Owls to Athens, or: The Discrete Charm of Transformation Design. An Essay Michael Erlhoff
I. As a category, the term ‘transformation design’ represents a tautology because, when describing design in broad terms, one would have to define it as an offer to transform existing things and conditions and, therefore, as a many-faceted activity of transformation. Transformation is essential to understanding both the activity of designing and how we use design. After all, in the act of designing, design is constantly generated from the transformation of observations, memories, and experiences. This process, however, is always subject to specific societal conditions, including economics and culture, and therefore happens within the framework of specific conventions. Each design concept is first of all based on the designer’s individual processing of such societal factors, which influence every intellectual reflection and concrete activity in either a direct or an indirect way. Even the observation and specific acceptance of what might be considered coincidences are subject to these transformational structures. Another important and essential aspect regarding the relevance of transformation for design results from the permanent transformation of materials and from their combination into new material composites or even into entirely new materials. Doubtless this happens all the time in design, thus highlighting once more that transformation and design are inevitably linked to each other. Furthermore, contemporary design is characterised by the fact that objects and signs are not only conceptualised and designed as an interlinked entity but also have to be transferred into and conceived as processes: ‘hybrid networks between design and people as potentials for (transformation) processes that have become difficult to control’ (W. Jonas). The task of design today is no longer to create a new bicycle or car but to provide options, in this case for movement; design is no longer about designing telephones, not even mobile ones, but about enabling conversation regardless of distance, as well as options for information, orientation, and so on. The idea of transformation is even more clearly implied when designers today, for very good reasons, think about changing objects into services and develop these concepts within the framework of service design, for example. ‘Using Instead of Owning’ has been the maxim for some twenty years, one that aims at a radical form of transformation. Clearly, this also means, if you will, fundamentally seeing objects or products as service offers and formulating them accordingly.
OWLS TO ATHENS, OR: THE DISCRETE CHARM OF TRANSFORMATION DESIGN. AN ESSAY 075