Global Issues in Design

This blog traces our conversations regarding globalization theories and their influence on design practice, (and vice versa), as discussed in lectures and readings hosted by Associate Professor Susan Yelavich at Parsons, The New School for Design. Contributors include students from a range of Parsons majors including visual and performing arts, architecture, management, computer and information sciences.

Our engagement with design and globalization will incorporate the perspectives of cultural producers as well as scientists and philosophers in order to ask: How is the concept of culture important to the design professions? How do our creations (in)form social norms? In turn, how are cultural ascriptions revealed in the things we make? We focus particularly on how the streets of New York reveal aspects of cosmopolitanism today.

In week 1 we encounter what literary theorist Terry Eagleton describes as a crisis in culture. Due, he says, to the increased fragmentation and multiplication of subcultures, we have lost our ability to relate to each other — except through capital. Eagleton distinguishes between “c”ulture (smaller groups affiliated through shared, voluntary interests, ie. vegetarian cultures, punk cultures, or professional cultures) and “C”ulture (larger, top-down social constructions, often associated with national, religious, or ethnic — in-born characteristics) to explore the idea of culture “as at once an ideal criticism and a real social force” (The Idea of Culture 2000, p8).

Is our culture as fragmented as Terry Eagleton suggests? Do we share affinities only for cash? Or, (perhaps thanks to this fragmentation) are we coming to realize our greater essential human-ness. The work of contemporary artist Ernesto Neto (seen above) may be a good example describing the subtle valences of cultural ascription versus universal humanism. While often noted for their particularly Latin sensuality, Neto’s soft, often scented installations also explore the most basic corporal, universally human, phenomena.

Relatedly, what are the real and psychological effects of design in our everyday? For example, in objects as well as processes we’re seeing a redefinition of humanity’s relationship with nature. Notions of sustainability, both ecological and humanitarian, can no longer linger in the periphery of any discourse. These global issues will have a great effect on how design understands and shapes culture(s) today.

Seen left to right here are some projects reformulating culture in answer to these issues, by design:

Ilha and Meteor (The Campana Brothers)

The California Academy of Sciences (Renzo Piano)

The Fab Tree Hab (Media Lab’s Smart Cities group, and Mitchell Joachim)

Course Objectives

• To understand culture as a variable set of social dynamics.
• To see design and art as both expressions of culture and instruments for changing culture.
• To gain an understanding of the larger social, economic, political, ethical and extra-disciplinary contexts within which design and visual culture function in the current state of globalization.
• To be aware of the consequences of design and art.
• To gain exposure to a variety of modes of thought, disciplinary approaches to solving and setting problems.
• To think critically about design and visual culture.
• To encourage students to view their future professional paths, not in terms of discrete disciplines, but rather as a series of intersections with knowledge and practices parallel to their own.

posted by: Sarah Butler
course administrator
textbutler(at)gmail.com