNOVATION

MEXICO FASHION CARLAFERNANDEZ.COM

In her fashion work, Carla Fernández F mixes contemporary with traditional Mexican patterning techniques, mostly originating in the Mayan and Aztec cultures. In her native Mexico she founded Taller Flora, a mobile fashion design laboratory that travels to women working with textiles in indigenous communities. The lab studies their fashion customs, and then maps and finds ways to rework them into contemporary design. For F Fernández, F innovation is a way of preserving cultural tradition.

HELLICAR & LEWIS ‘CREATIVITY IS VARIETY, VARIETY MAKING NEW THINGS’

UNITED KINGDOM ART, DESIGN HELLICARANDLEWIS.COM Pete Hellicar and Joel Gethin Lewis from London use art, technology and design to create groundbreaking experiences and lasting memories. Their projects range from interactive dance performances and art projects in museums like Tate Modern to branding projects for Selfridges or Intel. Somantics, their latest project, uses touch, gesture and camera input to encourage and amplify the interests of people with Autistic Spectrum Conditions and other communication difficulties.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SPEAKERS

D DAVID KESTER ECONOMY NEEDS DESIGN

UNITED KINGDOM THEORY WWW.THAMESANDHUDSON.COM WWW.DESIGNCOUNCIL.ORG.UK Before becoming Board Director of Thames & Hudson, David Kester headed Britain’s Design Council for a decade. There he oversaw a host of programmes and policies for industry, education and the public sector. For F Kester, design is never an afterthought or embellishment but a force that drives innovation to shape our future. He is a firm believer in the need to look beyond invention and at the benefit for everyday life.

MIKE KRUZENISKI ‘CONNECTING PEOPLE IS A MEANINGFUL THING’

CANADA DIGITAL KRUZENISKI.COM

Canadian-born interaction designer Mike Kruzeniski has worked in the digital field for a decade. A former member of Nokia’s insight and innovation team, he was design lead at Microsoft before taking up his current position as design lead at Twitter. His work in the area of communication and connections focuses on ‘bridging disciplines across design, business, and technology, to create space where great design can take place’.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SPEAKERS

BEN LANDAU UNWRAPS DISCOURSES

AUSTRALIA DESIGN BENLANDAU.COM Ben Landau is a designer working in critical and experimental design. His aim is to unwrap contemporary social, political, cultural, and technological discourses to reveal unknowns, and in doing so instigate awareness, change and growth. His work includes conceptual projects, performances, product designs, theatre set and costume designs, exhibition designs and photography.

RAHUL MEHROTRA ‘IT’S ‘IT’S NOT ABOUT GRAND VISION. IT’S ABOUT GRAND ADJUSTMENT’ AD USTMENT’ ADJ

INDIA ARCHITECTURE, THEORY RMAARCHITECTS.COM

Architect, urbanist and educator Rahul Mehrotra is founder and director of RMA Architects, a firm with offices in Boston and Mumbai that works for governmental and non-governmental agencies, on corporate and private individual commissions. A member of the steering committee of the South Asia Initiative at Harvard, Mehrotra attempts to bridge the gap between perceptions from the East towards the West on the topic of urbanization.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SPEAKERS

NEXT XT NATURE NETWORK ‘REAL NATURE IS NOT X CONTROL GREEN, IT IS BEYOND CONTROL’

THE NETHERLANDS TECHNOLOGY, THEORY WWW.NEXTNATURE.NET WWW.NANOSUPERMARKET.ORG Amsterdam-based research lab Next Nature explores the changing relationship between man and nature. Through human interference and technological meddling, nature is slowly turning into a ‘next nature’. Blending technology and fantasy, the informative, surrealist and surprising findings of Next Nature can be explored on their online platform. ‘Nature remains as savage as always,’ says founder Koert van Mensvoort, ‘resulting in wild software, genetic surprises, autonomous machinery and splendidly beautiful black flowers’.

PEDRO REYES THE ART OF HEALING SOCIETY

MEXICO ART WWW.PEDROREYES.NET WWW.BLOG.PEDROREYES.NET

Artist Pedro Reyes from Mexico City emphasizes individual and collective participation in events of a social and cultural nature. In his work, Reyes mixes architecture, design, language and video. Pieces can take on a variety of forms, from penetrable vinyl sculptures to TV and short-film productions. His is perhaps best known for turning the metal from 6700 destroyed weapons into 50 musical instruments in a project aptly entitled Imagine.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SPEAKERS

NICOLAS ROOPE PLUMEN IS THE WORLD’S FIRST DESIGNER ENERGY LIGHT BULB

DENMARK/UNITED KINGDOM DIGITAL, PRODUCT, TECHNOLOGY POKELONDON.COM PLUMEN.COM

Anglo-Danish designer Nicolas Roope looks beyond industry rhetoric to the inspiring truths of networked media and design. He is the founder of Antirom, Poke, Hulger and Plumen, all companies of note and all influential and innovative in their respective fields. A member of the Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences since 2006, he co-chairs Internet Week Europe, an annual, open source festival that launched in London in November 2010.

KIRAN SETHI ‘CHILDREN DREAM UP AND LEAD BRILLIANT IDEAS’

INDIA EDUCATION, THEORY WWW.SCHOOLRIVERSIDE.COM WWW.APROCH.ORG WWW.DFCWORLD.COM

Indian designer Kiran Bir Sethi advocates human-centred, practical teaching to get school pupils excited about ethics, excellence and engagement. She founded the Design for Change Challenge, in which over 25 million children in 36 countries have taken part. It makes use of a simplified design thinking process, asking children to imagine and implement solutions for problems, thus preparing them to deal with issues the 21st century will present them with.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SPEAKERS

CAROLYN STEEL ‘LONDON NEEDS THIRTY MILLION MEALS A DAY’

UNITED KINGDOM ARCHITECTURE, FOOD HUNGRYCITYBOOK.CO.UK

British architect Carolyn Steel is the author of the much-acclaimed book Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives (2008). Food F shapes cities, and through them, it moulds us, along with the countryside that feeds us. As an architect with a passion for food, Steel realizes how much architecture and city planning are intertwined with our daily food. And she understands how we might use food to rethink cities in the future.

MARIJE VOGELZANG ‘FOOD GOES TO THE STOMACH AND THE BRAIN’

THE NETHERLANDS FOOD WWW.MARIJEVOGELZANG.NL

A self-proclaimed ‘eating designer’, Marije Vogelzang is primarily interested in what food does and means to people emotionally. Inspired by the origin, preparation, etiquette, history and culture of food, Vogelzang devises restaurant concepts, designs art installations, curates exhibitions, creates new food rituals, and works for food giants like Nestlé. The Dutch designer shared her ideas and philosophy on eating design in her book Eat Love and its sequel Eat More Love.

EVENT REPORT

THU & FRI 16 17

MAY 2013

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO THURSDAY DAY 16 MAY IN WORDS AND PICTURES

WDCD CONFERENCE 16 MAY

A CONSTANT STATE OF DESIGN S Design belongs at the very heart of society, dealing with how we treat our environment, educate our children, care for our sick, consume our food. But designers need to adapt to keep up. Why thinking wrong is the right way forward.

BY BILLY NOLAN ‘Design is expanding.’ These were the first words of the first speaker, on day one of What Design Can Do 2013. A rapt audience packed into the grand auditorium of the City Theatre in Amsterdam heard David Kester explain how, as head of Britain’s Design Council, he devised programmes to make design an agent of change for the better in areas vital to the wellbeing of society, such as education, healthcare and elder care. But Kester wasn’t simply holding up the designer as a do-gooder. His message was that if we allow design to infiltrate the systems at the heart of our society, the results will not only improve life but also increase wealth, boost efficiency, reduce waste, enhance sustainability and much more. And besides, bringing designers on board makes business sense. He also pinpointed where design comes into play, as a bridge between creativity and innovation. Creativity, he told us, is about generating ideas, while innovation is about turning those ideas into value. Design is the crucial bridge between the two. Which is to say that the designer takes a

creative idea and applies it to make tangible and intangible things that fill a void, answer a need, or improve what already exists.

WHAT CAN C DESIGN NOT DO? So is there anything that design cannot solve? Not much, if we are to believe ‘eating designer’ Marije Vogelzang. She implied that design could prevent war by repeating Immanuel Kant’s claim that if you break bread with each other, you can’t break each other’s necks. ‘I use food as a material,’ she explained. In orchestrating the theatre of eating food, she achieves lots of other goals, from the mundane (helping reluctant children to eat greens) to the wonderful (raising awareness about the plight of the Roma minority in Hungary). Seeing the world through food was also architect and author Carolyn Steel’s recommendation. ‘Food F Food shapes our lives,’ she told us. ‘Food Food is everywhere. F It’s so big we don’t even see it.’ Food, F to her, can be a tool to mould life. We have devised an extraordinarily efficient system of logistics to bring food

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO THURSDAY DAY 16 MAY IN WORDS AND PICTURES

DAVID KESTER

TOP: CAROLYN CAROLY ROL N STEEL / BOT TOM: KIR AN SETHI ROLY

from faraway places to our plates, but a third of that food is discarded, uneaten.

the status quo. Such ventures are only possible, Bielenberg maintained, when designers defy what he calls the ‘institutional fear of failing’ and simply go forth. Then Nicolas Roope brought us down to earth again by reminding us that ‘designers get stuff off retail shelves and into shopping baskets’ with their products, logos, packaging and ad campaigns. They seduce us with symbols that drive our desire, but they can turn that skill and use it to do something sustainable, like countering design obsolescence. ‘We need to wear in, not wear out. Once you get it, it’s very simple.’ Perhaps the most compelling illustration of design at the heart of society came from a non-designer. Kiran Bir Sethi from India is harnessing the creativity of children in her Design for Change Challenge that has now reached 25 million children in 36 countries. Putting creativity at the core of school curricula helps to shift mindsets and makes design a matter of child’s play. The adults in the audience nodded in admiration.

GETTING IT WRONG So there’s plenty of work to be done to make food the social capital it can be. But making headway calls for designers to rethink their way of working. Designer and educator John Bielenberg knows exactly what creatives need to do differently to tackle issues that have fallen outside the realm of design up to now. His advice checklist reads: Be Bold, Get Out, Think Wrong, Make Stuff, Bet Small, Move Fast. F A project that illustrates the new way of operating is PieLab in Greensboro, Alabama, where a woman’s gift for pie-making had gone unnoticed until Project M, a network created by Bielenberg, made a pop-up pie shop to sell her wares. That shop is now a permanent downtown eatery and the heart of the deprived community. Across the road is the Alabamboo Bike Lab, a similar initiative that makes sustainable bike frames out of bamboo. All thanks to designers unafraid of upsetting

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO THURSDAY DAY 16 MAY IN WORDS AND PICTURES

‘It is super interesting that the speakers come from various fields. Also, most of them go beyond making things beautiful and make you realize how important it is to understand the context of your project.’ Maarten Janssen, graphic designer

NICOLAS ROOPE

MARIJE VOGELZANG

‘This conference is very informative. It makes me realize I need to become more critical and reflective of my own practice.’ Robin, student of product design ‘I enjoy this conference because it is relaxed, casual, and not intimidating.’ Lisa, IKEA LIDEWIJ EDELKOORT OOR OORT

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO THURSDAY DAY 16 MAY IN WORDS AND PICTURES

‘Not only are the speakers eloquent and amazing, also the format and the model of the conference is inspiring. The gospel choir was a great kick-off to loosen up the atmosphere. However, I do feel that as it is mainly designers in the public, the conference is not reaching the right audience, namely the people who are unaware of what design can do.’ Gabrielle Marks, coordinator at Academy Willem de Kooning W K A THE WHAT DESIGN CAN DO GOSPEL CHOIR

JOHN BIELENBERG

‘I love the location of this conference, and the fact that you work together with other partners like the Apple Store. The overall concept of the conference is great and it is interesting to see a shift taking place in different areas of design.’ Anand Joshi, educator, India

CARLO ANTONELLI

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR BREAKOUTS

WDCD BREAKOUTS 16 MAY WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR PROMISES HOSTED BY THE NEW INSTITUTE

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR CHERRY PICKING HOSTED BY DUTCH CREATIVE COUNCIL

Do engineers or artists solve problems?

Creativity and the swarm effect

A panel discussion between Timo de Rijk, David Kester, and Jan Konings, moderated by Tim Vermeulen, resulted in an interesting breakout session. Timo de Rijk recently made headlines with his harsh criticism of irresponsible design – design that purports to be much more than it is. His target was ‘Mine Kafon’ designed by Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Massoud Hassani. ‘Mine Kafon is not about solving problems,’ De Rijk said. ‘It is about success in the media and museum world. We really need to ask what sort of success that is.’ The discussion then switched to design education and if it can be blamed for any of this. ‘In an academic world one should be able to experiment on topics that are not necessarily interesting or even make sense,’ said Jan Konings. Konings agrees that something did go wrong in education for a while and there were too many narcissistic graduation projects. He already senses that that has changed though. ‘I see most students now really looking for solutions to everyday problems,’ he said. Kester added that with any graduation project it comes down to expectations. ‘It is about honesty,’ he said. The topic then switched to design research. Kester argued that good research depends on whether or not there is a multidisciplinary approach. ‘When you have exclusive designcentric research, the likelihood is that you will have a lower quality result.’

The Dutch Creative Council – established a year ago as the strategic advisor of the creative industries to the Dutch Government – aims to boost the innovative capacity of the Netherlands by increasing the impact of the Dutch creative industry. This breakout session was held to discuss the idea that the creative sector acts like an intelligent swarm. Complex challenges can only be solved through skilled multi-disciplinary teams, and a carefully chosen collective can act as a swarm to create added value and impact for their clients. Designers present, who had taken part in such swarm tactics, felt that through this method the solution was better. ‘It was exciting times, and we felt that we delivered the best solution possible,’ stated one of the designers. Building company Heijmans N.V. also benefitted from the strengths of the swarm when pitching for a large museum assignment. Working together with architects, designers, brand specialists, and design managers, they recounted how they were better able to develop a winning pitch to build a military museum. Lonneke Wijnhoven of Heijmans stated, ‘We are looking for partners to marry, we want long-term relations. And we want that with the creative industries. We can build, but we cannot design. Therefore we need the creative industries.’

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR BREAKOUTS

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR PUBLISHING HOSTED BY ATHENAEUM NIEUWSCENTRUM

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR CHALLENGES HOSTED BY HELLICAR & LEWIS

Why niche magazines are the future

Prototyping with paper and pens

Not only in magazine publishing, but in business in general a shift is taking place from large ‘block ‘blockbuster’ brands towards niche players, Reny van der Kamp told the audience. Van der Kamp and her colleague Anneke Reijnders are both designers who also work at Athenaeum Nieuwscentrum in Amsterdam, undeniably the foremost newspaper and magazine stand in the Netherlands. The shop is a Walhalla for magazine lovers, offering an extensive collection of magazines from all over the world, on subjects that range from politics, history and lifestyle to art, music, design and architecture. Van der Kamp and Reijnders never believed digital publishing would replace printed magazines. For F that they see to many magazines pass through their shop that are made with great passion and dedication. Mostly independent magazines made for a certain niche market. Why do these so much better than mainstream glossies? Van der Kamp: ‘Because independent magazines have a strong identity. They make a choice, show courage, don’t have to obey their advertisers. They are pleasing their subscribers and buyers, who also become part of their community. They make themselves into something people want to have, even want to belong to.’ The success of magazines like Kinfolk, Lucky Peach, or Apartamento lies mainly in the passion of the magazine makers that is recognized and shared by their audiences. As passionate magazine readers themselves, the booksellers named their own favourite top 5: Lucky Peach, Printed Pages, Uppercase, Delayed Gratification, and Little White Lies. In the second part of the breakout the audience participated in an experiment to decompose a glossy to see what remains when you take out the ads.

All you need for a great idea is paper and a black marker. Joel Gethin Lewis and Pete Hellicar, the creative duo that operates under the name Hellicar & Lewis, have experienced that rapid prototyping with pen and paper is the best way to get to the core of an idea. Their master class served as a compelling drill into this technique, pushing the participants to come up with ideas for the use of new technical devices. ‘The speed in which ideas are ‘made’,’ was among the best experiences one of the participants in this workshop had. Many fellow participants mentioned the interactive aspect of the workshop and also that they had to act out the ideas they generated in small groups. ‘Acting out an idea helps you find flaws and leads to additional ideas,’ explained designer Klaas van der Veen. The workshop made him realize that rapid prototyping really works and that it is great fun too. Daan Lucas of Random Studio was convinced too and says he will use the method for his own company. Anina Beuchert, studying editorial design at HKU, learned in this breakout how important group work and communication is. Architect and designer Franzi Kramer had a comparable experience: ‘I liked getting to know the designers and the other participants. It gave me lots of creative input.’

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR BREAKOUTS

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR PUBLISHING HOSTED BY AKZONOBEL

ROUND TABLE HOSTED BY THE NEW INSTITUTE

Can digital ever replace the thrill of traditional publishing?

Open call: social design for wicked problems

How can we translate the excitement of a print publication into the online realm? That was the main question discussed in the breakout session hosted by AkzoNobel. It’s quite a relevant topic for the painting and chemical giant, as the company is in the middle of bringing its flagship magazine A magazine to the digital world. Although David Lichtneker – editorial manager at AkzoNobel Corporate Communications – with his twenty years of experience in journalism, is a self-declared aficionado of printed magazines, the company decided to transition it to an online publication. The main reason: they were simply missing a lot of readers. A magazine was launched in 2008 when AkzoNobel introduced its new identity. The magazine is not like the average company relations magazine. ‘We made a conscious decision to be different and where possible to take risks,’ Lichtneker said. The magazine runs daring covers (Che Guevara on an issue on leadership), great, outspoken photography and stories that don’t so much boost AkzoNobel’s profile as offer information on topics related to the company. In the breakout, the attendants were asked to discuss what the last printed issue of A magazine should look like and, in a second group, how the magazine should be transitioned to the online world. Attendants were invited to really get involved in the process after the conference as well.

Today, The New Institute, with André Schaminée of Twynstra Gudde, and Tabo Goudswaard kicked off a public research project on social design for wicked problems. The term social design is used in different contexts for different (rhetorical) purposes. It features prominently – but in different meanings – in various heated debates and seems to suffer from conceptual erosion. The research project should help designers and artists to come to terms with the qualities and methods of social design. Simultaneously, it should equip problem owners (or opportunity hosts) to collaborate with artists and social designers. The research project should also give constructive input to the public debate on social design. In the round table discussion held at WDCD, five experts took part, each operating from a different design domain. They all consider social design to be part of their practice: Emer Beamer, Kars Alfrink, Pieter-Jan Stappers, Alastair Fuad-Luke, and Tabo Goudswaard. The session was helpful in finding terms to address the elements that we want to study and clarify during the project. The full report of this round table will be available on the blog shortly.

OPEN CALL F the research project two open calls will be For issued: One for primary stakeholders in wicked issues, and one for design teams that will work on them. We will team them up, monitor the processes, reflect on the projects with experts in a series of public sessions, and publish online at: socialdesignforwickedproblems.hetnieuweinstituut.nl

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR BREAKOUTS

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR BEHAVIOUR HOSTED BY HULGER / POKE

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR TRENDS HOSTED BY GOC

Designing in desire to change hearts and minds

Opportunities for the gaming industry

Nicolas Roope, who was listed in the ‘Wired 100’ in 2011 as well as in the ‘Adage Creative 50’, has a surprisingly simple message for us: reframe! He explains that he will always love fast cars, and as this will not change, we better redesign behaviour and recontextualize the things that might not be the most sustainable, the most efficient or the healthiest. A low-energy light bulb becomes beautiful, an energy efficient car can be sexy, and you turn out to be a relatively rich if you compare your income with that of the rest of humanity. Roope claims designers should be considered as politicians, and their greatest talent is to seduce users to behave and think differently. This breakout session led by Roope took place at the unfortunately noisy Apple Store. Despite this, it proved to be no obstacle for a fruitful, exciting session of reframing behaviour in various fields. Each group of participants identified problematic behaviour that needs to change, and then developed a specific product. How to make eating fruit more fun? How to make cycling safer? What to do with vacant buildings? How to optimize your time in a car from one place to another? After intense discussions and wild sketching on iPads, various solutions were presented that indeed helped to reframe unwanted or boring behaviour. ‘If you know how it works, it’s easy!’

In this interactive and visual session, participants discovered the new opportunities that emerging trends offer us. Hermien Mijnen, who works at the Centre for Personnel Development in the Creative Industry, and engineer Dennis Luijer demonstrated the value of these trends for the gaming industry. Mijnen co-authored Trends in the Creative Industry and researches future jobs in the industry. Luijer demonstrated the value of visually sharing vision, process, and movement in organizations. ‘This session made me think about problems and more importantly gave me inspiration concerning innovative problem solving,’ said Corien Staels, student of international fashion and management at AMFI. ‘The breakout gave me insight into social trends occurring and how they interfere with our daily lives.’ Design manager at Rabobank Edwin Wibbelink liked the quick way of idea generation through drawing and visualizing, working in steps, from trends, to target groups, to problems, to solutions and tips. Designer and photographer Julia Gunko liked working in a team and seeing ideas of others. AMFI-student Dillan Cintract had the same experience: ‘Proactively forcing me to extract ideas and thoughts from teammates was interesting and made me think out of the box.’ A fellow student, J. Homburg, said: ‘It was fun to listen to other creative brains. It motivated me to think further.’ Pam Asselbergs (The Motor) was motivated in another way: ‘Draw more often!’, she said.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR BREAKOUTS

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SITOPIA HOSTED BY CAROLYN STEEL

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR EDUCATION HOSTED BY DESIGN ACADEMY EINDHOVEN

Sitopia: shaping our lives through food

New models for design education, new roles for designers

F Following her lecture on the main stage, Carolyn Steel discussed with the audience the ways food shapes our lives and surroundings. The director of Kilburn Nightingale Architects in London and author of Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives elaborated on the relation between food, urbanism and architecture. ‘This session was an eye-opening experience,’ says Colin Elliot of Utrecht University. ‘Viewing the history of cities through their relation to food gives deep insight, and Carolyn Steel’s knowledge and charisma may well influence my daily habits. I was persuaded that buying food is a political act. As such, it demands serious thought.’ Anna Ciepiela of Studio Vrijdag was also inspired and mentions that the breakout brought her ‘faith that we too, to some extent, can design our life and its quality through the way we approach the food problem.’ ‘Carolyn Steel makes me proud to be a Slow Food F member,’ says designer Marjolein Triesscheijn. ‘Her story really inspires me to get on with my movement and charity work for the Slow Food F tells me how to bring design into this organization as a professional designer.’ Jenneke Harings of the Brabant centre for art and culture in Tilburg also got ideas for her work as advisor and project manager in art and culture: ‘It would be interesting to try to make connections between art and culture and the changing food industry, because I think that people in the arts field are engaged and conscious and can address the problem.

The session discussed the relation between education and design, and politics and design, in a way that triggered participation and dialogue by breaking up the hierarchy of speakers and audience, and introducing movement and music as disruptive elements. This session was an experiment in creating a discussion around an issue that we, and others, consider valuable to current debates, which is connected to a variety of disciplines. This experiment introduced, firstly, a series of diagrams defining elements that form the basis of education and institutions and, secondly, a number of projects presented together. Critical questions were posed and time was given to discuss them. Two methodological frameworks, both of which dedicated the majority of time to the audience taking the central role, offered points of critical reflection. At the end of the two sessions participants articulated their thoughts and concluding ideas on posters and notes. One such poster read: ‘I will think and re-think the value of being a designer.’ Consciously, we chose not to document the session. Instead of considering this breakout session as a ‘workshop’ with an outcome, we decided that open dialogue and discussion would be the ‘outcome’. ‘You can ignore reality but you can not ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.’ - Ayn Rand

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HUNGRY R GUESTS WAIT PATI RY P PATIENTLY ATI ENTLY LY FOR MARIJE VOGELZANG’S LY ’S F FAK FAKE E MEAT AT SNACKS SNACKS DURING THE PONTI PARTY P RTY PA R

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR FOOD HOSTED BY MARIJE VOGELZANG

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR CHOCOLATE HOSTED BY ENVER LOKE

Taste some real faked meat at the Ponti Party T Eating designer Marije Vogelzang had the audience taste Ponti, or real faked meat. Vogelzang’s faked meat started as a reaction to meat substitutes that generally look like the real thing. To question that approach, she invented new animals that could act as sources for faked meat. The fleshy lollipops of reinterpreted fish fillets are the outcome of exploring the possibility of merging food and animal design and provoke play, interaction and enjoyment. Art director Sara Landeira of De Designpolitie commented, ‘Marije Vogelzang gives a nice twist to the idea of vegetarian food masquerading as meat. And she does it with the powerful tool of humour.’ And art director Hilmer Thijs of Studio Hands added, ‘It was great to see Marije Vogelzang cooking and provoking interaction with WDCD visitors with her Ponti Party.’

Make the world a better place: make chocolate What if you could redesign one of the world’s most popular products? What would you do? Well? Agricultural engineer and sustainable business developer Enver Loke invited the public to join him on the journey he started to redesign the chocolate bar as we know it and make chocolate that benefits everything and everybody: nature, farmers, producers and consumers.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR BREAKOUTS

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR BRAINS HOSTED BY JOHN BIELENBERG

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR PLAY HOSTED BY FRAME PUBLISHERS

Why thinking wrong is the right way to go

Hunt & Play

Try to talk wrong; it’s harder than you think. Words flow from your brain to your mouth through well-established synaptic pathways, ultimately making communication easy. Try to do it wrong, and the pathways simply don’t let you. You have to think really hard about talking wrong. Now try to think wrong, and you get the same result. The way we think and conceive the world is structured through these same pathways. Breaking these so-called ‘heuristic biases’ is John Bielenberg’s mission. According to him, we are trapped into thinking according to various orthodoxies, which hold us back from solving the world’s most urgent problems. In order to break from this, we need to think wrong. Bielenberg challenged our group of twenty to do just this, by engaging us in a quick exercise. After writing ‘Rabbit’ in the middle of a page we were asked to then write down related words. The clock stopped, papers were passed to the left, and we began again. Papers were passed again and we selected the two most interesting words. Five groups were then formed, each given two of these words. ‘Guinea Pig + Gas’, ‘Hop + Drops of Water’, ‘Mars + Space Death’ were some of the unlikely pairings. Bielenberg’s final challenge: use these two words to develop a design idea that could make the world a better place. The results were predictably random and haphazard. Did they make us think wrong? To answer that, I’ll really have to think about it.

Transdisciplinary designer Matylda Krzykowski and her opponent, jewellery designer Sam Hamilton, invited the participants in this breakout to engage in a playful inner-city search around Leidseplein. Through reintroducing play and encouraging activities that are normally associated with recreational pleasure, Hunt & Play encouraged engaging with others and the development of ideas. And playful it was. Participants were shown many strange and unexpected corners of the Leidseplein. ‘It was nice to be in uncomplicated action,’ Rudy van den Berg (Curlylight) said afterwards. ‘The playing made my mind free,’ another participant working at dBOD Design experienced. Asked what they liked best, several participants mentioned the enthusiasm and the energy the hosts put into the breakout. ‘The freedom of the activity was refreshing,’ a furniture designer said. ‘It was relaxing and gout us talking to other members at the conference.’

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR BREAKOUTS

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR ALUMNI HOSTED BY DESIGN ACADEMY EINDHOVEN

WHAT GRANTS CAN DO FOR DESIGN HOSTED BY CREATIVE INDUSTRIES FUND NL

Four masters from Design Academy A Eindhoven

Public funding for quality, innovation and entrepreneurship

In this session, four alumni who graduated in 2012 from the Master programme at Design Academy Eindhoven took the stage. Alicia Ongay Perez (Contextual Design) presented her thesis project InsideOut. On various levels and in various media this project deals with the hidden premises of conceptual design, and how design relates to the real world. Irma Földényi (Social Design) presented the project Digitalogue / Digital and Analogue in Dialogue. The open-source method Digitalogue reveals an in depth research into the changing relationships between the human body and new technologies, which influence how we relate to the outside world. Földényi intends to bridge the digital and analogue worlds with this thought provoking and imaginative project. Tamar Shafrir (Contextual Design) shared some of her challenging views on contemporary design, with questions such as ‘How should a designer approach the task of creating an everyday, archetypal object?’ and ‘How can we create new ways of looking at objects? ’ Shafrir proposes we look at contemporary design objects as agents within a network of interactions and contexts, rather than the frozen symbols of an isolated design discipline. Finally, Daniela Dossi (Social Design) spoke about her thesis project Micro Utopias. This proposal to connect and co-create unexpected services aims to trigger and support grass-roots social innovations. The user-driven model for a new social idyll is both a physical space and a digital platform, which might be adopted by anyone who is interested.

The Creative Industries Fund NL is the Dutch cultural fund for architecture, design and e-culture. The fund issues project grants in order to foster substantive quality in architecture, urban design, landscape design, product design, graphic design, fashion and e-culture, to promote innovation and cross-sector collaboration, and to enhance entrepreneurship. Eva Roolker, secretary of the grant programme for design, held a walk-in session to answer questions, on a one-to-one basis, about the subsidies and funding opportunities from the fund.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FRIDAY IDAY 17 MAY IN WORDS AND PICTURES

WDCD CONFERENCE 17 MAY

POSSIBILITIES OF DESIGN Day two of What Design Can Do spoke of social design, architecture for change and injecting design where it is really needed. Problem solving is still at the forefront but now the communities are involved.

BY CASSANDRA C PIZZEY Once again moderated by Hadassah de Boer and Dagan Cohen, day two of WDCD 2013 kicked off with architect Rahul Mehrorta. Illustrating the current situation in India and Mumbai especially, the architect argued that Western ideals shouldn’t be implied in India. ‘We don’t need glass boxes and green labels,’ he says. Instead, why not utilize local crafts, ideas of architecture, why not create full-size versions of local, working businesses. Examples of globalizing local programs and localizing global programs. ‘We need to soften the thresholds,’ he states clearly. Buildings themselves can be a part of that change by creating means of social interaction. ‘Future societies may look back at us one day and find it all absurd,’ according to Royal College of Art (RCA) professor and half of Dunne & Raby, Anthony Dunne. ‘What we do is try and crystalize alternative ideas and then discuss them in a social context.’ A shift from idealism to realism is illustrated by the exhibition United Micro Kingdoms in which a number of possible future societies are discussed. This shift needs to take place at an educational level for trying to simulate the market

is not the way to go. Design courses are practical, and that’s a good thing.

LET’S GET INTERACTIVE If the audience didn’t use Twitter already, maybe the presentation by its Design Lead Mike Kruzeniski (@mkruz) has convinced them. Although the focus didn’t lie on Twitter but instead on using design to push things forward. Kruzeniski advocates: ‘We need to penetrate companies by spending years trying to understand the problems and then help solve them. Having designers in house is an important step according to Kruzeniski. Being as close as possible to the actual product and being in contact with the whole company, introducing design at all levels is the way forward. Companies who aren’t in contact with their design employees run the risk of losing out on big opportunities. With startups such as Pinterest, Vimeo and Airbnb now household names and enablers such as Etsy and Kickstarter, ‘there’s not much stopping you to get your work out there’. Proof in point here is designer Bas van Abel, who

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FRIDAY IDAY 17 MAY IN WORDS AND PICTURES

R AHUL MEHROTR A IN CONVERSATION WITH MODER ATOR DAGAN COHEN

with his ethically produced smartphone named Fairphone, aims to make us aware of the techF nology that surround us. ‘If you can’t open it, it’s not really yours.’ There is certainly nothing stopping Hellicar & Lewis, a partnership that has been going strong for five years and learnt many lessons during that time. An interactive installation on show at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam is their way of giving back. Just tweet your command and the ‘Hello Cube’ will not only perform but give you feedback.

THE LATIN-AMERICAN SESSION Social design, whether that be working for or with communities, is always a major theme when discussing the role of design and this is no different for the three Latin-American speakers during day two. There might even be an increased sense of awareness in these countries, where people are confronted with corruption and violence on a daily basis. Weapons play a huge role in this global

issue. Mexico especially as guns are transported here via the United States. It’s an issue that artist Pedro Reyes is closely linked to. Asked by the local Mexican government if he would like to use some 6000 confiscated weapons for his reuse project, he jumped at the chance. ‘For For an earlier project F we had turned the guns into shovels, used to plant trees, new life. This time we created instruments.’ A poetic gesture that partner Carla Fernández, F fashion designer in her own right, would appreciate. As a Mexican native her interests lie in the heritage of her country. The number of artisans, each region with its own skill, is huge. Instead of taking the craft techniques of the indigenous people as an example, she now works with communities all over Mexico, creating modern fashionable clothes for her brand. Closing the circle, Alfredo Brillembourg from Urban-Think Tank takes the same approach to urban architecture as his predecessor Rahul Mehrotra. Aiming to give local communities the building bricks to become empowered, he offers frameworks and ideas instead of finished products.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FRIDAY IDAY 17 MAY IN WORDS AND PICTURES

PEDRO REYES AND CARLA A FERNANDEZ FERNANDEZ TALKED WITH HADASSAH DE BOER AF TER THEIR PRESENTATIONS

TOP: BAS VAN ABEL / BOT TOM: MIKE KRUZENISKI

‘Though design is all around us, for the majority of people it is hard to realize what exactly design is or can be. This conference brings us awareness and makes you look around.’ Diana Babei, PR at Pickles

ALFREDO BRILLEMBOURG

‘It seems that the most central and pressing issue addressed at this conference is the tension around designethics. Another theme is how technology, art, design and innovation are merging. For F me this conference is highly inspiring and the pace is very convenient.’ Ronald Ramakers, manager at an audiovisual company

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FRIDAY IDAY 17 MAY IN WORDS AND PICTURES

’It was a great event for my network. I made new contacts and I might even have landed a new commission!’ Marit Turk, T graphic designer ‘I’m here to see how other design professionals deal with various issues and to gather new energy and insights beyond my own studio.’

‘Corporate businesses are having a midlife crisis. They need to reinvent themselves all over again, but have no clue how to do that. Many people working for these companies are completely fed up and in desperate need of change. That’s why I’m here; I want change!’ Regina Fluyt, publisher

Jarno Potijk, graphic designer

HELLICAR & LEWIS

JEREMY MY LESL LESLIE, IE, JOP VAN BENNEKOM & GERT ER JONKERS ERT

ANTHONY DUNNE

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR BREAKOUTS

WDCD BREAKOUTS 17 MAY WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR DATA HOSTED BY UNIVERSITY FOR THE COMMON GOOD

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR VISION HOSTED BY MIKE KRUZENISKI

How information boosts innovation

How to turn concepts into real products

More and more designers want to use data collected at the ‘user side’ as input for their design process. Collecting the right data is, however, rarely as straightforward as it might appear. The very process of collecting data, and the tools required, should therefore be considered objects of design. Tim Devos and Maarten Desmet believe design and its societal value can benefit from gathering precious information in an innovative way. When addressing urban spatial issues, we can identify a whole spectrum of data collection methods, ranging from the classical survey to temporary interventions. Although lots of creative initiatives emerge around the globe, the ‘grey zone’ of interestinterest ing practices between these two extremes remains largely unrecognized. Unconventional methods can effectively generate useful data. An intervention, for example, can give us lots of information about people’s needs and responses to change, or it can be designed to directly ask people’s input. In this breakout led by Devos and Desmet, participants entered this grey zone and designed out-of-the-box methods of data collection that not only responded to predefined design problems but also identified spatial challenges and opportunities, stimulated creativity and even generated concrete ideas! These methods didn’t seek feedback on products nearing completion but involved people proactively. That’s why we envision a situation where data collection identifies challenges and stimulates people to reflect on spatial issues, inverting the conventional logic. The breakout demonstrated that data can trigger initiative.

‘It is amazing how many big initiatives in organizations large and small come to nothing.’ This quote, by Jim Rait of the Global Design Center at Unilever, is how Mike Kruzeniski chose to open up this breakout session. The focus here was on advanced design labs, operating within companies, and how they can maximize their output in creating groundbreaking new products. Kruzeniski speaks from experience having spent years working for Nokia, Microsoft, and now Twitter, in their advanced design departments. Kruzeniski finds it particularly problematic when companies invest their resources in fancy videos that promote concepts far removed from reality. For him science fiction productions like Star Trek F or Minority Report will always do a superior job at this, so it’s better for a company to concentrate their resources on products they can produce in the next few years. Timelines vary, but at Twitter they look no further than two years ahead. Still, even with a bullet-proof idea and product, there are other considerations advanced design labs need to take note of before their product can really take off, namely how to insert their product into the pre-existing production pipeline. Advanced design is all about change, while the intrinsic nature of a company’s production is optimization. It will reject change as a risk, so designers need to find the optimal moments where their new idea can intersect with the pipeline.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR BREAKOUTS

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR COLOURS HOSTED BY AKZONOBEL

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR MINDSETS HOSTED BY DUTCH DESIGN AWARDS

ColourFutures 13

The future of design

‘Adding colour to peoples lives’, AkzoNobel’s credo, is not only about bringing colour to people’s walls, but much more about making people’s lives better, making the world a more colourful place. For F that reason the paint and coatings manufacturer does lots of research into colour. Every E year the Aesthetic Centre of the company in Sassenheim invites a group of designers from different parts of the world, to discuss what trends are influencing consumer behaviour in the coming year. The designers discuss social, economic, and design trends. After three days of discussion on how the trends could be translated into colour, a colour of the year is chosen. For F 2013 the deep blue colour, indigo, was given the honour. Heleen van Gent, head of AkzoNobel’s Aesthetic Center, explained to the audience about the trends that were discerned for 2013 and how these were translated into a colour palette. Five trends were sorted out with names like Collective Passion, Switching Off, The Art of Understanding, Home Factory, and Visual Solace. These trends, together F with the colour palettes derived from them, are published in AkzoNobel’s trendbook called ColourColour Futures, as well as some more specialist publications with titles such as Wood, Architecture, and Trends. Van Gent, however, was interested to hear if the public could think of other ways for AkzoNobel to spread this information. Maybe it was not a direct answer to that question, but somebody asked if AkzoNobel talked to consumers as well when deciding on colour trends. This not being the case, Van Gent was genuinely happy with that suggestion.

Every year during the Dutch Design Week, the Dutch Design Awards grant prizes to design projects in several categories like product, communication, spatial design and autonomous design. As the DDA wish to reflect not only on recent issues, but would also like focus on future developments, they initiated a new category, which is focused on ‘future concepts’. But what exactly are the core values of design? This Break Out session was hosted by two of the jury members. Antoine Achten is the chairman for the commission that selects projects in the category of Communication and Marleen Stikker is chairwoman for Future Concepts. After an insightful introduction by Stikker, who is also director of the Waag Society, the participants discussed on various statements. Four F groups tackled various topics through different assignments, to define the core values in design. An impossible task for only one hour. The participants received an empty pyramid, reminiscent of the Maslow hierarchy of needs. What are important values for design, in what order? Interestingly, the different groups came up with very different interpretations. Whereas one group identified aesthetics to be in the upper level in the pyramid, another group formulated the process of design in a spectrum from a basic need or problem to an idealistic goal. They identified need, materialisation, comfort, aesthetics, responsibility and a higher or spiritual goal, which looks at the impact of the design itself. A beautiful and abstract outcome of a focused session, worth to be nominated itself.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR BREAKOUTS

PARTICIPANTS P PA R RTICI P NTS DISMANTLED PHONES IN SEARCH OF TIN, COPPER AND GOLD PA

ROUND TABLE

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR COBALT HOSTED BY FAIRPHONE Smash up a mobile phone

During the two days of What Design Can Do six Round Tables were organized to allow the public to talk to people they generally wouldn’t meet that quickly. WDCD speakers and business leaders were invited to discuss different subjects with a selected group of participants. Tim Vermeulen of The New Institute hosted a round table discussing How to survive Fashion. F

In order to make a phone of fairly produced components, you first have to know what these components are. In this session, participants separated minerals (e.g. gold, tin, copper) from dismantled phones. Hosts Sacha van Tongeren, Gabriel Sebastian and Laura Gerritsen explained the social issues behind these components. And presenter Bibi Bleekemolen of Fairphone F spoke about her visits to mining sites in Congo in search of fair cobalt for the production of mobile phones. The company aims to produce a phone that is manufactured using conflict-free materials and produced by fairly treated facory workers. With the Chinese factory Fairphone F is starting a worker welfare fund to secure a healthy working environment. ‘Contrary to other phone companies, we want our phones to last as long as possible,’ says Bibi Bleekemolen. That’s one of the reasons why the phone is fitted with dual SIM. The phone can be recycled and repair shops make sure individual componants can be replaced. ‘We by no means claim to be completely 100% fair right now, but we strive to become fairer by involving our network to think and work with us on it,’ Bibi says. The message hit home: one of the participants of the workshop started ordering a Fairphone F from his iPad right away.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR BREAKOUTS

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR DEMOCRACY HOSTED BY SANDBERG INSTITUTE

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SEED BOMBS HOSTED BY DESIGN ACADEMY EINDHOVEN

Exercises on democracy (or how to crowdsource utopias) Dear designers, artists, human beings, other animals, plants and billions of microbes. The Sandberg Institute has sent out an intergalactic request to save democracy on earth. We are happy to answer this call and take you by the hand. So come with us into our fictional realm. Trust us and discover overlapping universes of personal dreams. We meet today in a theatre. Drop the masks you believe are appropriate to wear and invent a new role for yourself, a living representation of your most secret dream. Our weapons are trustworthy lies, endless energy and enjoyment. We do not distinguish between reality and fiction, neither between fiction and reality. If your true story is boring, please lie to us. Let’s be inventive and express ourselves. It is not enough to talk about changing the world. We have to build an entirely new one. Politics can be fun, beautiful and true at the same time. Every revolution starts with a movement. Remember, we are talking now only in a fictional realm. You can be everything, you can do anything, the world around is your oyster. Let’s not be afraid of naïve questions like: how would it be if things were different. Our manifesto is called Imaginary Grounds. It’s about democratic dictators, green fingers in the outlet, movement movers, energy transformers. True democracy lies in the C. Stone age in the water. Spray tanning in simple paradise. Riding the vicious wave to freedom. The force is with the ‘dinosources’. Back to zero.

Learn how to make a seed bomb From September 2012 until January 2013, 2nd and 3rd year students of Design Academy Eindhoven’s design department Man and Activity worked on the project Food for Fun. The main question in this project was how designers can contribute to increase and stimulate awareness of healthy food among young children aged between 4 and 8. After a research phase, the students compiled a playful exhibition that was visited by 200 children from elementary schools in Eindhoven. In the breakout the students presented several projects from this exhibition, including their Seed Bomb Factory. This workshop educated children to manufacture their own seed bombs and become a green activist by throwing them in their garden. To make a seed bomb one needs a block of clay (6 x 6 x 6 cm), one spoon of seeds and one spoon of soil. Press a hole in the block of clay, fill it with seeds and soil and close the hole with clay. Roll the block of clay into a ball and the seed bomb is ready for planting. For F the workshop the students designed a seed dispenser and other equipment to make the bomb making even more fun.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR BREAKOUTS

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR STUPIDITY HOSTED BY ASSOCIATION OF DUTCH DESIGNERS

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR RESEARCH HOSTED BY DESIGN ACADEMY EINDHOVEN

How to explain the potential of design

An odorous message for oblivion

‘Bringing great design to the world takes a lot more than great design,’ moderator Tom Dorresteijn argued in this session. As CEO of design agency Studio Dumbar, he knows what it takes to convince clients of the value of design. Designers sometimes feel they are surrounded by stupid people who don’t understand, see or appreciate the potential of their work. In this breakout session he discussed what designers can do to convince these stupid people of their invaluable talent.

How can we use the power of smell and its strong associative memories as a tool to manage addiction and drug rehabilitation? These was the central question in the breakout session organized by the Readership in Strategic Creativity at Design Academy Eindhoven in collaboration with Bernardo Fleming from the Olfactive Design Studio (ODS) of International Flavours and Fragances (IFF). The workshop focused on the power of smell and the personal memories it stirs up. Design researcher Susanna Cámara Leret is developing a tool that enables drug addicts to share their memories within a sheltered context. There is no right or wrong, since the connotations of smell are very personal. The young addicts that the workgroup has been working with feel at ease sharing their memories. In doing so, they offer insight into their backgrounds and traumas. Medical staff can use the information to help the addicts on their way to recovery. To shed light on the methodology, workshop participants were handed ten different strips of paper, each sprayed with a different smell. They were asked to briefly smell a sample and then write down what associations the smell conjured up. In a second round of smelling, they could extend the experience and delve into it a little deeper. While one smell made a participant recall the biology teacher she liked and dreaded at the same time, another smell was associated with diapers of teething babies. What some people considered ‘yummy’ was appalling to others.

‘I liked how Tom turned to the designers in the session to strategise solutions together, how to manage clients, value talent, and create design with clear communication’, offered Sara Snaith, a freelance designer for Eye magazine. For Vanessa Pateson, a graphic designer at VKP F design it: ‘re-affirmed the importance of ‘hidden’ skills in design such as communication, strategy, project management.’ Students in the audience also had some useful takeaways: ‘I think I can apply the method to my final thesis project at school, which is really helpful’ said Domus Academy student, Leslie Guerard. Kayleigh Smetsers, an industrial design student from Design Academy Eindhoven, summarised what she learned as follows: ‘Always be nice, laugh, and show them what’s best.’

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR BREAKOUTS

HELLICAR & LEWIS REPEATED THEIR R APID PROTOTYPING WORKSHOP ON FRIDAY

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY HOSTED BY MODINT

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR THINK TANKS HOSTED BY ALFREDO BRILLEMBOURG

An introduction to smart, sustainable design

Transforming the 21st-century city T

Design can have a positive influence on the future. Carlien Helmink of sustainable fashion brand studio JUX X showed how in this breakout session that she hosted together with Nienke Steen, an expert on corporate responsibility and sustainable strategy in fashion. They discussed what any product developer needs to know to create a good product that meets the demands of today’s and tomorrow’s society.

In this Q&A session with Alfredo Brillembourg, moderated by Lucas Verweij, the audience had the opportunity to ask the founder of interdisciplinary design practice Urban-Think Tank (U-T T) about his ideas and working methods.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR BREAKOUTS

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SUSTAINISM HOSTED BY THE BEACH

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR REDESIGNING RESULTS HOSTED BY THE NEW INSTITUTE

Localism, connectivity and sharing

The research agenda of design

Designers are facing new opportunities at a time when the world is experiencing a wave of social initiatives. A cultural movement called ‘sustainism’ is emerging. Centred on sharing, connectivity, sustainability and a resurgence of localism, sustainism is ‘a new ethos for design’, as The New York Times put it. Co-creator of the Sustainism manifesto Michiel Schwarz and project M initiator John Bielenberg discussed with the audience the implications of this new perspective.

What are new perspectives toward design research’s innovation agenda? That was the central question in this session with WDCD speakers Anthony Dunne and Rahul Mehrotra and sustainable design facilitator Alastair Fuad-Luke. Led by Klaas Kuitenbrouwer the participants discussed possible new strategies for dealing with complex problems that need addressing. Together they exchanged views on how to redefine results and how design practice and education should be organised in the future.

Interior designer Joelle Maakaroun got very inspired by this workshop. ‘I thought it was very good. The idea of sustainism is not just about sustainability, it goes much further than that. It is about the behaviour of people, about the true meaning of sustainability and about sharing. The discussion triggered me to incorporate the sustainism approach into my daily work, although I haven’t a clue yet how!’ F Flo, from Germany, this was an interesting For breakout too. ‘I hadn’t heard of the word sustainism, yet. At first it sounds like another word for sustainability, but there is clearly more to it. I liked it, although we could have had a little more interaction with the public.’

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR BOOKS HOSTED BY ATHENAEUM NIEUWSCENTRUM

ATHENAEUM NIEUWSCENTRUM MOUNTED A BOOKSHOP IN THE FOYER

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR BREAKOUTS

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO EXHIBITION ON TROT TER BILLBOARDS ADORNED LEIDSEPLEIN

WDCD SPEAKERS DINING ON THE EVE OF THE EVENT

WDCD AT TENDEES ARRIVING AT THE THEATRE

WDCD TEAM MAKING THIS BOOK K ON THE SPOT

WDCD DIRECTOR PRESENTING THE FIRST COPY

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR FRIENDS

THANK YOU MY FRIEND What Design Can Do is grateful for the support from these members of the WDCD Friends Club:

ARCO DAWN D DIETWEE ONTWERPWERK THONIK TINKER The WDCD Friends Club brings together designers, clients, policy makers, academics and people in design education who hold WDCD dear and want to expand their network through What Design Can Do. The WDCD Friends Club enhances the relevance of WDCD for the business community by facilitating substantive customer relations. To that end, for every four combination tickets (valid for both conference days) they buy, WDCD Friends can invite one relation free of charge to What Design Can Do. Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more, WDCD Friends and their relations enjoy an exclusive reception during the event. At various moments throughout the year, networking and side events are held for WDCD Friends. Moreover, WDCD Friends are updated about speakers invited for the next WDCD conference. Friends also have an opportunity to contribute suggestions for possible speakers from their networks. If you want to join the WCDC Friends Club, please contact us through friends@whatdesigncando.nl

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO IN THE COMING YEAR

AND NOW, UP FOR THE NE NEX NEXT XT ROUND XT R That’s it: WDCD 2013 has come to an end. But don’t worry, we’re here to stay. We’re already planning next year’s event, and we’ll pop up with plenty of intermezzos before then. The two-day conference is the core of What Design Can Do, and we are delighted to announce that Magnus Nilsson, Swedish chef and rising star of Nordic cooking, will speak at next year’s event. We also know that Europe will be one topic on the agenda, so we will investigate What Design Can Do for Europe. But over time we have noticed a growing demand for quality master classes, workshops and exhibitions. We are increasingly approached by organizations, from publishing houses to furniture producers, that want to raise their profile. The proposition of WDCD, that design is relevant, offers limitless possibilities. We will therefore continue to build What Design Can Do and extend the collaboration with all our partners, including Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam, De Balie, De Melkweg, Apple Store and Stedelijk Museum, as well as all our sponsors and media partners. Keep track of what’s happening on the website, Facebook, Twitter F and LinkedIn. And don’t hesitate to respond and share with us your ideas, suggestions and encouragement.

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THANKS!

SEE YOU IN 2014! THANKS!