Radical Design for a New World

Thinking about my design methodology, I began to make an analysis of the changes that it has had since the beginning of this course and I could say that I went from a practice-based methodology to a practice-led one. In the first methodology, the creative artifacts (architectural and interior design projects) were the basis of the contribution to knowledge; while in the second one, the research leads primarily to new understandings about practice which means that all the experiences, readings, experiments, to mention some of them, are informing and conveying meaning to the Studio Practice, the Interior Design Project.

And to conclude, I could say that in my specific case my design methodology is a Radical Design one which could be better explained in Sottsass words (1973):

“…because one who is a designer could get into his head not to design like a good, well-educated schoolboy, things that a are good for industrial civilization, as they say it should be organized; but instead could get into his head not to be such a good schoolboy, and to design things that are not so good for industrial civilization as it is currently organized, but good instead for allowing reconditioned concentration, revealing meditation… one could get into his head to use consumerism so that ´consumption´ becomes liberating rather than conditioning. This is very difficult indeed, as everybody knows, but nobody says that you should not try. So far there’s no evidence that it wouldn’t work”.

So, maybe what we -designers- need is to change the way we are thinking, the way we have thought, that is, in my opinion, based on a colonial power bounding up in managing land, reworking it and extracting value through our environment to fuel a “necessity” of a society that is, as the same time fueling the system -capitalism- . That is design like a “good, well-educated schoolboy”, following the rules established by a colonial power to ensure that the system is going to continue working. Lets go and consider the values around our environment, our living beings that have been set in place through an extractive, violent regime that has render our natural environment as objects and resources, and also slaved people in the process. Design can help us reframe how we see the natural world, and how we see other organisms bridging the split between nature and culture.

Radical Indigenism

We had the idea that indigenous practices and innovations. Were low-tech, a term that means unsophisticated, uncomplicated, and primitive -not highly developed, simple, and very basic-. However, it is completely the opposite. While produce complex nature-based innovations that are inherently sustainable; are aligned to today’s sustainable values of low-energy, low impact, and low-cost. And the most important, understand that behind this radical indigenism (Watson, 2019) there is an accumulative body of knowledge, practice, and belief, handed out through generations by traditional songs, origin stories, and everyday life, that still live in some remotes places around the world.

It is eminently possible to weave ancient knowledge on how to live symbiotically with nature into the ways which designers shape the spaces of the future. For that reason, during my journey here, in London; I experienced a necessity of going back to my grounds, rethinking not only my design methodology but also my design thinking and references.

Indigenous people such as the Bora, Witoto, Tikuna and Makuna groups in the Western Colombian Amazon that perform as a living entity; have learned to live symbiotically with their environments, rather than disrupting it, and provide answers in the forms of sustainable, eco-friendly and peace buildings. These Lo-TEK infrastructures, in terms of Julia Watson (2018), are not a replacement for current ones, but are an important part of designing for overall sustainability in the face of climate change as they work with rather than against it.

We cannot go backwards, fixing all the hard infrastructures, creating more extractive activities and displacing more communities in the name of conservation. Instead, designers -architects and interior designers mainly- can go forward by funding, rethinking, rebuilding and scaling Lo-TEK building and spaces that support the resilience of both communities and cities, while addressing the inequalities and distance from nature that our current systems and climate solutions support.

Radical Design

Today I am making a calling to all designers and myself as well to questioning our roles in society, in economics, in fueling a consumer society rapidly growing since the post-war period. The same way that Ettore Sottsass Jr. ,known as a radical designer did in the 1970s creating a kind of informal conversation group without the designers, to think about how they-designers- might become part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Undoubtedly, we-designers- are part of it in terms of consumerism using materials, fueling inequality, etc.; but also design has been the backbone of capitalism, consumption and industrialization, and in that sense we-designers- have an original sin.

Radical designers of the 1970s such as Superstudio, Archizoom and Sottsass included argued designers out of existence. They pursued a philosophical position in which designers were no longer needed. The sustainable way forward they decided was to equip people with tools they needed to solve problems and design for themselves. This project called Global Tools consisted in an experimental anti-school of architecture and design, and was the theoretical centre of Radical Architecture (Thomé, 2014). And here is were craft becomes main character and takes importance, traditional craftspeople has shaped by hand objects that would be useful, practical, even enlightening, companions for their possessors´ lives. And though they have not called designers, they have produced basic communication signs, expressing some vision of how these objects should be used in the enactment of everyday rituals.

For that reason, I found relevant to design a temporary exhibition and concept store in my last studio practice project: Threads of Hope, by Casa Collage; that consists in a multi-sensorial immersion in a Tropical Rainforest where the audience could experienced the essence of the brand; be informed about the material-hemp and Fique-, the process, people involved, the place were is harvested the fibres and where artifacts are made, in summary information to trigger an awareness about conserving these traditional handicrafts practices; and where woven handicrafts are displayed as if in a gallery for sale purposes. The main aim is to create a ´new kind of space with an atmosphere of experimentation´, a journey of experiences rather than just a simply beautiful space. The idea is that this could influences the brand choice made by the consumer through creating an exhibition-like experience that is more like as touristic attraction than a place to shop. However, the attraction here is the vernacular weaved structures, called baskets of life inspired in the Colombian malocas and Latin American indigenous settlements that, at the end, want to create an awareness of the hand making importance into a heritage craft industry and the preserving of that legacy through time and across borders, as it evolves into a class of its own.

Threads of Hope also try to communicate the spirit of the brand -Casa Collage- which claim an integration of social and political consciousness with making establishing a dialogue between Colombian socio-political reality with design consumers through a selection of materials, the joinery and the way they are arranged, that could have the capacity to convey specific meanings such as the painful after a long and violent conflict between far-left guerrilla groups, the military, drug traffickers and paramilitary forces; as well as the social and economic inequities, domestic violence, poverty., and so on that as the same time reflects our national -Colombian- feelings. A meeting point of ideology, theory, materials and objects that combine the aesthetics of a design language with a social critique, as well as the work of art of Doris Salcedo, a Colombian artist who shows us all the wounds, cracks, ruptures, painful, and abuses that speak about a broken society victim to the ongoing conflict in her native Colombia.

Threads Of Hope final proposal. Carolina Lineros Ordúz, GDID Chelsea college of Arts

Finally, to conclude, a Radical Design Methodology was never as important as it is nowadays. Coping with very complex problems in an interdisciplinary setting with many disciplines involved required radical attitudes, changes and positions. The world needs that humankind can and must love symbiotically with her and her living beings. It is an indispensable part of life on earth, an essential to healthy ecosystems. Climate change is forcing us to rethink this strained relationship with living organisms and how it has led to disasters.

With wealthier countries contributing to climate change, “poorer” ones are suffering in a crisis that disproportionately impacts people living in the “Global South” (Watson, Abukhodair, Ali, Robertson, Issaoui and Sun). As a result, there is a string desire to change the perception of less valuable locations by highlighting the inventions and expertise that exist in these overlooked areas. In a region -the Global South- where high-technology is not a tool but where the world can find an enormous range of biodiversity and a wide spectrum of ancestral knowledge and techniques of living symbiotically with nature, could thinking through a radical handicraft the way to face not only with environmental problems but also bridge the inequity and split between these two worlds-North and Global South-?

“Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Buendía would finish deciphering the parchments, and has everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.”

― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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