Dear Terry and Colleagues,
Terry, as many have done before, threw the style-styling anathema over a historical view of what the social mandate for Designers should be.
The style-styling anathema is a good stone to throw at Modern Movement educated designers or architects like yours truly. However, I grew out of it.
Terry confuses the meaning of the word design with the discipline or the profession of Design.
By stating that the meaning of the word has changed, Terry suggest that the discipline or the profession and its social mandate should change, also.
A great deal of the work described by Terry as “design of something” is performed by engineers, or code writers or even sociologists. The fact that those activities are called “design of something” do not implies that the design profession is dedicated to these activities. Terry, above all people would spot the fallacy in this reasoning. Men eat bananas, all men eat, if you are eating a banana you are a man. (though luck if you are chimp: lot’s of money spent in laser hair removal)
In the Neo-Latin speaking part of the world (which are a lot of cultures and countries in the world), those activities are designated as “projecto” “projet” “proyecto” “progetto” and are only designated as “design of something” if there is a fancy agenda on it. However, these languages imported Design to designate some activities that were not fully encompassed by their native designations (Thanks God for Spanish that kept Diseño). Italians were masters in doing so. Somehow, not only Disegno, but also Architettura or Progetto were not enough for designating something that was emerging in the post-war period. I’m sure that our Italian colleagues will provide sound explanations for such shift but I may risk an explanation that is less related with methodological, ethical even aesthetical issues, but is more related with the needs of internationalization of Italian products. Another explanation, also common to my country, had to do with newly arrived generations claiming for a share of the work market and claiming to possess a “new style”, more modern.
I will now perform a logic jump: there is nothing wrong with style and styling. National Design Museums rely on a perception of national style, global markets rely on that perception related with brands, schools rely on that perception related with alumni success, remarkably, design fields rely on that perception. Users (buyers, consumers, public) rely on that perception.
Products, in the end, are, or should be the work of teams concerned with designing stuff that works, but lead by designers, concerned about making the product to look like something. Style is a part of Design by designers because it is a cultural marker.
Best regards,
E.
Eduardo Corte-Real
PhD Arch.
Associate Professor
Professor Associado com Agregação
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