Christian Guellerin

Tongji University has brought together in Shanghai the most eminent international experts in design and architecture in order to reflect upon the theme of « better cities, better life. » This theme is at the heart of designers’ concerns, and is central to most of our curriculum and research activities. How and where will we live tomorrow?
In the 20th century, the city affirmed itself as a model for land occupation. This development brought along with it new social, economic and ecological issues such as mobility, security, pollution, waste management, energy and food autonomy, access to water, information and culture…These issues and more will be discussed during the Cumulus conference, in an effort to guarantee tomorrow’s society peace, social well-being and success.

Have certain cities become megalopolises with sufficient economic power to become significant enough to compete with regions or even States? How will these cities be managed in the future to guarantee the balance between territories and powers? Where is the median between the metropolises, which will continue to grow and concentrate, and the middle-sized cities whose issues are much different? Is the concentration of cities inevitable, as part of the economic and social reality, or is it a cycle of population flux, which will experience a reflux in a few years towards deserted territories?

New information technologies, new materials, and new vegetal materials will remodel cities considerably in the near future. The “intelligent materials” will allow a new building architecture, just as re-forestation, agriculture and urban farming will be at the heart of urban issues. City dwellers will seek to reorganize spaces and recreate the countryside in the city, thus creating a form of energy and food self-sufficiency.

Cities will change their organization, aspect, colors, soul and sense. Global competition also applies to cities, which will have to continue to work on their identity in order to gain worldwide recognition and renown in order to attract new inhabitants and tourists. The quality of design schools and universities – whose way of teaching is different from one country and one school to another considering the gap of culture – will be a key factor in attracting the best students and the best researchers.

Finally, what are the new demands from urban citizens confronted with problems such as the access to work, education, culture, leisure and/or the difficulties of transportation and safety…will they be sedentary townsmen attached to their house and their quarter, or will they be nomads inclined to move from one dwelling to another? What will the new demands be when it becomes possible to work from home? If people are no longer linked to their workplaces, or the schools of their children, will it still be necessary to organize their lives around a fixed territory, or will the inhabitants – and thus the cities they live in – become mobile? If the city becomes a network, what would the pertinence of its territory be?

“It is compulsory to build the cities in the countryside, the air is there more pure” said the poet..

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Degree holders are used to saying they graduated in such or such city or school: Helsinki, London, Milan… But will this still make sense in the near future? Will it still make sense to say this for students who spent 2 semesters in London, 1 in Helsinki, 1 in Milan, and finally obtained a degree elsewhere.
Times are changing and models must be reinvented because students who complete their Bachelor’s and Master’s curriculums in the same country, in the same institution –thus limiting their mindscape to one single culture – are becoming scarce… and odd. The ongoing globalization spurs students to accumulate a wide variety of cultural and technical experiences and to hone their ability to appreciate make the most of differences.

But then, what type of degree is the most appropriate for the students of tomorrow? And above all, what identity should this degree have? One solution would be to implement a degree common to all schools; but this is risky because doing so could jeopardize schools and their identity, their specific know-how, their uniqueness.
We’ll probably be compelled to focus on values other than degrees, to define other
criteria for selection that go beyond titles, training courses, places… and ultimately create new kinds of identity.

Que voudra dire demain, je suis diplômé d’Helsinki, de Londres, de Milan…qu’est ce que cela voudra dire quand un étudiant aura passé deux semestres à Londres, un semestre à Helsinki, un an à Milan et qu’il aura obtenu un diplôme ailleurs.
Il faut réinventer les modèles au moment où il devient incongru pour les étudiants de passer la totalité de leur cursus de Bachelor et de Master dans un seul et même pays, dans le même établissement, en n’étant confronté qu’à une seule culture. La globalisation oblige à diversifier les expériences culturelles et techniques et à développer la capacité à apprécier la différence.

Mais alors, quel diplôme pour les étudiants demain ? et surtout, quelle identité pour ce diplôme ? L’une des solutions est probablement de créer un diplôme commun pour toutes les écoles mais c’est alors courir le risque de faire disparaître les écoles, leur identité, leur savoir-faire qui fait leur singularité.
Il va falloir probablement travailler sur d’autres valeurs que le diplôme, et définir d’autres critères d’appartenance, transgressant les titres, les lieux, les formations…et créer d’autres formes d’identités.

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http://www.cumulusassociation.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=597&Itemid=35

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The Copenhagen summit only led to a stalemate: politicians failed to enforce development management laws. However, a global political consciousness came to life during this international meeting and many rivalries between States were smoothed out.
But will this make capitalism into a virtuous system? Of course it won’t! As a “techno-scientific” system capitalism fundamentally lacks an ethical dimension. The supreme goal of companies is to be profitable, that of the marketer is to sell and meet consumer needs, that of the technician to increase and rationalize productivity… At every level it is but a matter of interest as opposed to duty. Morals have been totally left out by the economic model derived from capitalism.
Politicians failed to make things move forward in Copenhagen and there is nothing capitalism can do about it. Capitalism is powerless here. Therefore Humankind must take action and retrieve a virtuous, ethical way of producing and consuming… We must infuse new meaning and a true collective spirit into economics, we must admit that we can – and must – live differently. Only such a coming of awareness can help us “get politicians started” and force companies into developing new environment-friendly entrepreneurship patterns.

Designers should benefit from such a context. Likewise, the opportunities offered to companies by “sustainable development” and by green economy are about to trigger a new era as far as development is concerned.
To move ahead, companies must reshape economy – create, produce, sell, manage differently – and probably make social matters into key issues.
Designers have the duty to think up new products, new packaging, new spaces, new multimedia tools… Because they know how to anticipate upcoming scenarios designers have conquered strategic positions within companies. Since designers are dedicated to creation, innovation, the methods they abide by are neither fundamentally scientific nor fundamentally economic, wherein they remain free from the abusive determinist spirit of production-and/or market-induced logics that keep many companies to a standstill. Designers are craftsmen in the service of development within companies willing to go beyond their traditional cultural background.
Engineers are the key players in innovation and technological advancement, “marketers” in sales development and economic activities, designers conduct key research activities about the major human-and user-centered social and economic issues. Reflecting upon innovation implies keeping an expert eye on technology, economy and human sciences and thereby designers broaden the scope of value creation, thus bringing ethics back into it. Since Human beings seen as users are the core of the designer’s approach to creation, designers have the duty to promote a type of economic development that works in the service of Humankind. Their action is essential in reviving virtuous entrepreneurship models and in producing wealth with a view to fostering progress for all.

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2009 will remain a landmark in the 21st century. Two significant facts seem to foreshadow the birth of a new world; two events that could give us the creeps were we not “designers,” professionals forced to play Sysiphus, to keep building and rebuilding our environment on a daily basis. All the paradigms ruling industrial development and wealth production were brutally questioned when financial capitalism began to stagger and its foundations to crumble. The business world is going to have to reconsider its ways of achieving success.
Moreover the stalemate in which the recent Copenhagen climate summit resulted cast light upon the failure of States when it comes to agreeing on development management. However this meeting raised global awareness on burning ecological issues, which could spark off a reshaping of the worldwide industrial map, even though a huge territorial imbalance seemed there to last as China, India or Brazil had become the “official” world suppliers. Does it make sense for Westerners to buy dirt-cheap solar panels made in China that must then be hauled by boats or worse, by plane, thus making a ridiculously high carbon footprint? At least the Copenhagen Summit made it obvious that politicians are nowhere near resolving this problem. And yet we are going to have to take action.

Industrial companies, reorganize!

Financial capitalism – in which development and wealth production solely to producing more wealth, in which financial issues only raised further financial issues – showed its drawbacks and began to falter. The consequences of this decline are difficult to assess and we cannot rejoice over it for now. Luckily banks and stock markets rose again and a total collapse was avoided in a close shave. Such a collapse would have entailed terrible consequences on a social level.
However the financial crisis shed light on a deeper, way more worrying industrial crisis. Indeed the whole industrial world is about to reconstruct itself entirely. A construction process that will undoubtedly offer designers a tremendous playground. Designers will take on key strategic positions within the companies of tomorrow.

For several decades now, the rise of China, India, Brazil and the upcoming emergence of Laos or Cambodia – where production costs are bound to keep decreasing – have shaken up the organization of the industrial world on a global scale. So much so that some major Western nations – such as England, for instance – have pro-actively started to part with entire sectors of their industries. GM’s near-bankruptcy in the United States quite blatantly shows that the industrial models of the early nineteenth century are totally outdated.
Globalization and market liberalization forced Western industries to rationalize cost and production processes to the utmost, thus limiting their abilities to innovate and to think up new products or services. The so-called fruitful “quality-driven policies” advocated in management in the eighties tolled the bell of many a company. Always and solely keeping improving what you already know how to make is but a dead-end logics, especially if the rules of competitiveness vary from country to country. In many cases, quality-driven policies have paved the way to disastrous management methods centered on procedures and cost management, which in turn gave life to a financial tropism that sowed the seeds of a type of “evil” capitalism much questioned today.

Industrial models must be thought anew. We must re-empower companies and give them back the will to create and innovate, to launch new projects. Innovating is a way to stand out as different and to produce value-added, to anticipate tomorrow and to make the right strategic decisions to keep ahead and to keep developing. The true challenge for many companies will lie in their ability to free themselves from industrial logics and sectors which have to this day constituted their economical, historical and cultural backgrounds. What is a truly innovative company? Maybe the one who is in a position to ask the following question “making use of what I know how to do, what can I do that I do not know? Which products, to be launched on which market and for what uses can I apply my know-how to?”
To face low-cost products, Western companies must make up new thinking patterns that will enable them to move on and change activities in no time. To face the crisis and ensure salvation “GM” probably should stop manufacturing spark-ignition engines. And what if Renault – who makes a cunning and clever use of communications – decided to turn to electricity supply? This may sound weird but 20 years ago who would have thought Bouygues would turn into a multinational telecommunication company? Designers will probably benefit from the need for companies to move on, to innovate, to take initiatives and to veer from the beaten industrial path. This trend will help them take up strategic and leading positions and thus to guide companies and their staff towards change and development.

Bringing ethics back into entrepreneurship?

The Copenhagen summit only led to a stalemate: politicians failed to enforce development management laws. However, a global political consciousness came to life during this international meeting and many rivalries between States were smoothed out.
But will this make capitalism into a virtuous system? Of course it won’t! As a “techno-scientific” system capitalism fundamentally lacks an ethical dimension. The supreme goal of companies is to be profitable, that of the marketer is to sell and meet consumer needs, that of the technician to increase and rationalize productivity… At every level it is but a matter of interest as opposed to duty. Morals have been totally left out by the economic model derived from capitalism.
Politicians failed to make things move forward in Copenhagen and there is nothing capitalism can do about it. Capitalism is powerless here. Therefore Humankind must take action and retrieve a virtuous, ethical way of producing and consuming… We must infuse new meaning and a true collective spirit into economics, we must admit that we can – and must – live differently. Only such a coming of awareness can help us “get politicians started” and force companies into developing new environment-friendly entrepreneurship patterns.

Designers should benefit from such a context. Likewise, the opportunities offered to companies by “sustainable development” and by green economy are about to trigger a new era as far as development is concerned.
To move ahead, companies must reshape economy – create, produce, sell, manage differently – and probably make social matters into key issues.
Designers have the duty to think up new products, new packaging, new spaces, new multimedia tools… Because they know how to anticipate upcoming scenarios designers have conquered strategic positions within companies. Since designers are dedicated to creation, innovation, the methods they abide by are neither fundamentally scientific nor fundamentally economic, wherein they remain free from the abusive determinist spirit of production-and/or market-induced logics that keep many companies to a standstill. Designers are craftsmen in the service of development within companies willing to go beyond their traditional cultural background.
Engineers are the key players in innovation and technological advancement, “marketers” in sales development and economic activities, designers conduct key research activities about the major human-and user-centered social and economic issues. Reflecting upon innovation implies keeping an expert eye on technology, economy and human sciences and thereby designers broaden the scope of value creation, thus bringing ethics back into it. Since Human beings seen as users are the core of the designer’s approach to creation, designers have the duty to promote a type of economic development that works in the service of Humankind. Their action is essential in reviving virtuous entrepreneurship models and in producing wealth with a view to fostering progress for all.

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The environment of design schools – and of all higher education institutions – has greatly evolved over the past few years. Among all these significant mutations, 4 seem to prevail:

1/ The “globalization” of social and economic issues. Already implemented in more than 70 countries to enable institutions to open their curriculums to foreign students, to share students, teachers and other projects, the “Bologna Treaty” has triggered drastic changes in the organization of schools all over Europe. Education institutions are going to have to adjust to a market becoming global and to make sure they can welcome students from all over the world.

2/ When reflecting upon tomorrow one cannot overlook the issue of sustainable development. The duty of designers is to think up – driven by humanistic values of progress – physical and virtual products for tomorrow. Sustainable development is thus a core issue of design.

3/ Facebook, Wikipedia, blogs and Internet as a whole – all those tools that appear as endless contribution platforms – could totally reshape the way we envision knowledge and consumption. We seem to be evolving from a consumption-based economy to a contribution-based economy in which users are held responsible for the knowledge they produce. This should bring great upheavals in the bond between teachers and students: knowledge will cease to be solely reserved to teachers, and the students’ responsibility will thereby be increased. Even more so that the field of knowledge available to them is now endless.

4/ The recent economic crisis held high the role of designers. The dramatic 2009 financial crisis was but the tip of the iceberg. The iceberg being the need to rethink the industrial model. During the “post-industrialization” era, entire nations turned their back on their domestic industries and called upon emerging countries to ensure profitability. These practices are still common practice. Now we must devise new “re-industrialization” models based on easily adaptable, ever-mutating companies able to change profession if required. Efficiency used to be about improving your know-how, about getting better at what you already knew how to do. But these outdated standards have to be redefined and adjusted to the business world of today. Entire industrial sectors were given away to low-cost countries. In-house designers will strive to shake companies from within and have them anticipate the changes to spark off now to prepare tomorrow.

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Designers have become project managers. Though they are still primarily valued for their creative and technical skills – which are in itself a language – in the course of time designers have taken on other kinds of responsibility – such as being in a position to bringing together philosophers, sociologists, engineers, technicians, marketers, financial people, artists… all the players expected to produce innovation and progress. Designers are inspirers who “strike up a new order” by having human sciences and hard sciences work together in harmony for development and progress. They are pioneering elements of a new type of thought likely to merge the analytical thinking that rules hard sciences and the rather intuitive thinking of human sciences. Through their method and language – the universal language of drawing and graphic representation – they give meaning to “intuitionalytic thinking,” a hoped-for child born from the unusual encounter between intuition and analysis, a type of thinking that will undoubtedly prove useful in facing the many challenges companies are going to be faced with.

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I have recently given a lecture at the symposium organized by the IASDR – “International Association of Societies of Design Research” 2009* – a research-oriented conference presenting the work of a large number of researchers and
universities from all over the world. First we should congratulate the organizers of the event for gathering so many different players together in Seoul. Many vibrant debates took place and much knowledge was produced during this wide-scoped event.
However I was puzzled by such a profusion of information about “research” and “design”, two terms many of us are striving to bring closer.
In doing so we must be wary not to bite our own tail like business schools, who call “marketing research” quantitative or qualitative studies often limited to statistic charts interpreted in a not-so-scientific manner that lacks the method and depth of sociological research. Why naming “marketing research” activities that are no more and no less than the very practice of “marketing”?
Why naming “design research” all reflections about creation and innovation?
Design is but an emerging discipline that is not very visible yet in the field of research. Some take advantage of this state of things to engage in studies pertaining to sociology, psychology, educational theory or hard sciences and claim they are doing “design research.” To me this working method is irrelevant and will not help design be accepted as a research discipline.
Along the same line using the term “design research” to refer to projects carried out by professionals does not seem very relevant to me either.
The central issue of this debate is the very nature of design. Can design, as a practice, really be defined as a science? The criteria to answer this question have not been decided upon yet. And it harms the image of “design research” to rank behind this label initiatives stemming from other disciplines, innovation-oriented initiatives, or new production processes applied to products developed according to the usual methods.
We must be cautious here. Otherwise we run the risk of blurring the message conveyed by a young discipline – design – still in the process of defining its very identity and of proving its legitimacy on the academic level. Doing “debased” sociology, or debased psychology to try and codify “design-induced emotions” is not a serious way of tackling the issue.
We must aim at centering research on a specific unique field based on a language of representation and on an interface linking all the knowledge produced by human sciences or hard sciences with the social and economical issues ruling the world we live in. Design is a language and an interface that brings human beings, ideas and knowledge together to shape a better world for tomorrow.
If we want to promote design as a science we must beware not to mix everything up just because design is all over the place and because conducting activities involving reflection makes one feel important.
Once again I wish to congratulate the organizers of this conference for giving us the opportunity to address in depth the tricky issue of research in design.

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Because they have always considered business administration and management as mere business sciences based on analytical thinking; because they have always relied on research and its seriousness; because they have always strived to rationalize, codify and analyze the past to retrieve the sacrosanct “dogma” – in this field, no salvation without dogma, it seems – business schools have failed to develop the kind of intuition-based approaches crucial to coming up with new ideas and undertaking initiatives.
To anticipate tomorrow, never have companies been so much in need of intuitive thinking as today. Unfortunately, business schools seem quite powerless when it comes to considering a new approach to industry on a worldwide scale. Things might have turned out better if business-school-employed “researchers” had foreseen the current crisis instead of simply explaining its reasons afterwards – too late – the way historians do.

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This morning I was solicited by concerned parents: they were wondering if their still undecided child should rather enroll in a design school or a business school. I told them that after a five-year training in design, as a young graduate you possessed the resources to develop a solid marketing-and-management culture within a year or so, and thus aim for strategic in-house positions.
Oppositely, obtaining a Master’s Degree from a business school will not earn you sufficient creative know-how to become a designer within a year after your graduation… No way!

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