Koert of Next Nature issuing an actual design manifesto

*Really? Wow.

http://www.nextnature.net/2014/01/innovative-nostalgia-design-the-future-by-referring-to-the-past/

(…)

“Believe me, I should know. Although I myself studied computer science and art, I’ve been teaching for about ten years at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Now, I can tell you that people at a Technical University really know a lot about technology. There are buildings in which they make nanostructures for solar panels, buildings where heart valves are grown from tissue, buildings where inscription algorithms are developed. All of which is wonderful.

“But let’s be honest, (((this is gonna be good))) design at a Technical University will always remain an unwanted child. Physicists, chemists and mathematicians have an unjust and persistent tendency to look down on the lack of exactness in the design field. Instead of explaining that good design is so complex that it cannot just be summed up in a simple formula, and that the more exact professions might learn something from this as their own material becomes more complex, the designers on campus – who, incidentally, prefer to call themselves design researchers – display compensatory behavior by talking about their profession in very exact and analytical terms. That translates into a great many analyses and user tests, which are subsequently published in unfathomable articles. Is that useful? Perhaps. Is it design? No.

“A thriving design practice at a Technical University remains awkward. The analytical qualities are exceptional, but we are barely able to simply make good designs. And we are totally incapable of actually designing. Virtually everything designed by the students on design courses at the Dutch Technical Universities looks like it came from a Star Wars film. You know, like those 3D printed objects with too many LED lights and exaggerated superfluous forms that mostly appear to scream: ‘Look! I’ve been designed!’, and in which an inadequately developed sense of form is shouted down by naive enthusiasm.

“Now I don’t want to blame the students, it’s because of the teachers: sensitivity to form is nowhere to be found among the teaching staff. Myself included, because I remember all too well from my time at art college that my purely aesthetic design skills are mediocre at best. But then in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And so, it is possible that our technological environment will be designed by a bunch of would-be designers or technical engineers with more good intentions than talent for design. And the rest of the design world just looks on and puts another pan of sprouts on to boil….”