Day Two of What Design Can Do got off to the worst possible start. Brazilian architect Guto Requena told us how he had been kidnapped for hours. Even worse, his father was shot dead. In response, Requena vowed to approach design with a positive frame of mind. And that spirit defines everything he makes, such as his dancing pavilion for the 2016 Olympics in Rio that conveys the energy of dancers to moveable mirrors set in the façade.
His project Can you tell me a secret? (2016) consisted of interactive furniture on an underused public square in a São Paulo district that is home to lots of immigrants. His installation allowed people to listen to secrets left behind anonymously by others and brought life back to the area, encouraging strangers to connect with one another.
Most recently Requena developed the Love Project. He takes biological data collected through brain and heart sensors from people as they tell a love story and uses it to create beautiful objects. Requena is convinced that architecture should convey people’s emotions in a similar manner.
Uneasy relationships
Fashion-designer-turned-textile artist Femke van Gemert had her own epiphany too. Flying to China, her boss announced his aim to boost the profit margin by two percent. Why? To treat himself to a fancy car. Van Gemert then realized she wanted out of the fashion business. Now her textile works raise awareness of society’s uneasy relationship with fashion, the second most polluting industry after the oil industry. The wall pieces she makes for private clients are made from recycled garments donated by those same clients.
Like Van Gemert, farmer Jaap Korteweg found himself in an industry he could no longer morally justify to himself. He knew that meat production damaged the planet, but a life without meat? No way! He was an ardent follower of the philosopher Homer Simpson, who said: ‘I’d be a vegetarian if bacon grew on trees.’ But change Korteweg he did. His company, De Vegetarische Slager, now produces artificial meat from lupine, so successfully that he’s even swept the prizes at meatball competitions.
Vegetarian Butcher Jaap Korteweg
Activist storytellers
While the early morning speakers all challenged industries from within or without, the next session focused on activism. Mexican art curator Ana Elena Mallet, for example, noted that her country boasts around 2,000 museums, but not one devoted to design. So she took on the task of helping to build a design culture in Mexico.
Dutch documentary maker Sunny Bergman outlined her mission to highlight the blatant racism that pervades Dutch society, as illustrated by the character Black Piet. Bergman’s drive to challenge norms and ‘decolonize our minds and fight inequality’ runs through everything she does. She’s even set up an activist platform to retrain teachers to be aware of their unconscious biases.
The daunting task of changing ingrained attitudes is shared by Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, a Palestinian-American journalist who covers the Middle East. He showed how even respected media institutions like the New York Timesgloss over the truth with headlines like: ‘Dozens of Palestinians have died in protests…’ A wording that avoids the inconvenient truth that they were killed by Israeli forces.
‘I don’t understand passive journalism,’ Shihab-Eldin said. ‘I’m unapologetic about trying to expose facts and injustice as experienced by people on the ground. Journalists have an imperative responsibility to change society for the better.’ For him, truth, transparency and accountability are the tenets of a journalistic redesign, and too often those values are sadly lacking.
All three speakers agreed that their responsibility is to the truth. They all see themselves as telling human stories in provocative ways. Shihab-Eldin spoke for all of them when he said: ‘I don’t feel any shame about advocating for what I deem to be right, based on my observations, which is the reporter’s primary role.’
Beetles on indian cress
Day Two closed with three presentations by true pioneers in different domains on different continents. Master chef Elena Reygadas from Mexico City treated everybody to a morsel with a message. Trays of bright Indian cress blossoms, each containing a shiny protein-rich beetle, passed along the rows of seats for attendees. As the crowd nibbled, Reygadas explained her aim to reconnect with a lost tradition and draw on the vast riches of her native Mexico. For her, the distant past points the way forward.
A frightening yet intriguing moment
Cyclist Manifesto
That pursuit of values worth upholding found an echo in the ideas of product designer Daniel Freitag, who has gone from designing his trademark Freitag bags to designing an organization that revolves around the mantra of cycles and circular concepts. He shared with us his seven-point Cyclist Manifesto: We keep stuff in closed cycles. We own objects that last. We repair. We believe in systems designed for compatibility. We prefer access over ownership. We pay for results, not resources. We lose speed to win time.
His final thought was a plea for trust: ‘In good creators we trust. Good creators need trust, not scripts.’
Life-saving power
Similar thoughts were elaborated by the day’s final speaker, Robert Wong of Google Creative Lab. ‘Designers have the life-saving power to create visions of possible futures that don’t exist yet. Once you paint that picture, and it’s compelling enough, then everybody lines up. Yeah, let’s build that.’
Wong dismissed the notion of technology as the driver of innovation. ‘That’s completely false. Fake news. It will always be the human heart and the human imagination that changes things, that builds the future. Design is that heart and that imagination manifested in tangible form.’
It recently dawned on him that everything is made up. ‘Everything: countries, religions, language, even croquettes. I feel honoured to be part of this Ivy League of designers who can shape the future, and possibly even save it.’
At the end of Day 2 Richard van der Laken and Javier Lopez Casarín of the Reinventing Mexico Foundation announced WDCD Live Mexico City to be held on 4, 5, and 6 March 2019
WDCD Live Amsterdam was closed off with drinks on the stage!
Mission completed for the founders of WDCD, Richard van der Laken and Pepijn Zurburg