 |
 |
> Ken, Nicola, and others > > It is notable that schools have migrated toward names that capture their sense of changing mission and understanding of what is possible in the future; for example, The School of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania has become the School of Design; The Museum School of Industrial Arts (1876-1988) has become the University of the Arts in which industrial design struggles for identity as a discipline in the College of Art and Design. >As others have noted, names such as industrial design cue perceptual categories and ways of interpreting them. They carry many entailments. Professions also work to identity and promote what they do even to the point of segregating themselves into self protecting niche cultures with a non inclusive world view in which one must conform to the cultural norms or become licensed by the state in order to belong. Where risks are high and competence must be assured, as in architecture and engineering, this makes some sense but when the state also controls what gets built through codes and peer review, such licensing is no longer really needed. I believe that everyone should be known simply as designers and have to prove the worthiness of their designs against standards of performance rather than codes of practice and bureaucracies that restrict innovation. How an open discipline of "design" could come about remains to be seen. >Best regards, >Chuck -- >Dr. Charles Burnette >234 South Third Street >Philadelphia, PA 19106 >215 629 1387 >[log in to unmask] > > On 12/20/06 8:18 AM, "Ken Friedman" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > >> Dear Nicola, >> >> Good thoughts. >> >> One of the challenges we facein describing the context of design activities >> is the fact that we still live in an industrial economy as well as in a >> post-industrial economy. >> >> Over 10,000 years ago, human beings moved from a hunting-gathering economy >> into the agricultural economy. Following several developmental revolutions, >> the first of at least four or five industrial revolutions began in the >> Middle Ages. How many there have been depend on how you count. >> >> In 1940 or so, a British-Australian economist named Colin Clark described >> three economies, from the primary economy of agriculture, fishing, and >> forestry to the tertiary economy of services. In 1976, Daniel Bell >> elaborated this into an economy of five sectors in his book The Coming of >> Post-Industrial Society. To place this in the context of design and design >> research, I have reworked Bell's structure into seven sectors -- starting >> with a Zero Economy for the nearly billion people who are shut out of much >> of the world's economic activity to Economy Six, the ultra-post-industrial >> experience economy. >> >> The key fact of all these is that they operate side by side. All the >> productive economies exist and need each other. At the height of the third >> or fourth industrial revolution in the late 1800s, for example, the >> majority of the world's people still worked in the primary economy to feed >> and provide raw material to all the rest. In most advanced economies today, >> three farmers feed all the rest of us. Nevertheless, without their work in >> the primary economy, the other five economies would collapse. >> >> The shifting proportions between economic sectors means that some of the >> world lives in a post-industrial knowledge economy or an experience >> economy. At the same time, we still need computers, cars, trains, >> telephones -- even chairs, dinner plates, drinking glasses. Industrial >> designers have a role to play in the important industrial economy that >> continues to make the post-industrial economy possible by supplying the >> goods that people use in their daily post-industrial lives. >> >> Since much of this also involves the flow of information in automated or >> programmed services -- manufactured through another kind of industrial >> process -- your inquiry into the nature of a definition offers a valuable >> insight into the logic of the designation "industrial design." >> >> Thanks. >> >> Ken Friedman >> >> >> ----- Nicola Morelli wrote: ----- >> >> >> But here I think it would be much more useful to reflect upon why do we use >> the word Industrial Design, especially in the post-industrial age, in which >> the use of this term may sound obsolete. >> >> >> I believe there is something relevant in the term, that refers to the >> traditional industrial logic: in my view the reference could be to the fact >> that the "industrial logic" is about reproductibility of products (or >> solutions) the formalisation of knowledge the organisation of work and >> competences. >> >> >> >>