Okay, so I'm not 7:22
in the evening.
Okay, so pleased to
meet everybody although
everybody is invisible at the moment, but I hope
to have a conversation you a little
bit later on.
So what I'm going to do is to tell three different kinds of
stories, but I've got two opening caveats to
begin with just to give you a sense of
Where I'm coming from?
So the first one all systems are constituted
by relations.
But not all relations constitute a system.
relations in the systems exist at and
in
various levels of complexity
As being as beings we
exist in and of a complexity.
We do not cannot fully comprehend the
complexity of this complexity.
We are on the inside.
Or seemingly acting as if we were
on the outside.
What I have to say falls into this
observation.
of an observation
So I'm sure all of this sounds a jumble of words.
But you'll see the war the words fall
into place as I move on.
So that was the first caveat the second one.
Is overarching your events focal themes?
about either the mind the biophysical sickness
and so it cannot be
delinked from the malady
of the planet's ecology in turn
this sickness.
Is a product of what is produced and how
by Rogue systems the
produced?
Is undercutting lives dwelling.
Is making the world our world?
award within the world
a situation of unmaking
the essence of this are making I call.
The future so very simply as we
make the world that we inhabit.
We are also destroying the world
that we depend upon.
that dialectical relation
at the moment is incredibly destructive. So
at its most basic what
we have to be able to do is to
slow this process down.
And the way that we're approaching it.
Is at the moment very limited. I'm
very problematic. So the
stories that I'm going to tell.
Will make what I've just said.
I hope it'll clear up.
So we are situated.
in an uncanny in an uncanny situation
and uncanny situation that is seeing
and thinking the scene.
That we're in that we're compelled to
make can tell compelled to manufacture.
Without Really gaining a sense
It is adequate.
To understanding what it is that we've
done.
In other words, we have a dislocation between sense
and the sensible.
so the three stories that I'm going to tell
an attempt to kind of deal at least
partly with this problem.
So Story one.
Is a Dry Town?
And a main dry in that it's got a lot of information and
it it is not particularly entertaining.
But it's important to put in place.
It's been autoimmune.
And recognizing designing error. That's the
story.
So to understand autoimmunity.
We have to start with understanding immunity.
The word derives from the Latin immunice and
obligation service Duty.
the biological concept of immunity
Was not known until the 19th century the credit
goes to a French chemist. You would
have heard of.
Louis Pasteur
Who defined how the process of immunity worked as a
result of his research on chicken
cholera?
This work was Advanced by a guy called Elias
mechanic a Russian imperial zoologist.
in the late 19th century
Who discovered cell mediated immunity?
This gained him a new a Nobel Peace Prize.
in 1908
over the stories more complex and you'll be
pleased to know more interesting than this history suggests.
The practice of immunization is ancient.
There are references to its earlier term, which is
very relation.
As a method of treating smallpox by
infecting persons.
With matter from pustules from an
infected body this goes back.
to
Greece in the 5th Century, BC
It's also practice in China in the 10th century.
And didn't become documented in Europe.
Until it arrived in
practice in Europe in the 19 in the 16th
century.
So the history of the modern method of verilization
Is credited to Edward Jenner?
He inoculated a man with matter from a cowpox
lesion.
in 1796
on this practice has been done and documented for several
decades earlier without scientific rigor.
of Jonah's experimentations and documentation
so by the late 19th century
The bi-metal concept of immunity was established.
As an organic and organic exemption.
from harm born by environmental pathogens
no prior to all of this.
Alongside this history.
Is the history of it as a political concept?
Which meant individual exemption from communal
demands?
This is another complex dialectic between the concept of
humanity and the relation to
community.
It means being a part of I'm being
excluded from.
And here we start to get a blurring between
the legal and the biological.
Legal immunity was actually founded in Roman
law in the 8th Century, BC.
for most of for most of the life
of the concept immunity
was confined to the language of Law and politic
cells are steady biological was a lake.
Roman or designated the musical universe
and the power of inclusion and exclusion of government.
By the local Authority together with the rights
and privilege belonging to the citizen.
The key here is immunity.
So positioned is a matter
of law.
That has the ability to place you
beyond it.
That notion of being placed Beyond this
critical to understand.
immunity then
no places you exempt from political obligation
from responsibilities immune from
prosecution from military service taxation.
legal capability
Financial indemnity
When the law formally set aside, it's the
universal obligations for particular subjects
or groups of subject. So that
ancient concept is pretty much how it's
still understood in law.
a biology law and
politics or convert
and arrive and expressed in the concept
of bio-politics a recent
concept predominantly given
profile by
Foucault
as well made in a sense
very very popularly understood
during the time of the pandemic so
In a sense the vast populations understanding
of immunity and auto emergency
really come from this recent
experience.
of the pandemic
and its management became indivisible.
As a medical condition from the political and
the legal and the economic. So the pandemic
brought together everything that I've been
talking about in relation to law and
the biological
so that's the first thing that's
put in place now for autoimmunity.
So while the history of immunity is old.
The trans and a transdisciplinary complexity
autoimmunity is new.
And it's difficult to beyond the biomedical still not
adequately acknowledged.
notwithstanding this Jack dirida
gave it presence and significance.
The stepping back a little bit the discovery
of autoimmunity.
Was credited to it Richard Pfeiffer in
1894. So
again, it goes back to the 19th century
is born in Poland educated in Berlin.
And had his initial career as a military doctor.
He rose to became a press professor of hygiene the
University of conansburg.
In their book on the history of autoimmunity Warwick
Anderson and Ian McKay note that autoimmunity
as an editor of a rose in
1951.
It was only recognized as a separate
degree disease.
In 1957, so it's
very new.
Biologically autoimmunity is
an overriding concept.
Describing a myriad of different ways in
which the immune system that supposedly protects
the proper self ends
up attacking the immune system.
And healthy cells tissues and organs.
the exact cause of autoimmunity
is still unknown.
There are theories about microorganisms and genetic
triggers, but not the case is not proven.
philosophically
autoimmunity is a failure of the self.
Or the collective to protect itself.
By destroying his own social political immune system.
Radar defined it in this way.
Is estranged Behavior?
by which an organization
acquies in a quasi suicidal fashion
itself Works to destroy his own
protection to immune itself against his
own immunity.
At the same time there to also darede
also sees Auto industry as
a rupture a breakdown.
an opening of the social political system
as such
it creates a function similar to the pharmacomicon
is something
that either kills you.
Or saves you.
Think Russia now.
Russia is an example of what?
Go to is talking about.
Russia in its actions
is in a sense also destroying itself.
It is a nation in a condition of autoimmunity.
So the social political and philosophical causes of
alterinity.
Also from there it is point of view include.
religion
and ideology
to give you
a kind of reasonably well known dramatic example.
It comes from the US people's Temple.
So I'm making the religious connection.
the James Jones Town project
that happened in remote Guiana on the
18th of November in 1978.
Jim Jones who led the project and the
cult
instructed 909 people
to commit Collective suicide
by injecting poison, which they
did
fast forward to now
There are people.
in the US
Who are willing to kill or be killed on the
Beast of Donald Trump?
These are not.
Covered examples of the fusion between ideology a
cult and autoimmunity.
But one that continually reap gets repeated
over time.
and across
different cultures and geographies
so these
religious and ideological actors
in
their practice end up
destroying themselves
Okay, so the next point.
Going a little bit tangently.
And making a different kind of perspective is that
seduction?
overwhelms reason
Conformity displaces self-respect reflection
people can act
without any sense
of what they're doing.
Being in total contradiction to what
they believe and to what they think that acting
action is called a crazier.
To act and contradiction to what
you know.
We do it all the time.
and evenly but collectively
humanity is acting in this sense.
with autoimmunity
You know this contradiction.
as unstainability unsustainability
so
we know that we're acting unsustainable.
But we go on doing it.
As a species we are effectively.
de-futuring ourselves
Well being diffuted by others.
so in this sense
autoimmunity collapses into unsustainability
and is a general condition of our being in the world now.
Why?
Because we are seduced by our material desire
and to extend.
This these desires are product.
of conditions of collective crazy
we don't do this alone.
We do this together.
certainly to be of the global North
is to know
A way of life. That is unsustainable.
transposed to autoimmunity
We are dying by a collective
induced protracted mass suicide over
time.
We don't see it this way.
because the passage of the unsustainable
is for us incredibly slow.
geologically
historically is happening incredibly quickly.
Now we come to design.
because design supports this process
It is absolutely bonded to futureing.
and the future
and is captured by.
Euchre
so
design functions in error
it is a product.
That is this understood as being
finished.
as an endpoint
whereas in fact everything that we produce.
is in process
everything goes somewhere. Everything has
a life. Everything has a Direction.
Everything ends up.
either
as being destroyed
or in a state of a
state of abandoned dysfunction to eventually
turn to this.
now the contrary practice
to design as it is.
Designed that thinks it is delivered
something as an endpoint as a product.
Is designed understood?
as ontological design
ontological design recognizes that everything that
we design
goes on designing
at the moment
as you listen to me.
You're sitting in a chair.
That chair was designed but it
is going on designing it is designing your sitting
at the moment.
And you're sitting in a chair over the course of
your life.
has will have
a physiological concept on you
and you will schedule condition.
So chairs are designed and go
on designing as does almost everything
else that we bring into existence.
So that actually changes how we see
the world.
Once you understand this you start to see
things as movement rather than static
you start to see them in time.
As well as being in space.
So the implication of what I'm saying?
Is that the moment we design in error?
We design because we don't actually see what we're doing.
at this fundamental level
But equally we design without power.
Because most designers design as
service providers.
A search they are not responsible for
the most fundamental.
decisions
about what is designed? What is to be
designed?
It is overdetermined.
by the client
by The Practice
so the Contra practice
To design as service.
Is designed as an autonomous practice?
So the designer is the person.
That makes the fundamental design decisions and
takes responsibility for what they bring into
existence by Design.
So if we bring together ontological design and
autonomous design
what we have is a foundation.
of an a totally new
design
paradigm
so design in error
fundamentally is a failure to design
in time.
And the Contra practice to designing in time.
Is to design back from the future.
a future
Where one assists a risks that are
in front of us?
And places those risks.
In front of what it is to be designed. So
the passage of the design object through
time is modified by
a recognition of the risks that
it has to negotiate.
Okay.
so
That was Story number one, and I
did give you the warning that it was a bit dry.
now
we go to Story number two, which is a warmer tail.
That links to what I've just been saying.
I'm going to talk about oppressive things.
I'm talking about the future and futureing as
design in time.
as a species
we
are extremely creative.
to wit
we've created an enormously complex
world.
of material Technical and aesthetic
things
this is a world within the world.
We celebrate it.
We still creativity.
We reward creativity.
But we forget that creation is dialectical.
It is indivisible.
from destruction
and is of
a recursive essence
of life and death
and I've met all metabolic processes.
So
the wooden chair destroys the tree
the steel from which a myriad products are
made.
Depends on the destruction that occurs.
of extracting matter
from the environment
new ideas
destroy old
so the relation of creation and destruction
Is invisible indivisible?
and ethics and a
material sense
Is the designing line?
between the one and the other
the point of decision
the decision which says does what I
create justify what I destroy that's
an incredibly simple
statement to make
but is a fundamental observation observation which
escapes us.
It is an observation and a question.
We simply do not ask.
so it didn't man's
another way of thinking
about what we have created
and what will
Be created.
And this second way
of thinking.
demands another way of seeing
it Demands a confrontation with alethea.
Which means?
the bringing of what you see
out of concealment
the truth
of the unconcealed
produces appearances
it's like
the creation of the beautiful
facades of selves and
things
we
make ourselves invisible
by the manufacture
of our appearance
design is a practice.
overwhelmed by consumment
so much of what we design
is about
conceiving
the facade
of a building
You know is fundamentally about conceding the
structure of the building.
the body of the calm
is about concealing.
the machine
the clothes that we wear
Are about concealing us?
So we live in a world of designed.
concealment
and at its most fundamental
What we concealing?
Is truth.
What we can see is the ability to see
what we need.
to see
So this relation?
Which sounded?
Abstract a moment ago.
Is actually very concrete.
And very challenging.
and
whilst we can't strip everything bare.
What we can do.
Is learn how to see beyond?
the concealed
destruction
Is there for everyone to see?
But we don't see it.
Because it's so much of it is
hidden.
And the more prosperous the more wealthy.
No more inadverted commas civilized the
more inverted commas developed we are.
the more destruction there is
that is rendered invisible.
one of the things that
underpins all of this
Is the observation The Plato made
when he simply pointed out?
We see with our mind not our eyes
our eyes are simply Optical instruments.
What is strange?
Is that one our creative capabilities and intellectual
capabilities of our species?
Have created this enormous complexity of
complexity.
including our complex way of seeing
And whilst we have all sorts of theoretical devices
that make that apparent.
humanitically phenomenologically and
in terms of systems cyst
General systems theory
and second order cybernetics
they do not.
Address the scale the horror of
Destruction that accompanies are acts of
creation.
for all our theoretical sophistication
we still do not see what is essential
to render vision.
and Design
still hides the ruin.
The ruin that is unsustainability in
process.
so, I'm really
emphasizing this
on emphasizing this question of seeing
because once you can think seeing
then you can see the world as otherwise
you can see what there is to do
what there is to learn.
What there is to take action towards?
in
a way, which is not a turning away
from
So while sight is natural?
Seeing is alert.
And what is learned produces at the
moment seeing in error?
most significantly
the objectification of things Ray finds
them.
They are frozen in time was being in time.
As I've said everything is in process.
and by a viewable a variable duration
Everything Changes moved decays disappears
and all matter and energy
will eventually be dissipated.
Notions like Recycling and economic circularity only
get part of this process.
They don't get the constructive expenditure
of excess.
the expenditure of matter over time
the essential
creation destruction relation
They don't get to the point again coming back
to design.
of the essential task
of Designing things away
those things
That have been created that are acting to
destroy us and what we depend upon.
Need to be designed away.
That is a practice.
that needs
to be created the needs to
be invented that these to be developed.
so de-futuring
is a way of seeing in time.
IT projects back
And IT projects forward into conditions of
causality our search
it informs designing.
in the medium of time
it brings the future to the present.
as the projected face of things
it makes the expected end of life something.
to place
from which it is created it puts
things in their condition of origin.
It sees nature and the fate of things in a
relational Matrix.
everything
this situated in time and space
and again to kind of hammer home the question of seeing.
But we're endeavoring to try to learn.
Is the ability to see things in time
as well as in space?
And what impedes us from doing this is
the fact that we are chronophobic.
We have a fear of time.
We function with the illusion.
of permanence social reiterate
the propensity of design is the
design in space.
But diffusion demands designing in
time in two respects.
designing in the medium of time
and designing with a sense of urgency.
It makes this these up demand because unsustainably and
our species is in
a state as I have been saying of autoimmunity.
the same message
design as Elemental
To making a world within the world.
that at the moment
Is it dominantly accelerating?
towards our financial being
so the essence of design in
time.
Is making time.
the essence of unsustainability
Is the erosion of time the destruction of time?
So the task of design at its most
fundamental to repeat is making time.
A motor creation is a mode of Destruction.
Is destroying our condition of dependence the collective
bodies at risk from the danger?
Within
as much as our individual
automobile body
without
relationality therefore
creates direct links between destruction produced
by the makers and the maid
by our own
beings
acts of Destruction
anthroposantic climate change future pandemics
There's no side eco-side inequity.
escalating condition of Google global conflict
are all relationally connected.
They may cut the condition or part of the condition.
of the complexity of complexity
when we through reason
is aggregate things in order.
to We Believe
understand
and address problems
this
disablegation this removal perform complexity
is a removal from the condition of
possibility.
So here is the bigger challenge.
The challenge are really understanding complexity.
The recognizes that it
will always be on Beyond us.
the acquisition of knowledge
over dominates
the realization of fully knowing
there is no making.
without destroying
I know I'm repeating this endlessly.
But we have to understand that includes ourselves.
We have to understand that empirically currently.
are species
is monstrous
We are two things biologically. We
are still an animal.
social culturally and cosmologically
We are.
being
of differential social cultural evolutionary
creation
What destined?
are destruction
are monstrosity
what invites a confrontation with the
impossible?
is
the recognition that in terms of creation
We became out of control.
We Amplified it.
technologically
We've always been.
technological
but every iteration of our evolution
Amplified this capability
to the point at which it is now
accelerating beyond our control.
So that that process of the future.
Is indivisible from a relation?
to technology
So for all our instrumental knowledge and capability.
I had a really fundamental level.
We do not know what we're doing.
We do not know the consequences of what we creating. We
bring things into existence.
Without understanding where they are
going.
On what they would do on route.
so
we come back to the question of saying.
We come before ourselves are being
out of control without limit.
to understand the essence
of the thing.
Is not to really understand it.
in full
we have to understand what things do.
Not in Heidegger talked about the thing
of things.
The thing of the designing of things the
thing that you're sitting on as the chair
is designing a city. That is the thing of the chair.
For management imagine looking at a room.
a shop The Factory full of things
and rather seeing them as objects.
Seeing them as vectors seeing them as
traveling seeing them as force fields.
getting an autological understanding
Of what design tells you?
When you see things as directionally going
on designing.
So you see in a sense?
a room as a field of forces of movement of trajectories
so again
coming back to seeing
we're talking about how we see ourselves and what
we do.
a build a bird
built a nest
20 Generations later
a hundred generation letter later
a bird builds a nest
like a bird
we need food.
and a metaphorically
we need a nest.
but across Generations
What did we build?
We built a f****** great big world of
incomprehensible complexity.
monstrous miracle
of insupportable material excess
there is absolutely no correlation.
between what we've created
and what we need.
a monstrous
Is a being out of control?
my feeling
as an animal
my impossible attempt to think for
you and see as an animal.
my attempt
to be in control while being out
of control.
Within my constituted being in
the world.
Confronts me and my animality.
Is it possible?
To see through the eyes of ourselves as animal.
at the same time
it is something.
That is just instructive.
to try to do
to see just how ridiculous.
We are.
from the perspective
of an animal
so that was
story
number two
story number three short
so what is
where does the future of architecture come from?
And you don't have to be interested in architecture to
find this story of Interest.
the past especially in the modern past
in relational architecture is futurely refused.
What I'm going to say about architecture tries
to actually ground.
Some of the things I've said in the past two stories.
consider
the most sophisticated buildings
most of us to get a building design materials
construction methods systems technologies
that have ever existed exist
now
however
A hundred years is now deemed
old for a commercial building.
To survive such buildings are
usually programmed for major refit.
after 50 years
Yet there are buildings of the most basic materials.
built with the most basic of Technologies
that are still standing.
after 1,000 years
or more
example
Of this house. It's the
image of my title slide.
Is called a nap of Hower?
at Papa Westway
in the orkneys
in Scotland
It's the highest it was built 5,
600 years ago
and you can still recognize it.
From his remains as a house.
a more complex building the Temple of
Colossus in Crete
build around 4,000 years ago
a more complex building
But it's still in the sense.
looks
reasonably sophisticated
You know, it has many of the qualities many
of the features.
of contemporary architectural and relation of
a structure
that is over arched.
the style
then there is the pantheon in Rome.
built over 2,000 years ago
that building is still in use.
So we have this massive contradiction.
What we need.
I'm calling a fusion architecture.
This is not an architecture.
dominated by the new new
but what is this renewed?
to create conditions of sustainment
In contrast to sustainability there is an
imperative to deal with what early it really exists.
This means metrofitting remaking the material making
the social cultural fabric.
We're making the economies assistant of cities.
So this concept of metrofitting.
Is one of the practices that in a
sense?
Recreates the possibility of Designing another way.
Okay.
I'm nearly finished.
Just a bit more an architecture going to
designing back from the future.
There's a method that goes along with this.
This is in a sense.
creating a narrative
a narrative that's based upon a designated moment
of time. Let's say a hundred years.
It goes to researching when I talked about earlier all
the kind of risk that one can predict that
what our building is likely to face in a hundred years.
Telling that story.
And then writing a narrative that directs what
it is.
That is designed.
But that narrative is a making.
It is in a sense writing a story.
across a line marked in time
marked with
What the impacts?
that have been identified our
What people's responses to the parks are?
And what kind of Design Concepts ideas
practices?
Can engage that?
It is taking in a
sense.
the notion of Designing where things
are going
as the basis of the start of
design
It is a project brought to designing in the
present.
In relation to affected Futures. It
does not deliver certainty.
But it's a more critical approach.
the designing simply based upon
required building standards and short-term short-term
expectations in the Run of environmental change.
so to conclude
the three stories are not a unifying system.
But they all are relationally connected.
They are all about the ontological condition of diffusion of
ourselves and other beings they all
about auto-destructive processes equating
to autoimmunity.
That perpetuate design in error.
We depend on things in so many ways.
As they future but equally on mass maturely
and performity performatively
they are oppressive. They also
do future
they travel to the end.
Seeing such for marks for monomer.
Is essentially seeing them in time?
Which is a crucial sift shift in
the register of action.
so
we
totally need immunity.
But we are the autoimmune.
as I've indicated
but the story three tells the future of another
kind of architecture.
in affirmatively connects
It delivers the possibility of working towards immunity
with what already exists
rather than trying to impose another
structure on the world.
That can claim to deliver immunity. We have to make
what is this immune?
And to give you a kind of a context.
And a kind of a point of reference.
To what we're facing.
Lagos
2100
a city of projected 80 billion people
maybe 80% of that city is going to be informal
illegal.
note
under the direction of any control
in the face of climate change impact in future
pandemic's food security.
social ecology breakdown economic Exchange
and conflict it is a space.
of demonstrable
autoimmunity
it is very likely to happen.
so the intervention
in cities of architecture now
in a sense is one of
the few ways that we can preemptively do.
With this kind of problem.
Lagos is not an isolated example.
cities all over the global South
a traveling in that kind of Direction
with those kinds of numbers
cities
Are designing events?
They are events in time.
Extractivism into industrialism Wars agriculture
are examples of other events of
Designing and time.
all in those systems
the systemic
non-sitemic relations, excess
and Orders of comfort
the orders of comfort they will create.
by designing in ways
that we believe meet our immediate needs.
That don't meet our essential needs.
so
What we need.
what we embrace
What design Futures and what
dear future and demands?
is embracing
the dialectic of creation and destruction
seeing in time of acting in time
and designing other words otherwise
I'm kind of aware that you know
to talk of these issues at this scale.
You know is overwhelming.
It is in a sense.
Facing a condition that can feel like
it's absolutely totally impossible.
But it isn't.
because the history
of our species
is a history.
Of the attainment of what from any moment of
time could appear to be impossible?
so
facing the complexity
of complexity
we commit to
striving
in strife
to confront the impossible
Thank you for your patience.
Thanks, Tony.
I don't know if you can see us at
all now.
I don't know if we can arrange away that you can also see us.
But we'll have some questions I can see you you can.
You see me through that.
Good see the front row of people and I can see you. Hi. I
don't know the camera is and thanks.
That was great.
And I love stories. So that
was perfect. And I really enjoyed
the way you were able to speak to their focus areas.
Of the program. So, thank you.
and I'm now going to hand over to do
the Q&A to two of my
friends and colleagues
we have Tom Ainsworth who is
gonna kind of chair the in-person questions
and we have Evan Barber who will be
able to take the
Online questions, so please make sure if you're online hello
to all of you. Please put
the questions in the chats or
in the question bit. Sorry not
in the chat just in the question, but and yeah
over to you so
Do you want to intro Tom? Can you introduce yourself?
This is Tom. He's gonna introduce himself.
I I nice to meet some my name is Tom Ainsworth.
I'm the third part of
the radical methodologies group that are hosting
this event working with Ben and with Sally.
and so
Can go straight out already got questions. So, please raise your
hands and I'll command them you must.
Thank you very much for a lot of stimulating thoughts
that I'll be mulling around for a while still one
of the things that came up yesterday and
you hit on today. You talked
about ontological designing and autonomous design converging
together and idea of things as ongoing movements
and yesterday in the Bates and
dialogue that we had here. It also came up this idea of moving
from design as something that predetermines and ends
to support the kind of more open-ended ongoing transforming
process.
So and you also talked about you know,
buildings that exist for 5,000 years or 4,000
years. And in that how do we differentiate ourselves
in this ongoing movement? What
should be stable and what should be
dynamic and adaptive in our designing
process? And I one of the the points that
I think about is Italian physicist Carlo raveli.
He talks about everything as interaction and he has
a very poetic saying that a rock is like a kiss and I'd
love that because it helps us think even the things
that are really stable are just kind of temporary coming together happenings,
even these buildings. So in that
how do we think about what we do as designing and
how we're conf?
however temporarily and what should be
long-term and what do we work toward in that longevity versus
leaving open? Thank you.
Well, I'm going to in a sense repeat.
to answer the question a little bit of what I've said in the sense of
the importance of
Trying to see things.
in time
seeing them in motion.
but
in addition and responding to
the kind of the essence of the question.
Of making critical judgments around the
criticality of what it
is that we see.
and what I mean by criticality
is not just being critical but
seeing everything as
as it were poised.
in a critical condition
as something which is
creative or destructive
and
both can be positive and both
can be negative.
So
you know one of the things that
We do.
Is that we create things?
That are intended to be destroyed.
And we create things which are
intended.
to endure
But we get it wrong.
We create things that shouldn't endure.
That are made.
to endure
And things that should endure the don't.
So that you know as a very kind of simple observation.
But it's it's a product a product of failing to
see.
the moment of creation as a moment of the designation of
time
so
in terms of
what a designer does.
It's a question of pruning a kind of.
an insert into the activity
creating a kind of pause, you know
creating an activity.
simply
of viewing and thinking
in time
I'm saying this this has kind of
naive and quite simple.
But it isn't
it actually kind of requires.
stepping into another kind of
sensibility
so
in a kind of summing up kind of way.
We have to be able to design three things.
we have to
design design itself
in a different way
we have to design the way that we design.
in a different way
and we have to design what we design.
in a different way
So the challenge thus is
a complete redesign of
design.
and to do that
from my experience
you have to step back from design.
You have to kind of Step Aside.
from the discipline
you have to kind of recognize that a great deal of design education is
simply education in error.
Hi, my
name is anakura and I first I just
want to thank you for the talk. I am not a designer.
I'm an anthropologist and a psychologist.
And but I've worked in the field of design my
entire career and what you were talking
about were was this aspect that
I've always seen as the lack of
reflection for unintended consequences.
And so we have intention and and then the
unintended consequence but I think what I
have is more of a comment than a question because
it's around time.
And the way in which and I think it's pushes towards
again this transdisciplinary way of doing
and being because what at
least from the
the practice of anthropology I see very much
what I've termed in a book. It actually
comes from a film. It's a little embarrassing. There's
a film called before nurse.
Of HBO has it binged it
during covid and they use the
term called trans temporality.
And it's this action. I think it was
as I was listening to of describing this
this movement back.
And forward and in any which
way and it it resonated with me, so I've
written academically not from a design perspective
but anthropological perspective where this is
the precisely what I think
is been missing. So I just really was
moved by your comment around time
and this aspect of bringing
time into the equation.
Okay. Thanks. Thanks for that.
I just say a little bit more about time in
that case because
one cannot in a sense separate time
being is being
in time literally.
being
within the medium as the condition
of being
as being in space
the other thing is that
you know, we have a we have these Concepts.
And the assumption is that some of
them mean one thing but the meaning of time.
Is complex and plural?
conjunctional
so for example
hiding up points out that everything has its
own time.
Aristotle in common with
Einstein
describe time
As that in which events occur?
And then there is kind of a notion.
of recursive time
of it not being linear, but Circle circular.
And then there is the confusion.
the time
is measured but time.
is not measure
the kind of instrumentalization of time that we function with
as measured duration
Is simply another?
Kind of reductive way of understanding time.
So
You know the question of the nature of time.
Is an eternal question?
Is an eternal.
puzzle
and
as we
acquire knowledge
So the nature of time.
in a sense morphs
it is not able to be rendered
as a stability.
Well, I was struck by when you
were saying that that design is
in the service of clients and one of
the participants in a in a panel
yesterday had said to me that that as
a designer he was frustrated because he couldn't
do the kinds of projects. He wanted because he
designed in the service of industry
and and he was working, you know, he has a design practice.
So what I'm wondering was when you
talk about speaker, I can't hear.
Can you hear me now?
Yeah, okay. So I was saying that
I was struck by what you said about design being
in the service of clients and I
am participant on a panel that I
was on yesterday had said
to me that he was frustrated because he feels
that he can't do the kind of design he
wants because he works in
the service of industry. And when you talk
about redesigning design, I wondered if you could talk
about the practicalities of how how what
does that mean in terms of
of redesigning clients and finding support
for the kind for Designing in
time and for Designing in you
know in support of a viable future.
Okay, so there's quite
a there's quite a complex issue.
And there are various bits to it. So.
let me just
deal with to begin with autonomous design
autonomous design
can be understood
in two ways
one way
Is the realization?
of
people in need
are having the ability.
to discover a solution
to meeting that need by Design
through the assistance
of a designer
I'll give you a concrete example.
I worked.
with a colleague in Colombia
With demobilized Fark.
Gorillas
Women from a local community.
farmers
All of whom would living in the community
trying to wait find a way.
to economically survive post conflict
they all had a contribution.
To that solving that problem.
and
it centered around.
growing coffee a marketing coffee
But the marketing and coffee wasn't about simply selling
the product.
but using
the coffee
as a mechanism of communication through its Packaging.
to describe the process
of the redesign the Reconstruction of
community
so all the ideas.
came from
the community
they were given the kind of authoritative to make
the design decisions.
supported
by designers
So that is it kind of a different relation.
to a designer being told what to design by
a client
because the designer was part of the conversation.
So that's one version another version.
and that version comes from
A Columbian American Anthropologist who
some of you may have
read our tour Escobar?
The other version is the autonomous designer as the
designer. That is the author of Their Own.
products
now one of the fundamental principles
Is simply simple to state?
but challenging to meet
which is if you can identify.
a significant problem
that affects other people
that needs solving
and develop it as a
design.
project
then there is
a reasonable possibility
That somebody some organization.
Will support the realization of the solution to
that problem.
And the solution might not be.
A kind of a solution as well as
it were.
an endpoint
but think it more as a
changing a set of conditions
So I'm substituting changing conditions for solution.
So that that requires.
An a sense a different kind of
Entrepreneurship.
And the development of a different set of skills.
It requires a designer to be a far more
articulate.
communicator
far more perceptive
researcher
a farm or socially orientated actor
so autonomous design
You know could well be conceived.
As another kind of mode of design education. It
is something that
has to be learned
at the moment. It is something that a few
people learn.
simply through their own practice
But it can be.
Something which is supportive. It can be something which
is
developed
It is a condition of possibility it is so
in the warrants being created.
As for example a course.
so
that's part of the response.
the
the other is
it is very common.
For designers after they've been in the workforce for
a number of years.
To be alienated to be frustrated to be
the satisfied to be for us to be kind of.
kind of
anxious about what they are doing as a
designer.
So what happens that
people get jaded people kind of a sense
feel compromised, but they still
have to go on earning a living.
So that actually becomes a very destructive condition,
you know, it feeds into what I've
been talking about in terms of
autoimmunity what you end
up destroying your own practice your own
spirit.
so
the kind of the narrative
of design
of which
autonomous design
is a part.
Kind of did not demands rewriting.
demands new stories
so rather than Stories being
a digression
the story of design
needs to be Rewritten. We used
to be reanimated.
And seen as a path of action
seeing as something that has agency that
has the possibility.
of change
so I wrote a story of relocating.
A city in crisis. It was a
story of
35,000 words in a book on design right in
design fictions
But it is an instructive story.
You know, it came out of the experience of working
on.
relocating cities
in 2008. I worked on the
relocation of a city in Northern Sweden.
so that there is
as a were tangible knowledge.
in that story
So the stories aren't a digression from learning.
They are in their construction a way
of learning.
And a way of the transmission of learning.
so, you know, that's just a little bit of a
response to the question you asked but there are things
that can be done that need to be done.
But it requires stepping outside of the
familiar.
Okay, fantastic. So we've got six questions
lined up. So the
first of those is with Peter, we've got
one online one up here and then we'll
come across to this side of the room in this too so
far over here so first
Okay.
Thank you for so. I didn't
hear any of the oh, well, there are six questions lined up.
I guess I'm I'm next Peter Jones. Thank you
for inspiring.
Um talk about our own Futures and
and helping us recognize the
responsibility of the designer which reminds
me of of chomsky's responsibility of
the intellectual the points of serious relationship to
the Future. So what what I
well my question is about is in reconfiguring
the designer as an autonomous
designer that
What can we now choose our purposes for design?
That is I I I've been
working for the last five years. My practice is moved as
we've been learning more about systemic design and
creating different practices. Not just
research groups than universities but practices
that are that are working with the
principles and methods and systemic design.
We have to now convince out of
Market. This is a different approach to designing with
completely different clients to follow up from I think the other
question
I don't say this is autonomous in
my sense. But as a following a different being of
service to a different ontological context
if you will, so it's working with systems, but those
systems are are social systems.
So municipalities, for example climate change
planning with municipalities where I'm part of
a team. I'm not the lead. I might
be called the lead designer, but I'm not designing the
you know, I'm part of it design part of
a team in which design is now part of
part of that group. We're working with seafood sustainability across
an industry Group, which has hundreds of
ngos and Industry players including Walmart. That is
a very slow process. Right? So the the
type of temporality in which a design practice is
used to working in which we conduct workshops
create artifacts have different visual outputs
in sustainable Seafood. This might
take years.
With a bioregional context so
I mean you talk about one of the farc. There are
a number we've been working with Costa Rica with South Devon
fiber shed with economic projects
in in Canada new new
economics. These are we don't know
how
We aren't trained and not even me as a professor. You
know, I never learned this in my own
education. So we're training students in ways
of Designing within groups and teams
and multiple stakeholder contacts where we
haven't learned ourselves. We're figuring this
out as we're going.
So I don't doesn't feel autonomous to me. It feels of service
to a different purpose to a
sponsor that is
that has some has some
access to the system that we'd like
to change and the we isn't the designers. We
the we is one that I'm called to help with
that. I believe has some rightness has you know
has an ethics and ethical
service if you will so there this gets blended
it doesn't you know, it doesn't come out as like oh, this
will be the next project but these projects
really come to us and I think in in systemic
Design This is where we're we're trying to catch up.
To what we're being called to do. So do you I
mean some of the projects you've described Tony are along those
lines. So I mean, it's you know,
who are we being of service to how do we choose? What
is our responsibility for those choices?
Okay, so I mean look there are
a lot of issues there. So I'm just going to
I'm just going to kind of respond to
a few briefly
first of all
within the whole dimension of
systems
We have a collision with systemic problems.
So
first of all, there is the kind of
the criticality of the analytic
of the system that you are inducted.
into working Within
so that that
poses a question of where to start
or what to accept
what a critically engage.
what to identify as risks
So the The crucial issue is
not.
What is the problem to solve?
But rather where is the place to begin?
And that comes
to the whole question of time.
Because as you point out these things take a long time
and the
time that somebody something takes.
is determined by
the thing itself
So that requires seeing the system.
as a condition of transformation in
time
But then that throws up all the other kind of
major issues that we have the systems.
in terms
of
the degree
Of enclosure of the system the boundary
of the system.
has not been
autonomous
so here we have a relation of autonomous
design with the question of autonomy itself.
So all I'm really doing in responding to
the to the issues.
Is kind of indicating.
the generation of questions
the prefigure
Take any taking any InDesign engagement.
with the system
one question online from Sylvia Barbaro
Thank you so much for your inspiring speech after reading
so many of your articles. It completes my comprehension of
the responsibility of design and building Futures. I would
have thousands of questions. However, I would like to underline a
concept that you mentioned and I would like to explore it
a little bit more. What is the role of Education in design?
And what are the main skills that future designers should
have in order to really be responsible and
conscious of this situation. Thank you so much.
Okay. Thanks for that question.
I start with one very simple.
comment
the most important thing
for design education
Is for the designer to be educated?
and what I mean by that is
not too simply learn how
to design.
but to learn
how to understand the world in which design functions
so that that then means
going on Beyond design as a discipline.
It also means
kind of understanding design as a continual learning
process. So we
so there isn't a moment
where you become educated as a designer and then
simply become a practitioner.
to be a designer
has to be understood as a way of learning.
That in order to be responsible.
You have to be able to learn.
how to address
the continual changing circumstances
in which
We function.
so
to be frank
I don't have a very high regard for design education as
it is.
especially kind of object orientated design education
and the most significant change that
needs to happen.
Is the re-education of design educators?
Fantastic, thank you. So we've got a question here at the
front first and then we'll come up to the left hand
side.
Hello, Tony, Michael Arnold Mages.
Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to spend with
us today and prepare this very rigorous
talk.
I appreciate it very much. I was
interested if an extending
the metaphor of autoimmunity that you
brought up earlier and my
practice is medical. I'm a designer and my
practice is medical adjacent. So I'm asking this question
a bit from the limits of my knowledge here. But
you know, as I understand the various therapies for
autoimmune conditions, one of
these would be to degrade the ability of the
autoimmune cells to replicate one would
be strengthening biological barriers within
the body to keep them. These autoimmune
cells away from what they are attacking one would
be, you know, killing off the autoimmune system
either.
Actually are completely which leaves the you know,
the person in, you know,
quite a reduced State and then
some new quite experimental therapies have
looked to reboot the autoimmune system.
So kill it off essentially and
then restart it with stem cells derived
from the the bone marrow itself.
And I was wondering if you've you know, extending this
metaphor of autoimmunity as a condition of contemporary
life if you've
had any idea towards therapy.
Yeah, I mean first of
all.
What it puts on the agenda is the
imperative of it of responsibility
experimentation.
so that
We Can't Stop by presuming that we
actually know how to do this
so
One of the implications when you
understand it as a political
issue not just a political issue.
Is thinking about a different
kind of politics?
But that bringing that to the relation.
to the treatment
to the treatment of
medical problems
so that
You don't simply have.
the patient as a passive
entity being treated
but but the patient becomes part of
a different kind of dialogue becomes an
actor in The experimentation, although they
might be the object equally of experimentation.
Which requires the patient to
be informed to be given knowledge.
so
There is a kind of a whole question of expertise stake in
all of this.
And I come back to the kind of the notion of the pharmacone.
and the kind of
the path that is steered between
dangerous action of going to the
edge
and the notion of
immunity
being a relocation of place
so thinking about how you put
the person
Who is being treated and participating
in their own treatment?
As being put in another place.
so
I obviously haven't got off and
off the top of my head answer to the challenges
that are posed.
but
there is a direct relation to be made here.
between cure
and care
both beg to
be resought
and that relates
to the activity of
being careful.
As being full of care.
So what does it actually mean?
to be
to be full of care in a Way Beyond a
kind of fuzzy humanitarianism
Excellent. Thank
you. I think we got time for two more questions. So we've got one up here
and then we'll finish with Matilda. That's right.
Okay.
Thank you very much for the three stories. You told
us.
I'm Christine Wigan.
I would ask you a question.
When we decide for sustainability, we very often
meet the economic system as a barrier.
What do you think the economic systems?
represent in your stories
and how
will it be there through our management
of the collapse or the change?
Okay. So again a
challenging and difficult question.
the first thing to observe is
is that we have to be very careful about
the notion of sustainability.
Because so much of what happens
under the name of sustainability.
Is sustaining the unsustainable.
And the basis of Economics to the
question of sustainment.
is
Centered around what it is. That is
it's changed.
so
what we actually require and I can't
go beyond. This is the kind of a convergence.
between understanding the ecological
as a condition of its change.
which is
in a sense the process of life life is
predicated.
What the transformation?
of energy into life
and
what should have happened what needs to happen?
Is this should be the basis?
of
full economic Exchange
so it isn't a question of
designing and idealized system
But rather to take the principle that
I've employed.
By dealing with what already is this in Metro fitting?
to
economic conditions
And a kind of asking the question.
within your own practice
of what is the
imperative imperative of
Exchange?
so one of the things that as a designer
That invites consideration.
Is what I've talked about of.
design for elimination design
for design of what needs to be destroyed
so that can translate into a different relation of Exchange.
That also next to
another kind of notion.
of the reinvention of utility
that goes also to
what I talked about in terms of
concealment
of
in a sense of Designing in truth
where we actually reveal things.
So rather than start with
a new economic theory.
Yeah one I'm not saying this is the absolute answer
but one possibility.
Is to work with different
economic practice this design.
Question from yesterday's
keynote so over to Matilda.
Thank you so much.
Yeah me.
Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much
Sony guiding lights.
I'm Attila Tom and I did the talk yesterday. I
also mentioned care so that's a nice link.
And obviously I super agree with you that
design needs to be redesigned including design education.
And I also think it's not in the
future. I think we've seen so many beautiful examples not
least here like fan Angelie
and Sophia Daria and in other
places of design design education relationships with
clients already being redesigned.
and
From my point of view. This is Design coming from
a logic of Earth instead of another logic but
a burning question I have is
that obviously the dominant Narrative of design is
still in service of economic growth and
has amazing muscles and it's being rehearsed
all the time. So what do we do to outcrowd that
narrative and how do we connect all
the myriads of examples of new ways
of Designing the access and are not coming from
the typical protagonists will say
And to give those examples more
power and more visibility and
I think of this as a kind of wildlife Corridor
where the butterflies of the new designs can
flow freely, and I wonder do you
also see the need for this and how can we do
it together? How can we connect all this amazing examples
so that they can outcrowd let's say
the bad design. Thanks.
Okay, so
You know, this has been a problem.
the kind of bow goes back many many decades
and
there's clearly been a failure.
To be able to do something which is fundamental.
And it centers on the notion
of gathering.
Okay, so Gathering.
Is both a coming together?
and a comprehending
So that begs
a strategy.
a strategy of gathering
Which requires a narrative?
Okay.
And what obstructs that a narrative?
Is the kind of the history
of humanitarianism in design?
So what actually happens, is that the margins?
People acting on the margins are not actually doing the
same thing.
They're pointed in all sorts of different directions.
with all sorts of different motivations
and politics
and and projects
so there isn't there isn't
a narrative at the moment. That hasn't been a narrative.
So in in a way it comes back to what I've been
doing. It's about.
It's about creating another story.
And it's a it's about disseminating that
story.
But it
is incredibly hard.
And what has to be prepared to
live with the failures?
over time
but one of the things to remember
Is just how powerful a design
narrative can be?
So there are there are enough people in the
room that you're in at the moment and there
are enough people listening online.
To be a really powerful force.
If you could actually gather together the
narrative.
to comprehend it
and to realize it.
And to illustrate the
point.
of the power of a few
the whole
kind of the whole format of modern consumerism
the negative
really began with
less than a dozen designers
in the late 1920s and
the early 30s in the US.
With the waiting in which streamlining became?
a motor for the generation of
of consumerism
in relation to the New Deal
Where the desire?
for designed commodities
collided with the electrification of the US.
through the TVA through Tennessee Valley Authority
and the arrival of credit purchase
all of
which
Became the generative motor of a cuminance
of a consumer-led.
economic recovery celebrated in
the World's Fair in New York in 1939
So this is the negative story. This is the negative story
of a few designers.
Being the generative motor of contemporary hyper consumerism.
So, how do we invert that story?
How do we reverse engineer that story?
How do we create?
a community of designers
that our future
fantastic. Thank you very much. So can we give another big round
of applause?
Thank you. I feel like I'm smarter.