Miguel Afonso Caetano"Along the way design lost its ethical intent. Channelling its frustrations with the world as it is and its compromising entanglements of toxicities, it has retreated into protest and insularity rather than attempting to seriously address the big issues. All the algae and fungi, the recycled water bottles and seaborne-plastics have made not a blind bit of difference to the planetary crisis, and design as a profession and an industry knows it.
The crisis is in its impotence. Design was once understood as a tool to improve lives. To some extent it did. We are still living in a world the modernists made, albeit not the one they imagined. A corporate interior, a coffee bar, a new apartment tower and the furniture inside it will all be the fruits of the designs of a century ago. The iPhone, which has flattened our lives, is the essence of minimal modernism. But the social equity somehow did not follow. That seems too big a task, too big an ask for now. It is a painful irony that in a world increasingly objectified and obsessed with design in every form — from fashion and graphics to supercars, watches, phones, apps and luxury interiors — that design has seemed to relinquish its desire to change the world. Instead it desperately clings to a few final moments of spectacle, effect and affect."
https://www.ft.com/content/e6373dc6-e1f4-462a-8d63-1580c876c3c4
Sofia Jade
Aspec*German
Adrian Segar
Lawrence Nault- Stone & Signal
ResearchBuzz: Firehose
