My misspent youth: Searching for design

I've written before about my intensely felt relationship with design. And where, to have to quote myself boo hiss, I said,

Design, is inherently a philosophy or a system of values first, and it's implementation, in whatever form, second.

made me just realize that my youthful flirtations with arts and crafts, engineering and ultimately design were all aspects of wanting to know the full life cycle of how things were made. You know, the fundamental monkey's curiousity that we all carry within us?

So anyway, it also seems to be, in retrospect, my dropping out of NID after much soul searching was but a search to start the shaping of my own. We have such raw values at 16 and 17, we see everything in black and white. The edges of the decision making are as sharp as Occam's Razer. Age brings with it a myopia of a certain kind.

A willingness for things to be a bit blurred around the edges. The details will take care of themselves, our life experiences have shown us by now that by now. We've learnt to seperate the wheat from the chaff, and finally are becoming more efficient with our energy use. I mean, chalta hai yaar, why get worked up over small stuff? Its too hot to move. Is it life or death?

Friendships in India demand that you think about your answer in relation to just about everyone you know in your life because that is the way it is. What to do, we are like that only. Anyway I digress.

To finally get to the point, if design is indeed a manifestation of our value system, then does it not then follow that design for the future must indeed maximize constraints while minimizing the use of valuable natural resources?

Comments

[Martin]

Two things:

Firstly, I love what you say about design being a manifestation of our value system. It's so true.

Secondly, I think you're quite right about the black/white vs gray issue. I still try to cling avidly to my right/wrong mentality, even though I rationally know that it's stupid. Then again, I think there are lots of things which we know are irrational, but we still don't quite give in to admitting that it's so!

[Niti Bhan]

well martin, its not stupid, that much only we know for sure :) the rest is a prototype in liminal space, ha ha :P