A.1. .21Design DesignFuturing Computation
H
ow is the future being understood? And what is meant by design? This is not a ‘how to’ question, but in fact, it requires a clear sense of what design needs to be mobilized for or against. [21 From the past until now, design brought many creations for the ease of human being. People design a city in such a way they would want to live in; people design useful tools to overcome their limitations. However, when we gain something we tend to lose something. Defuturing is the severe issue due to the destructions and exploitations for these designed creations. And now, design for sustainment becomes the mutual objective for designers to ensure a sustainable future, in other word, we could claim ourselves as environmental activists as well. Advanced technology improvements indeed bringing us to a better living quality compared to the old days. Despite of this, it led to the privatized trend of life whereas people tend to obtained privately many things that were once only available by sharing. This is in fact an unsustainable practice since the amount of Earth could give is never sufficient for every single person on this world. Moreover, it is the design for consumption in which we as humans are too relying on technology in order to get what we want far exceeding what we need instead. Hence, a redirective approach in designing is a must to shift the technology creation purpose from consumption to the one for sustainment, as what Design as Politics project aimed for.[2]
Design can be said as an innate ability, which makes human unique. In this matter, design democracy as in Hester’s proposal is definitely a good move to engage with multiple views in reaching a best trade-off solution for sustainment.
However, quality is always the priority regardless of quantity. With today’s advanced technology, heaps of easy accessible creative software such as Grasshopper, Rhinoceros, Autocad and etc are bringing the Everyones-Can-Design trend to the community. This ‘bottom up’ approach in computational design somehow led to designs that having forms without content. Thus, design intelligence is paramount in design democracy to ensure a useful design is developed rather than just the fancy form explored from the algorithmic practice. To get people out of the defuturing comfort zone, a discovery of new sustainable living pattern needs the assistance of design intelligence, which manage to redirect the community to betterment.
Sustainment is the acceptance of plurality within one unified goal, a meta-diverse end which he identifies as fundamentally changing our behaviour in order to avoid defutured world.[3] Similar to Fry’s thesis, in the LAGI competition, it encourages people to design a sculptural form that can function as both renewable energy generator as well as tourist attraction. It invites interdisciplinary teams from around the world to present their ideas for what infrastructure art of sustainable city looks like. To ensure the quality of the outcomes, a list of criteria had been set as the reference for the jury. This shows how the quality of interdisciplinary design is being maintained with the set of restrictions. Lacking of ecological literacy made us become less sensible to the natural factors in urban design. According to Hester, it would be a benefit if the city is capitalized on their regional characteristics. A wise use of natural resources, with the principle of maximise the effect from a minimal source would definitely guarantee a continuous supply in the future. Often, as designers, smart use of appropriate resource is indeed important. With the smart use of natural renewable resources available at the site, it would be getting closer to the target for Copenhagen to become the first carbon neutral capital by 2025.
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