Editorial: Isn’t it All About Design?

Now, more than ever before architectural culture is confronting an open, dynamic reality, fortified by a new awareness of human problems and access to an unprecedented range of tools and resources. Social inequalities, economic growth, the environment, famine and migration are correlated issues that call for responsible behaviour on all levels.

This content-rich issue of Cluster not only deals with design from various different angles but also seeks to frame feasible solutions without losing sight of basic core needs

This content-rich issue of Cluster not only deals with design from various different angles but also seeks to frame feasible solutions without losing sight of basic core needs.

In this context the role of the designer gains more prominence. The use of technology and scientific knowledge progressively escapes democratic control due to their intrinsic complexity. It is therefore the responsibility of a few elite technical experts to organize resources and production strategies that don’t just respond to the demands pushed by a market created on short-term perspective.

Design is the result of contrasting interests but it must be able to embody the needs of future generations and those that aren’t always able to voice their opinions.

This is why Cluster approached INDEX: Design to Improve Life – the prestigious design award founded in Denmark, and now of increasing global prominence – for future collaborations. What unites us is a vision of design as an instrument for improving life, without undermining the aesthetic value of objects, but making design an acceptation that springs from basic needs and extends to processes.

The project Geodesign, an exhibition created in the context of Torino World Design Capital 2008, is a worthy example of this.

Reading the articles one after the other it seems that the world is now increasingly characterized by cities that have become a continuum of sprawling urbanization, taking over entire territories. And the centres of these dispersive megacities are becoming hubs for a concentration of quality functions in varyingly symbolic places.

Yet, the logic with which these functions are attracted and gathered breaks loose, even when territorial, traditional and urban planning methods are applied.

Very often master plans are translated into highly expensive, red-tape exercises which only serve to detract from the urgency of understanding how to operate positively in response to both global and local problems.

We need to renew our tool box in order to promote balanced and well distributed growth; act on the quality level of functions; adopt right equalization tools, incentives and obstacles in innovative ways, and use new technologies to get a dynamic measure of the efficiency of rules applied to strategic objectives.

These questions, ideas, issues that we are faced with every day represent only a fraction of the challenges that the architects of the UIA attending the congress in Turin, must address.