Why Material Matters

April 13th, 2012 | 0 comments
droog lab and interview

Interview with Renny Ramakers
by Agata Jaworska

This year in Milan, Droog presents Material Matters, a future furniture fair. The presentation speculates the impact of a shift in policy from taxing income to taxing raw materials and waste, and its impact on the design industry. The future fair features 20 design companies—both real and imagined—that might come to thrive given the change in policy.

How did this idea come about?

I read an article in the newspaper. Economists, ecologists, political scientists and other scientists were envisioning an alternative economic model in which sustainability is built into the system. One of the things they imagined was that income tax was replaced with tax on raw materials and waste, giving a few examples of what might happen—like no more packaging , new businesses based on recycling, repairing and leasing…

That inspired me. I thought it could also inspire designers and the design industry. Designers are trained to design products. Every year designers and design companies go to Milan, and every year, we see so many new products. Milan is full of new for the sake of new.

When I read the article, I realized some designers are already working in a way that fits into the scenario. Dirk Vander Kooij reprograms abandoned machines into 3D printers that make products using material made of old fridges. Markus Kayser prints products in the desert using the sand as the raw material and the sun as the energy source. Studio Swine proposes fishing plastic debris from the sea, turning it into products on a converted boat factory.

I imagined an alternative fair full of these kind of initiatives. We brought together existing initiatives and invented new ones. The imaginary fair presents some 20 design companies based on the premise that raw materials are taxed and therefore they become very expensive. One invented company, Gallery™ sells what used to be ordinary goods as collectibles. Another, Optical World™ sells illusions. Sometimes we really need a chair to sit on, but sometimes it’s the image that we’re after.

Currently quite a few companies are dealing with environmental issues. What’s the difference with Material Matters?

Environmentally friendly design is still mostly about designing products which harm the environment as little as possible, by using sound resources and by designing products that can be easily taken apart. Material Matters is more narrow because it is only dealing with material scarcity, but at the same time it is broader because it suggests completely different responses. An option could indeed be upcycling, recycling or waste management. But I am looking for more ways to tackle the issue. Maybe renting things is better than a chair that you can recycle. Or if a product lasts your whole life then maybe recyclability is not the most important thing. It is important to broaden the scope.

Essentially the Fair presents business models. Could you see it as a collection of ideas that others could appropriate?

You can think about what impact this scenario would have on companies like IKEA. Its unique selling point is that the products are very affordable, but once materials become expensive, what would their selling point become? They could—just like we do with UP™— upgrade IKEA’s dead stock or offer second hand IKEA furniture. People could return used products, IKEA could redesign them, and people could buy redesigned IKEA stuff.

You could also think of developing new materials from alternative resources, like Suzanne Lee does with BioCouture™, creating fashion with bacteria. Another direction could be designing services instead of products, like teaching people how to furnish their house without buying new products. That’s what Waste Watchers™ does.

Play Shop™, a game that satisfies your need for shopping without buying anything, is an extreme example. How do you see the role of the designer with something like Play Shop™?

A designer could have designed the game. It’s not like design will ever stop turning out products, but designers should stop thinking that every need should be satisfied with a product. Sometimes something else might do.

You bring together reality and fiction in an interesting way, almost not making a distinction between the two. How do you see this?

The ambiguity between the real and the fake creates cohesion. Each company is almost like a one-liner, presented in a tongue-in-cheek way. It’s really about the diversity of possible responses, on the level of the business model and not the details. It doesn’t matter if they are real or fictional.

How do you see the design profession changing?

When Gijs Bakker and I created Droog, we noticed new directions in product design, bundled them and gave them a name. Now, almost 20 years later, you can see that there are quite a number of new directions that designers are going into, less related to product design. Product designers are finding new ways to create a business. Processes are becoming important.

When you look at the profession from the specific angle of material scarcity, you get a very diverse landscape. Material Matters is about virtual design, it’s about reuse, it’s about inventing new materials, it’s about durability, it’s about renting things. It is a mixture of totally different initiatives that at first glance seem not to be related. Bringing this together as a Furniture Fair can have an impact.

Why did you bring them together as a Fair, and not something else?

Just like in 1993, we are bundling the sign of the time. In 1993 this was based on bringing together new visions on products. Now we are bundling business models, scenarios, processes. A fair means that every participant is independent. So many designers are starting their own businesses. I wanted to open the fair to them. This year the fair is imaginary, and is curated by us. We hope to host a real fair next time.

Do you think we need the policy change in order to get such a movement going?

The imagined policy change is the start of a thought experiment to speculate on design. Of course there are also negative aspects to taxing materials, like the disproportional impact on people who do not have much money. The point is not to convince the government that we should make the shift. It’s better to create a movement, and by-pass the need to make policy change.

The project started with imagining that policy changed. The government nudging people with new tax incentives. But in a way, the fair becomes a nudge for the design industry, minus the paternalism that would have come with the policy change.

Nowadays economists are taking into account the environment in their models, seeing biodiversity and water as economic assets. Material Matters wants to inspire designers to do the same—to build business models with environmental concerns at the core. It would be fantastic if this would generate a boom of new initiatives, building an industry of small creative companies that invent new businesses. And we never would reach the need to tax materials.

Join us.

“Sorry, but we don’t trust you architects”

February 29th, 2012 | 0 comments
droog lab

The Tarwewijk case

In 2011 the renowned American critic Bruce Nussbaum posted a blog with the title “Is Humanitarian design the new imperialism?” This controversial statement came into my mind when we were confronted with cynical inhabitants of the Rotterdam neighbourhood Tarwewijk.

Tarwewijk has always been a problematic neighbourhood in the South of Rotterdam. It is one of the poorest and most densely populated districts of Rotterdam, inhabited by a high amount of immigrants who leave the area as soon as they get a chance, resulting in a 20% vacancy rate. There is also a high percentage of unemployment and illiteracy. It is one of those neighbourhoods that we would call “disadvantaged” and therefore, it is destined to attract a lot of well-intentioned temporary interventions by all kinds of parties including artists, designers and social workers. I think every city has such a pampered neighbourhood—an ideal target for social design.

A model

Our ambitions for Tarwewijk were triggered by Open House, a oneday event we did in New York’s prototypical suburb of Levittown in 2011 in collaboration with Diller Scofidio + Renfro. “Discover your inner service provider” was the motto as inhabitants collaborated with designers to establish businesses in their homes. The aim was to bring more vitality and interaction into the suburb, and also to improve its economic circumstances. A number of inhabitants opened their homes for a one-day business—including an unemployed teacher who opened a classroom and an avid gardener who opened a backyard farm. Architects Hayley Eber and Frank Gesualdi of EFGH created a model proposing ways of modifying existing regulations in order to enable such a bottom-up service economy to emerge in the suburbs.

Open House presented a model that we then wanted to test in a totally different kind of neighbourhood. We found Tarwewijk, a place where residents already were running their own businesses behind the facades, businesses like hairdressing, travel advise and radio broadcasting. Together with the inhabitants we wanted to make the existing network of hidden business activity visible and to celebrate Tarwewijk as a business district. At the same time we wanted to propose new strategies that would re-introduce work into daily life within the neighbourhood, loosening regulations and creating affordable workspaces. With a team of designers and our partners we have been working to make this happen.

One of those short-lived initiatives

However, when we approached the inhabitants, we were confronted with stark cynicism. They considered our project as one of those short-lived intitiatives that they have encountered so many times before without any significant results. They accused the government that they were helping people to start a new business just because they want to get them off welfare support and to bring them into the tax system. They accused the architects that they steal their ideas: “You take our ideas, use them elsewhere and then you are gone!…Sorry, but we don’t trust you architects”. The residents of Tarwewijk seem to be fed up with all these patronizing attempts to help them.

At first I was shocked by these accusations but soon I began to realize that they were right. There is a gap between the design world and the people that designers want to reach. I started to distrust all this social work. I don’t doubt all the good intentions but who specializes in social design also needs victims—it’s their bread and butter. It’s time for a more strategic and long-term approach that has real impact.

Actual installations

We decided to cancel the one-day design event and to restrict ourselves to implementing thelonger lasting concepts and strategies. We installed The Economat by Thomas Lommée, a converted photo booth which invites inhabitants to capture, describe and locate their personal “demands” or “supplies,” mapping and expanding the existing network of hidden homeworkers. The Green Machine by Doepel Strijkers, a production unit for compost that connects children to urban agriculture was installed in a centrally-located playground and connected to an existing family network.

Proposed strategies

Wouter Vanstiphout (Crimson) who was also participating in our project placed our project rightfully in the tradition of “incidental, exogenous and superficial attempts that an extremely short-lived, fashionable interest linked to a misleading optimistic tone”. The proposal he developed with Maxwan architects stood out because it is a strategy to stimulate long-lasting entrepreneurship in the neighbourhood. Tapping into the 20% vacancy rate in Tarwewijk, they allocated existing building blocks as a Special Economic Block, a safe area from municipal regulations, thematic zoning policies and trends in urban renewal and creative industries: “Freed from this, the blocks will attract the entrepreneurial energy, investments and jobs potentially already existing in the neighbourhood”. The Special Economic Block is worth investigating. It will attract entrepreneurial energy and it will create jobs. The rest is left for the inhabitants.

The question that is left behind is what is the role of designers in solving the socio-economic problems of these kind of neighbourhoods? Do those neighbourhoods need well-intentioned design stunts or are they better off with different municipal policies, loosening regulations, and more space and tools for self-organization. If we look at Dharavi, the pampering child of Mumbai, we see that the informal economy of this slum is blossoming (though of course there remain many pressing problems). And we see that the informal activity does not happen in isolation. Dharavi supplies luxurious hotels and restaurants in Mumbai. It is interesting how the formal and informal economy are co-dependent. Of course, circumstances are different in our part of the world, but giving space for more informal developments by the residents themselves should be recognized as a key way of moving forward. This is the role of design—to see how the informal activities that are happening already can be connected to broader strategies. Design should make the step from short-lived interventions to long-term strategies that cover all dimensions of the situation.

WIJkonomie Tarwewijk

February 15th, 2012 | 0 comments
droog lab


image: Thomas Lommée installing De Economaat

It all started with Open House, a one-day event that we did in collaboration with Diller Scofidio + Renfro that took place in the prototypical suburb of Levittown, New York in 2011. Homes were opened up for business exchange, with the aim of reviving the suburbs through a bottom-up service economy that would introduce more contact and density into the neighbourhood. With this successful one-day event, we created a model that could revive neighbourhoods through self-created service exchange.

With the aim of testing the model in a completely different area, we teamed up with Jan Konings and Kosmopolis Rotterdam, who had been engaging with the informal work community in Tarwewijk, a multicultural community with considerable unemployment and illiteracy in the South of Rotterdam. Since Tarwewijk has a robust network of hidden business activity—from haircutting to car repair and radio broadcasting—we wanted to bring invisible business practice into public space and celebrate Tarwewijk as a business district.

Beyond the design event

Tarwewijk has come to symbolize the toughness of the socio-economic problems in the South of Rotterdam, and has suffered from being a testing ground for outsiders. However, it turned out that so many people have been trying to propose local change—often well-intentioned but short-lived—that many residents have become cynical to outsiders’ ideas. Therefore, rather than doing a one-day design event, we decided to implement projects in collaboration with residents and local organizations committed to continuity and to organize a design presentation and symposium at Netherlands Architecture Institute, where documentation of the installations will be shown and the Special Economic Block proposal by Crimson with Maxwan will be presented to decision makers.

The presentation will also show Masterplan by Jan Konings, a representation of how Tarwewijk might look in the near future, featuring concepts by TD Architects, Doepel Strijkers and Crimson with Maxwan. The Way We Are, an animation on the future of Tarwewijk’s identity by TD Architects will be screened. Documentation of the installation of De Economaat, a social machine that maps and visualizes micro-economic activities by Thomas Lommée with Netherlands Architecture Institute will be shown. Footage of the installation of Green Machine, a production unit for agricultural compost to be sold or exchanged by children by Doepel Strijkers Architects will be screened. Reaction of locals to our plans will be revealed.

The symposium, moderated by journalist Yvonne Zonderop, will feature Ole Bouman (NAI), Charles Renfro (Diller Scofidio + Renfro), Jan Konings, Robert Kloosterman (professor of Economic Geography and Planning, University of Amsterdam) and myself.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Start: 19:30h (doors opens at 19:00h)
Language: English
Location: Auditorium NAI (Museumpark 25, Rotterdam)
Admission: € 5 / € 3 for students / free for Friends of the NAI
Register.
More information coming soon.

WIJkonomie Tarwewijk is organized by Droog in collaboration with Jan Konings, Kosmopolis Rotterdam and Netherlands Architecture Institute, and is supported by DOEN Foundation.

Copying is good for design

February 6th, 2012 | 1 comment
droog lab

We live in times of transition. Powers are shifting. The financial system is collapsing. Resources are scarce. It is obvious that there is a need to reevaluate our existing systems, to develop alternative models, and to find new focus and new inputs. In our globally networked society, everything is connected in a largely unregulated space, creating a structure in which the rules of yesterday are no longer valid.

Take for instance, the notion of copying. In science, it is common practice to build upon the work of others. The scientist will carefully quote the work of his or her predecessors. In the music industry artists have been experimenting with new models for dealing with this issue for a long time. They are sampling each other’s work in such a way that the original is getting rewarded. In the design world the open design movement is marching on. We are starting to see designers beginning to invite the public to copy their work.

The heart of copy culture

Copying happens everywhere but if you want to copy without legal problems, you better be in China. There you can find shops full of high-end design surrounded by misleading information, including pictures of the original designers. It is as realistic as it can be. But as soon as you realize that everything is offered for a third of the regular price, you know this must be immaculate copying. In China you can even find replicas of IKEA and Apple stores. And if you go to the city of Shenzhen, you have to visit Dafen oil painting village where painters are copying whatever image you give them.

China is the heart of copy culture. Copying forms the backbone of a substantial portion of Chinese industry. Copying and collective authorship is considered an important part of its culture. The practice of “Shanzhai,” which stands for slight modifications of the original, in some instances should rightfully be dismissed as consumer deception, but in other instances it might offer something positive by adding something extra to the original. I think this practice could give us another view on copy culture. We could just see copying as a way of making variations.

Saturated by variations

It is not only online phenomena that should change our view on copying, it is also the growing amount of products on the market. In pre-industrial days, copying used to be a positive act. It was seen as a skill. Artists were looked upon as handworkers. Copying became a negative notion with the cult of the individual artist and the arrival of mass production, which made replication extremely cheap and easy. Copyright and intellectual property laws were created to protect the original. In those days, the amount of new products reaching the market was relatively small. Currently there are so many new products entering the market every day, that it is almost impossible for designers to be completely original all the time. When you look in the magazines or visit the fairs you notice that original designs are rare. The majority are variations of existing designs, and the boundary between an original and a variation is becoming increasingly unclear.

Redesigning dead stock

The issue of redesigning exiting products was also raised by UP, our recent project that proposes a new economic model based on the redesign of leftovers—brand new products that are likely to be thrown away. Triggered by the scarcity of our resources and the saturation of the market, UP aims to bring dead stock back into circulation, and at the same time, it opens up new possibilities for design. But redesigning existing designs is in principle a forbidden act, even if it is dead stock. The networked economy and the open design movement, coupled with issues such as resource scarcity and market saturation lead us in new directions, urging a reevaluation of intellectual property rights.

A new model

Starting with the idea that copying as shared creativity can be innovative, in partnership with Today Art Museum, Beijing and OCT Art and Design Gallery, Shenzhen, we organized a workshop with Dutch and Chinese designers in the city of Shenzhen, where we have been encountering and discussing the issue of copying and copyrights. With a few public debates we continued the discussion with press, critics, designers and students. We learned that copying is a complex subject. It is difficult to define the difference between copying and fashion and to draw the line between whether one design has been influenced by another or if it is in fact a counterfeit. Another issue is how to honour the original. But what became clear was that we really need to reevaluate our attitudes towards copying and intellectual property. In our workshop in Shenzhen we formulated the first ideas for a model that could encourage and reward legal copying culture. In close collaboration with the Dutch and Chinese participants we are now fine tuning this model and working to make it happen.

What is design today?

October 6th, 2011 | 0 comments

It seems many people are asking this question.

And it is remarkable how many offer a similar response. At least it was remarkable that the participants of a debate on the definition of design that recently took place in Chengdu all showed a consensus in thought, although their approaches were quite different. Emily Campbell who is rewriting the account of design for the 250-year-old Royal Society of the Arts raised the question: “Instead of making beautiful resources, can design help people be resourceful, not to solve the problem but to teach people how to solve it themselves?” “Do not finish the job but show people how to do it,” she said. Adrian Blackwell, connected to the John Daniels Faculty of Architecture at the University of Toronto, stated that design is always unknown, an uncertain creation, an open space in which people can produce new ideas. He focused on architecture that engages the virtual, providing unprogrammed space for appropriation and creation.

design is anything anywhere

My statement was that design today can be anything anywhere. Design does not only solve problems, it can also offer different perspectives. Design can open new horizons and offer unexpected possibilities. The capacity of design does not only express itself through products, graphics or garments but also through tools, services, scenarios, new business models and other ways of benefitting society. Design can find a role in any aspect of daily life. Design is organizing life and can be invisible. But this does not mean that there is no design at all. The challenge for design is to create high quality frameworks in which people can act.

a designer is not a social worker

The Chinese architect Hsieh Ying-Chun showed how he worked in earthquake disaster areas in China and Taiwan together with local communities to rebuild their villages. Through the use of local materials, low-cost building strategies and appropriate technologies, as well as the design of new, open structural systems, peasant farmers are able to participate in their own modern homebuilding projects. He proved that a socially conscious architect or designer is not the same as a social designer which could easily be called a social worker if there is no professional input.

design is a framework

I showed Open House, a one day event we did in collaboration with Diller Scofidio + Renfro in the New York suburb of Levittown. The goal of this project was to show a model for reviving boring and financially troubled suburbs by helping people to discover their inner service provider and set up a business in their home. One of the homeowners, a school teacher who has been unemployed for a couple of years, set up a ‘’school’’ to teach the community how to create digital photo albums and other hobbies. I mentioned that in this project the teacher was more important than the benches that were created by the architects. But still, the architects gave the framework for the woman to teach. And the project as such, gave a framework. Without this framework the woman teaching how to make photo albums would not have been doing it. And, as part of the framework, the next step could be to create new plans for suburban houses that show a new balance between public and private space, and to bring more density to the suburbs.

design is new collaborations

Design today is also new collaborations. Design can change the way people interact with products, and with each other. Design can connect people. Design is crowdsourcing. Designers are involving other members of the community to brainstorm on ideas or collaborate on projects – and this is helping designers redefine and expand their notion of what they do, and why they do it. We are seeing the entire supply and consumption chain being reconsidered and opened up to new collaborations.

redesigning the profession

Redesigning the profession is what all the participants in the debate, coming for all parts of the world, wanted to do. Of course this was no coincidence because we were all invited by the curator Ou Ning. How we are all thinking on the same line was demonstrated in Ou Ning’s exhibition of the Bishan project he did in a rural area of China. Again, together with the inhabitants and with respect for the vernacular already there. One of the fashion designers did not design anything but only showed the beauty of the garments of the village people.

During my stay in China I visited the artist Ai Wei Wei in his Beijing studio. He is the co-curator of the Gwanju Design Biennale which has been advocated as an attempt to redefine today with “Design is Design is Not Design” as the slogan. According to Ai Wei Wei, the act of design is to destroy itself. “To throw off the old body, that is the soul of design.” While he was talking his cat had nestled on our bag. When he noticed this he said: “Ask the bag designer what is the best way to customize a cat”. The designer may design what he wants but it is the user who decides how to use the design. Design today is not only designing for people but designing for people with people. Everywhere in the world, in whatever circumstances and whatever system people live in, they are creating their own way. And that’s inspiring.

Yes, design should continuously redesign itself. That was also my message at the conference. Society, culture and economy influences design, but design also influences society, culture and economy. The design challenge for the coming years is to explore new levels of design – considering not only what is to be designed, but also how, for what purpose and in which context. The world is always changing and design has to react and act. And we should not forget that design will keep on changing. The way design is today is not the way it could or should be tomorrow.

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