Design Thinking: A Useful Myth
by Don Norman
Produce everything you can locally
«Produce everything you can locally. Virtualize everything else. The value of your home will be based on the ability of your community to offer energy independence, food security, economic vitality, and protection. Survivalist stockpiles and zero footprint frugality are pathways to failure.»
Creativity is just connecting things
By Steve Jobs
When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences that other people.
Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem.
The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.
9 to 5
I waited so they might describe to me this place of dreams where they worked, where they give you lots of money, all time – where you only work a set number of hours. I waited for more than a year for them to speak about it. They spoke about Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali, about the Cambio Campagnolo, about their stamp collections. Finally, I understood: they looked on their place of work with a sense of horror.
Excerpt from Enzo Mari, The Conversation Series, by Hans Ulrich Obrist
Enzo Mari during the launch of THE IN TEL LEC TUAL WORK
Apirl 13th, 2010, Kaleidoscope Project Space, Milan
A true Guideline for every Designer
By designing without any stylistic or formal preconceived notions, and tending towards the natural formation of things, one gets the essence of a product. This means using the most appropriate materials of the correct thickness, reducing working hours to a minimum, combining a number of functions in one element, making all attachments simple, using as few different materials as possible for each single object, trying to abolish the need for finishing off in detail, doing any necessary lettering during the original pressing, and bearing in mind that the object should take up as little storage space as possible and should assemble itself automatically when ready for use. As for this last effect, one should, when possible, use the force of gravity, remembering that a hanging object costs less than one standing up. These are only some of the tricks of the trade which an experienced designer finds useful for coping with problems as he goes along.
Excerpt from «A prismatic Lamp», Bruno Munari’s Design as Art (1966)
Vom Nützlichen und Schönen
Die Essenz der Dinge im Vitra-Design Musem, von Lutz Windhöfel
28. April 2010, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Die Essenz des Dings ist einerseits Haltbarkeit, Handwerklichkeit, Materialgerechtigkeit und nachhaltige Formschönheit (ein gerne benutztes Objekt wird gepflegt und so seine Lebensdauer verlängert). Anderseits hängt die Essenz des Dings zusammen mit dem Grad seines Potenzials hinsichtlich einer besseren Zukunft, einer Demokratisierung des Konsums in der Form (durch kostengünstige Massenproduktion) und einer zunehmenden Egalisierung in einer normativen Ästhetik.
Order is, by Louis Kahn (1960)
Design is form-making in order
Form emerges out of a system of construction
Growth is a construction – In order is creative force
In design is the means – where with what when with how much
The nature of space reflects what it wants to be
Is the auditorium a Stradivarius
or an ear
Is the auditorium a creative instrument
keyed to Bach or Bartók
played by the conductor
or is it a conventional hall
In the nature of space is the spirit and the will to exist in a a certain way
Design must follow closely that will
Therefore a stripe-painted horse is not a zebra
Before a railroad station is a building
it wants to be a street
it grows out of the needs of the street
out of the order of movement
A meeting of contours englazed.
Through the nature – why
Through the order – what
Through the design – how
A form emerges from the structural elements inherent in the form.
A dome is not conceived when questions arise how to build it.
Nervi grows an arch
Fuller grows a dome
Mozart’s compositions are designs
They are exercises of order – intuitive
Design encourages more designs
Designs derive their imagery from order
Imagery is the memory – the form
Style is an adopted order
The same order created the elephant and created man
They are different designs
Begun from different aspirations
Shaped from different circumstances
Order does not imply Beauty
The same order created the dwarf and Adonis
Design is not making beauty
Beauty emerges from selection
affinities
integration
love
Art is a form-making life in order – psychic
Order is intangible
It is a level of creative consciousness
forever becoming higher in level
The higher the order the more diversity in design
Order supports integration
From what the space wants to be the unfamiliar way may be revealed to the architect.
From order he will derive creative force and power of self-criticism to give form to this unfamiliar.
Beauty will evolve.
(via rypat)