Embodying Ethics : Criticism of Contemporary Design Practice

Contemporary Design Practice

‘Where do things come from and why is it made? As per the popular belief Contemporary Design has greatly been responsible for increasing mass production, mass consumption and waste of natural resources.

The argument to support can be traced back from 1950s with Richard Neutra's Survival through Design (1954) and Vance Packard's The Waste Makers (1961) as well as supported by Victor Papanek's critique of the status quo in contemporary design practice and his continued exploration of the dark side of capitalist societies.

Victor Papanek criticized commercial design, underlining his veiws against the self-restricted conceptions of industrial design and focused on designing for the real people."Today, industrial design has put murder on a mass-production basis. By designing criminally unsafe automobiles that kill or man, nearly one million people around the world each year, by creating whole new species of permanent garbage to clutter up the landscape, and by choosing materials and processes that pollute the air we breath, designers have become a dangerous breed". Victor emphasised on a new industrial Context based on social innovation and focusing the attention on environmental needs as a starting point for new design agenda's.

In the book 'Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change', Victor has highlighted the change in the social and political values and its impact on the focus of design. The book has provoked strong emotional reactions, focusing on a methodology that works on a social context based on ethics, ecology and social economics. The book achieved a bible-like status in the environmental movement and continues to challenge the status quo of design and consumption. It was during this time that Industrial designers started to rethink of their practice, in order to find ways of engaging the problems that confronted humankind. This search for a more ecologically responsive and socially responsible lifestyle informed Critical Design practice.

The primary question for the designers thus becomes not what new products to make, but how to reinvent a design culture which can identify and realize socially responsive proposals. In words of Umerto Eco " I am deeply convinced that creativity lies not in finding new material but in the re-arrangement of all that exist". In the culture of sustainability, designers need to create a new forms of practice and approach. In years to come, design for consumer culture may be recognized as only one form of practice among many others, rather than continue to play the dominant role that it does today. As the design theorist Clive Dilnot says: Movement towards a `post-product' society, brings Design its status of becoming a means of ordering the world rather than merely of shaping commodities.

There is a growing need for Designers to prepare proposals that inform and reform. What makes Critical Design practice so essential right now is the clear evidence that older models of design practice are not working. Design methodologies like design for disassembly, life cycle design, and design with recycled materials are responses to this situation, but most of these concepts are aimed at reforming consumer culture rather contributing to a new approach to professional design practice. Design needs to disengage itself from feeding consumer culture as its primary role and reconstruct its identity, and rethink its role. The results of this practice , will create a new area for the designers to participate in projects focusing more on the welfare of humankind and the environment.