TRANSFORMING YOUR LIFE AND MAYBE EVEN THE WORLD
‘To the extent that design has fed [the] junkyard over the years, then it could be said that the renewed interest among designers in tackling social problems is a kind of penance for past excesses …’1
Warren Berger
Unlimited: Designing for the Asia Pacific is a fresh initiative with the bold aim of exploring how design can help solve complex challenges across urbanisation, food, water, shelter, transport, health and education in our region, rather than addressing a product-focused, aesthetics-driven industry. As Unlimited’s Creative Director Ewan McEoin told me ‘design is frustratingly still stuck in a product paradigm; stuck in the mantra of the Milan furniture fair’, and in his view that is only relevant to a sector of the market. He later modified this position by saying that it is also important ‘to maintain a capacity to celebrate individual practice, for people to follow their creativity and explore making products, the craft process and the manufacturing process’.
The week-long inaugural triennial presented an ambitious program of public talks, forums and exhibitions on designing in Asia and the Pacific—in all more than forty-five events including fourteen major talks by international and Australian identities. With a dovetailed program and concurrent events, conflicts within the schedule were inevitable, so you needed to prioritise and be agile.
The triennial was presented in several, mostly cohesive, components: forums and workshops by invitation only for the industry (subtitled Business Solutions), public talks, free workshops, actual and online exhibitions and several other events. With programs like this, a range of somewhat disparate satellite events became an inevitable part of the mix, but that was mostly fine, resulting in something for everyone. ‘I think there’s... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline
Make Change: Design Thinking in Action’ Opening, 2010. Photograph Tobias Titz. Courtesy Unlimited: Designing for the Asia Pacific.
Carlo Ratti, Safe(r); House
