Birgit:
"and I acknowledge as John Heskett has recently pinpointed that design is a fundamental human
capacity (shaping and creating human-made environments)"
I believe that the ability to design is the primary skill which differentiates us from other primates and living things. It must be a skill we have developed through the evolutionary process. Design has allowed our species to dominate all other species and to alter the enviroment to such an extent that it will in the not distant future threaten the future existance of most living things.Design must predate the invention of language by hundreds of thousands of years and seems to work at at a lower level of conciousness than speech, closer to our precultural behavior in the distant past. It would be possible to argue that language is the result of an evolutionary design process.
Yet society seems to respect language more than the process of design. The function of universities and other institutes of learning is the exchange of ideas through language.
Is it that design is too dificult to understand and define. We canot define adequately in words what is the significance of body ornamentation or a symbolic religious artifact. Yet these cultural objects are more important to humans than words. Their meaning is buried in the complex animal brain of our species. Achaeology is the study of design and animal remains and the futher interpretation of historic culture through these artifacts.
We do not understand the relative importance of this skill in "shaping and creating human-made environments" Corporations now manufacture the products which define contemporary human consumer culture.
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R o b C u r e d a l e
Chair Product Design
College for Creative Studies Detroit
201 East Kirby
Detroit MI 48202-4034
Phone: 313 664 7625
Fax: 313 664 7620
email: [log in to unmask]
http://www.ccscad.edu
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