“What the hell are you doing in Spokane?” This was probably the most asked question I was confronted with, when I visited Seattle, before my greyhound-journey to (at least) the second biggest city in Washington State.
While the answer – “Going on a Conference!” – was always the same, I began sketching a couple of worst case scenarios, about what I had to expect in this mysterious place that seemed to be stuck in the middle of nowhere.
Well, in the end, I did not see enough from the city, to actually judge on it. But for sure I can judge on the conference, and: it was well worth it!
On its fifth edition, this years Design Research Conference at the Interdisciplinary Design Institute of Washington State University Spokane (WSU) was entitled “Design and Cultures”. Almost thirty international presenters (Australia, Germany, India, New Zealand, Portugal, UK, USA) came together in order to scope on the correlation of design and cultures, certainly under view from different perspectives and experiences.
Regarding to his experience in trans- and interdisciplinary projects, Parsons New School’s Jamer Hunt stated in his keynote, that it sometimes does not seem to be about design and culture, but about design versus culture. By the example of Design and Social Science, he mentioned the major challenge between two disciplines with different practices, in which he sees design as a more propositional and social science as a more analytical practice.
Design is being influenced by culture (and vice versa), and of course Design itself has a culture of change, which sometimes leads to interdisciplinary conflicts. For instance, when it comes to interventions: design often works with interventions, but to anthropologists, interventions are highly problematic (e.g. in face of the history of colonialism).
Nevertheless, since practices can come from culture, but also contribute to it, Hunt stated, that we (can) understand through design, how we create our culture. Especially in regard to modelling future visions (“Visualizing future, helps to make it possible!”), we might actually use design as a cultural critique.
Showing a couple of new school projects, he underscored, that design does not always have to solve or answer problems or questions, but for example supports/enables social connections in playful, provoking or irritating ways. (I really liked the student project, where an umbrella is connected to a magnet via a leash. Whenever the person holding the umbrella, comes near to magnetic material, the magnet/leash connects itself to the material and makes the person stop and wait, just like we know it from people who walk their dogs. A simple object thus becomes a social bridge to other objects, places or people (since it also sometimes connects to other umbrellas)).
The majority of the contributions have been interesting and inspiring, but unfortunately due to parallel sessions, I missed a couple of presentations. But at least I saw John DeMao Jr.’s talk about the Culture of Design (“Practice: Method or Madness”), which was thought-provoking and activated a bright discussion amongst the attendees.
Further topics of the conference were (amongst others) about Identity possibilities of designed objects (Keith Russell), Rethinking Design for development and the interaction of design with social and cultural environments (Qassim Saad), Integrating approaches toward a theory of design (Michael Arnold Mages), discipline specific methodologies in design research (Kristina Niedderer), or about the responses of design theory, practice and education to unsustainable society (John Calvelli).
As every year, the conference has been connected to a Charrette Program for Design Research Week. This year’s topic was on “Bridging the University District”. Since the speakers had to judge on the student design competition entries, it was a good chance, to get to know about different approaches and methods being applied at WSU.
For the students, as some of them told me, the whole conference was a nice opportunity, to receive some input from “outside”, since some of them feel somehow (not least professionally) isolated.
Altogether it was worth visiting the DESIGN AND CULTURES conference. Not only because auf the lovely dinner at Prof. Nancy Blossom’s House (Director of the Interdisciplinary Design Institute). Not least I had some really interesting chats with interesting people.
“What the hell you think, I am doing in Spokane?” will be my next answer to whoever will ask me again: “Sharing thoughts on interesting topics in design research! Come and join me next year, if you don’t believe!”