The following thoughts were written by John Anderson in response to the opening questions. A full video of the conversation will be made available in the future.
Yestermorrow Design
Colloquium – July 18, 2015
Design is both a noun and a verb and even morphs into
adjective and adverb. This suggests a latent power in the concept in contrast
to words and activities that are more one-dimensional. So, Design is a very rich
word with metaphorical aspects and many linguistic applications.
The question is: what distinguishes it from or connects it
to all of the various courses and activities and goals that define
Yestermorrow.
Design as a physical and mental activity is implied in “Blue
Sky” and “Out-of-the-Box” thinking. Thus, Design can be thought of as an
activity that is unconventional, innovative, unusual, new, surprising, radical,
imaginative, etc.
Design may emerge from dreams, fantasies, meditations, and
other alternative modes of thoughts or feelings or even an epiphany.
I would suggest that Design is a unique human trait. It is
pure thought, a singular idea, an abstract or isolated concept and absolutely
critical to our ongoing evolution. It has no ethical, moral or spiritual
requirements. It is free space in which anything goes.
Design as a necessary human activity may separate us from
all other life forms that we know of. In the abstract time and space of Design
we pull things out of the void, out of the unknown, out of someplace that is
just vast potential. In Design space one can think ahead to the future, behind
to the past and in the vanishingly quick space of the present.
All Design is…is a thought emergent from mind—invisible,
evanescent, bathed in light and brand new. Every single person has—can
have—thoughts uniquely their own and totally original. “I think therefore I
am….unique.”
Right off the bat, here’s a concept: there is no need or
logical requirement to separate Design/Build and pure Design on moral, ethical,
functional, pedagogical or other sustainable grounds. Design is free space that
incorporates program input. That input can be anything. Design absorbs input
and gives it context, juxtaposition and reason for being. Maybe Design makes
House a Home.
Design and
Keeper-of-the-Concept
The designer/architect/creative person has a very important
and perhaps ancient role. That role is Keeper-of-the-Concept. The Design/Build
process can be a sequence of unilateral decisions made by a menagerie of well
meaning specialists. Each decision might be valuable in its own right, but the
sum of the parts can result in a complex or even chaotic solution with no real
soul. The Keeper-of-the-Concept makes sure that everything from doorknobs to
master plan stays true to the concept, the result being holistic, whole and
vibrating with a secret energy.
Design helps to guarantee a (built) result that is holistic
and fractal (in that each part contains the spirit and shape of the whole), and
that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
While it is certainly important that a Design/Build process
is sustainable in the sense that it leads to a solution that is healthy for the
client, the building, the landscape and by logic- our planet, it also should
end up manifesting the most creative and idealistic potential of human thought.
The human thought, here meaning Design, can stand on its own—no problem—or by
absorbing program input (such as permaculture) it transforms into an external
reality.
It is important to note that there is no discussion here of
Aesthetics, or Beauty or Truth. Perhaps all these characteristics are expected
in ideas like Plato’s pure forms that shaped his view of the cosmos or
Maxwell’s equations. Here, they may or may not be the outcome of someone’s
response to Design or Designer, but in emergent Design they don’t matter (and,
can be a distraction and false door in the Design process).
We now all inhabit and are all connected by a world wide web
of communication. Consider it a global mind. We have almost infinite access to
information and possibilities. Molecules can be manipulated; photovoltaic paint
is soon to be possible; even invisibility in cloaking materials is coming.
There is no reason why as a single synapse in a global mind, anyone of us
cannot create energy efficiency in the physical world and that global
sustainability is achievable.
The web also serves up ideas and concepts that travel by
light speed around the globe. Pure thoughts without relation to functionality
fly freely. It may be that the highest purpose of our species is to think of
new things that don’t exist now or may never exist. Free will and
self-awareness lead to unbounded possibilities. Technology and solutions follow
ideas and concepts. The Designer must keep dreaming, pulling concepts out of
nothing, comfortable in that void where anything is possible.
And what does this description of Design and the Designer
suggest…Art and Artists of all kinds: painters, sculptors, composers and
choreographers. Architecture is a Fine Art and Architecture as Design/Build can
be Fine Art/Build along with all the program input one cares to put into it.
My wish for Yestermorrow would be for it to be the most
practical and sustainable Design/Build school on the planet, and the most
creative and innovation center for pure conceptual and intellectually inspired
Design. Both are necessary for our collective future.
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