Design in the service of humanity. Design that resolves the discomfort or frustrations that we have to deal with on a daily basis. Madeleine Londene and Agnes Striegan, authors of the article, asked each of the 11 selected designers “What would you have wanted, or would you want to do differently?” For many of them, the creative spark was lit following a personal event, an immediate necessity for which they couldn’t find an adequate solution; a comb for Afro hair in Sweden or bio-degradable nappies, a quick, cheap HIV test or community furniture easily transformed into exercise equipment. Each object has a life of its own. All  products born of a personal experience or an altruistic thought. Here are just some of them: Luisa Kahlfeldt, who currently collaborates with Konstantin Grcic, starts from the standpoint that “it's liberating when there are no good alternatives to a product. And it is good to go about designing with a certain naivety. Then you trust yourself to do things that are not obvious." Paulien Nabben believes that designers spend too much time on plotting rather than getting to grips with the context to which the project itself is dedicated. Having a broader vision and being aware of multidisciplinary interweavings, making designers, builders and engineers work with biologists, ecologists and wellbeing specialists such as doctors and psychologists, are all crucial in order to come up with the optimum solution when faced with a design challenge. Future generation take note: design that provokes/demands a reaction: “No matter whether it's disgust, fear or shame, a design is good for me as long as it evokes a reaction,” says Elissa Lacoste.

Credits

Text: Madeleine Londene with Agnes Striegan

Photo: courtesy Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazine

Magazine: Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazine

Publisher: Magazin Verlagsgesellschaft Süddeutsche Zeitung mbH

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