“[D]esign has become the most powerful tool with which man shapes his tool and environments…This demands high social and moral responsibility from the designer. It also demands greater understanding of the people by those who practise design and more insight into the design process by the public.”
Austrian designer Victor Papanek’s observation about the design industry may have been written more than fifty years ago, but it continues to resonate with many designers today. His 1971 publication, Design for the Real World, accused the industry of enabling “murder on a mass-production basis” by helping manufacturers create unsafe, wasteful and polluting products. Instead, Papanek advocated for a socially and environmentally responsible profession that designed not for consumerist fantasies but “real world” needs.
➜ Read the full essay in Emerge: Contemporary Southeast Asian Design and Beyond
With its ability to learn and simulate all sorts of aesthetic styles, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is arguably a powerful tool for imitation in design. The technology, however, is still in development and has often generated unexpected outcomes. These have ranged from extra fingers to distorted faces, although they have become increasingly less common. While such outputs are typically regarded as limitations of AI to be solved, architecture and AI professor Immanuel Koh argues they should instead be seen as artefacts of its generative logic. They represent the native expression of AI or what he calls Neural Tectonics.