Changing the change

Design as we know it - “industrial” design - is a relatively young discipline, little more than two hundred years old. The industrial process of design developed to cope with the social and technological changes of the Industrial Revolution. Design as we know it is a corollary of industrial society, industrial technology and the industrial production system.

The question we face is how design can be transformed as society and technology transform from industrial to post-industrial forms.

There have been different interpretations of the concept of post-industrialism. The differences have tended to polarise between the “info-tech” vision and the “eco-tech” vision. In the former, post-industrialism means a form of hyper-industrial technology, based on the information revolution, automation and highly advanced technology. In the latter, it means a more small-scale, resource-conserving, “convivial” technology. In the former, technology is regarded as an autonomous, science-driven force; in the latter, technology is brought under the influence and control of people and communities.

The products and processes of a technology are linked with each other. Pre-industrial technology had its own particular types of products and processes, just as industrial technology can now be seen to have had its own particular types of products and processes. In turn, post-industrial technology will have its particularities which will affect its design processes and the products that stem from it. Perhaps a new paradigm of technology can emerge. Some features of the new technology will be continuations of the old; some will create discontinuities. Some features will be generated by the possibilities of technological development itself, whereas others will be responses to the problems created by that same technological development. Changing the Change can help to create the paradigm of a new technology.

Design as it might be - “post-industrial” design - is an issue for design research. Design research is an incredibly young discipline, only about forty years old, but nevertheless having significant influence on design practice and process and having great potential. Design research has a fundamental commitment to interdisciplinarity that will be essential to post-industrial design, and it is establishing a world-wide, international basis of cooperation that will be equally essential.

Design research is built around design thinking. Fundamental to design thinking is imagination: the abilities to imagine and to image. Changing the Change can help to develop the potential of design research. That’s why I am pleased that the Design Research Society endorses Changing the Change.

The largest furniture industry in Japan has inaugurated, with Enzo Mari, a program called “Un milione di alberi di Sugi - One million Sugi trees”, a type of wood that grows widely and easily in Japan, used to re-propose furniture of the Japanese rural tradition. Alessi promotes Twergi series, small objects for the kitchen and table, manufactured by communities of craftsmen from some of the Alpine valleys in Piedmont and distributed with success worldwide. These examples, chosen among so many, stress the importance of the bond between industry and craftsmanship, tradition and local materials.

In this direction, in our Region we have attempted to work not with individual craftsmen but with a number of communities. We have established networks for knowledge and promotion, provided technological and business assistance to the enterprises. Rather than closed projects, because we know how much craftsmen value their independence, we provided “guidelines”, open to freedom of interpretation of the craft community in respect of certain shared rules. We have defined sustainable protocols for production, and outlined scenarios of consumption that configure products not exclusively for connoisseurs or nostalgics, but for everyone is able to appreciate quality. The territory, in this sense, becomes the first client of the typical craft product: the bars and restaurants, the offices of the institutional communities, the shops selling typical products like foods, are filled with new products, becoming the site of the promotion.
For this reason, “Artigianato Comunità Design” is the subtitle of the exhibition entitled MANUfatto that, if you come to Turin for the conference, we can visit together in the splendid framework of a historic but out-of-the-way location that, like typical craftsmanship, has the same problems of visibility, communication and survival.

Welcome!