Shiraz Janjua, Associate Producer
Courtesy our friends down the hall at Minnesota Public Radio comes this feature on a design exhibit at Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center, and how design can tackle, head on, problems related to sustainability.
“In Western culture design is usually about styling, the appearance of things,” said [Walker curator Andrew] Blauvelt. “Most objects, when you attach the word design to them, it usually means its more expensive, it’s more refined, it has higher quality materials, those kinds of associations.”
The exhibit, called Design For The Other 90%, looks at how design gets past that chi-chi connotation to make practical improvments in people’s lives.
This reminds me of themes that came up during our An Architecture of Decency show. It also reminds me of an interview I once heard with Toronto-based designer Bruce Mau, who talked about a project he calls Massive Change:
3 months agoMassive Change explores paradigm-shifting events, ideas, and people, investigating the capacities and ethical dilemmas of design in manufacturing, transportation, urbanism, warfare, health, living, energy, markets, materials, the image and information. We need to evolve a global society that has the capacity to direct and control the emerging forces in order to achieve the most positive outcome. We must ask ourselves: Now that we can do anything what will we do?