Hello Design Scholars...
I am a designer and educator like many of you.
I'm curious to understand the collective thoughts of those of you who are in the business of observing and writing about design's history and its next near future. It appears that we are now at a very interesting juncture in the evolution of the Post-Modern away from the Modern periods of design. Allow me to explain.
For the better part of the last 30 years, the profession of design has been discussing this move away from the grand narratives of the late 20th century by doing what we thought was more inclusive and Post-Modern. The Modern period of design history helped build the western world and then appeared to have its sights on the rest of the globe as well. But something happened to cause doubt among the ways and methods in which Modern design conquered cultures, organized resources and ignored the voices of its targeted populations. The Post-Modern began poking fun at the large designer/planning egos, the control of forms and the way information was organized and broadcast. It adopted new tools to reach out to those who were to be a part of the next phase of development hoping to understand how design impacted them so as to "listen and understand" before beginning the design development process.
Now we are presented with a sea change in the marketplace where a more mature form of geo-politics has entered the design arena. Newly empowered leaders are being presented to us that smack of more 'Modernist' sensibilities and track records. They are accomplished, they are tough, they are no nonsense and they appear to not be aware of the moral relativism that has now come to infuse everything from the military to education to technology and the media. The apparatus that has been built over the last +50 years to disseminate information is truly a marvel of the Post-Modern era (Buckminster Fuller might wear a smile if he we still among us), but there are Modernist areas of the globe that are now falling into decline due to neglect while the blue ocean areas of capitalism are bright and shiny, but have no people with the means to live in them.
And so I ask, are we scheduled to lurch back to a more Modernist approach to design now? Will our resources be pointed at building more monuments to mark the era of these new leaders of nations, or will the apparatus continue to grow to try to measure more, try to predict outcomes more precisely (or not) and try to include more of those that will be affected by design's processes in the coming near future? What does the clash on the horizon look like? How will philosophy change?
Best Regards in the next era extension
Stephen Bourgogne Allard
Seoul
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