Gui Bonsiepe - virtues_of_design

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105

some virtues of design

GuiBonsiepe

An unfashionable term

I chose to focus on the issue of virtues of design when I was reading –

once again – the Six memos for the next millennium by Italo Calvino.1

In this remarkable small volume he speaks about the values he would

like to see maintained and brought into the next millennium as far as

literature is concerned. These shared values he calls virtues. Taking his

approach as my starting point, I want to talk about the shared values

of design for the next millennium.

Virtue 1. Lightness

The Six memos for the next millennium include: lightness, quickness,

exactitude, visibility, multiplicity and consistency. Without wanting

to push the issue, several of these values for literature can be – with due

corrections – transferred to the domain of design. A literal transfer

certainly would be naive and inappropriate. But parallels and affinities

seem to exist. For instance, when Calvino defines lightness as the

attempt to remove weight from the structure of stories and language,

are there not analogies in the field of design? Lightness in design might

be a virtue to be maintained, especially when we reflect on material and

energy flows and their impact on the environment and when we confront

the mundane issue of congested lines cloaked with digital trash in the

net. Later on he refers to the sudden agile leap of the poet-philosopher

who raises himself above the weight of the world, showing ... that what

many consider to be the vitality of the times – noisy, aggressive, reving and

roaring – belongs to the realm of death, like a cemetery for rusty old cars.

Lightness acquires a critical dimension and dissipates wrong associa-

tions of easy-going aloofness and superficiality.

Definitely I would include under the term lightness the notions of

humour, wit and elegance for which we have – particularly in Italian

design – such well-known examples [for example, Castiglioni’s tractor

seat mounted on a flat elastic steel profile].

Virtue 2. Intellectuality

On the occasion of the Aspen congress 1989, dedicated to italian

design, Ettore Sottsass surprised the audience by presenting himself –

quite naturally I would say – as an intellectual and cultural operator.

Only an Italian or a Frenchman can say that. Italy and France are two

countries in which the notion of intellectual does not produce a lifting

of the eye-brows and a climate of suspicion. In Germany, in the United

States and I assume also in the Netherlands, the word ‘intellectual’

carries negative overtones and certainly many of the practising design

professionals would be reluctant to accept self-interpretation as intel-

design

beyond Design

Notes from Gui Bonsiepe’s

spoken contribution to the

conference:

I do not pretend to deliver

a systematic treatment

of a theme that as far as

I can see has recieved but

marginal treatment in

design literature.

Virtues are not something

that you can take away or

isolate from design...

Virtues are intrinsically

embedded in design

practice because design

as a particular domain of

human action addresses

human concerns; I would

saybasichuman concerns.

Which kind of human

concerns is addressed

and how they are

addressed, how they are

balanced, that is a ques-

tion of virtues. Virtues

thus permeate - similar in

that respect to theoretical

presuppositions - every

design practice, even the

practice of the most hard-

nosed practioner who

might feel slightly embar-

rassed when reminded of

the soft and airy issue that

seems so distant from

the hard core of design

business.

The popularisation of the

notion ‘design’ during the

eighties has made design

almost a household word

and nobody would and

should argue about that;

however, the popularisa-

tion has a particular

restrictive bent. In certain

contexts and mediatic

discouse, design is used

as a label of speciality

items, for instance

designer jeans, designer

drugs, designer furniture.

Postmodernists that see

themselves as standing

beyond or above moder-

nity, having left it behind

as a historically outdated

1Italo Calvino,

Six memos for

the next millennium

Cambridge, Harvard university

press, 1988. p 12

Gérard Paris-Clavel, 1994

Gui Bonsiepe

106

lectuals. Rather they would say that they are practitioners and they

want to distance themselves from the neighbourhood of the intellectual;

they do not share Gramsci’s notion of the ‘organic intellectual’, who

uses his technical competence within social institutions like private

companies or public administration.

Intellectuals are – rightly or wrongly – characterised as wordsmiths

because they play a decisive role in shaping the discourse of domains –

political, cultural, scientific and technological. In the field of design,

intellectual formation does not have a strong history, because design

education grew out of craft training with a deeply engrained mistrust

of anything ‘theoretical’. Recently, however, we can observe some prom-

ising signs of a shift away from an indifferent, if not openly hostile

attitude towards an interest in articulation and theoretical issues.

Designers are starting to write, particularly graphic designers – for me

a promising symptom to overcome a period of collective muteness of the

profession. Design and writing about design are no longer seen as sterile

and mutually exclusive opposites. On the contrary, a design historian

in the year 2050 who looks back at the design scenery at the end of the

twentieth century might be surprised at the binarism between action

and contemplation. In two generations this opposition might appear

as out-of-date as for us the debate about types between Muthesius and

Van de Velde nine decades ago.

Intellectuals have repeatedly reflected on their role in society. The most

salient characteristic seems to me the stamina to reveal contradictions,

to rock the boat of self-complacency, to compare what is to what could

be, and in particular to ask for the legitimation of power. This is a busi-

ness that is not whole-wholeheartedly welcome to the powers that be,

whatever they are and wherever they are.

I do not want to heroize the role of the intellectuals, even less overesti-

mate their possibilities of influence, above all in the field of design.

Neither I do want to stylise them as permanently resentful protesters

driven by ‘anti-ism’. But I would not like to see this ingredient of a

critical stance in the design culture missing or abolished. An antidote

to intellectual acquiescence does not only seem to me desirable, but

indispensable if one wants to avoid the danger of falling into the trap

of indifference and accommodation.

As second conclusion, I would like to see maintained intellectuality as

a virtue of design in the next century: readiness and courage to call into

question the orthodoxies, conventions, traditions, agreed canons of

design – and not only of design. That is not only a verbal enterprise,

an enterprise that works through the formulation of texts, an enterprise

of linguistic competence of a critical mind. The designer acting as

designer, that is, with the tools of the profession, faces the particular

challenge of an operational critique. In other words, she or he faces the

period with welfare state

intentions, sometimes

seem to feel uneasy when

the issue of design and

social context is brought

into discussion. For

understandable reasons,

because by restricting

design to the narrow ﬁeld

of design, with citations of

citations for the pleasure

of the initiated, discon-

certing questions are

curtailed right from the

beginning. In the cosy

world of postmodernism

the issue of politics and

design has been declared

an area off-limits.

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