o_19po8js951tvs1r0t1r8s4bb1vpla.pdf

Gui Bonsiepe
Some years ago the term “Design Thinking” started to be divulged as a new
mantra in the ambit of companies management, claiming the existence of a
particular type of cognitive competence. It did not take long for this term to be
unmasked by Donald Norman, who wrote: “The design thinking is a term coined
by the public relations for an old acquaintance, nominated creative thought”
(NORMAN, 2010).
I agree with this criticism, because the concept of design thinking is vague,
except if it wants to make allusion to the holistic and integral focus of design, what
is not new as well, since it has always served to characterize the work of designers.
If this multidimensional focus found resonance and acceptance in other fields of
human knowledge, we would have an encouraging case for the effect of design
irradiation to other areas. Maybe in that there is one of the possible contributions
of design to overcome the current crisis.
Another current tendency of design are the dealings to transform design in
art – or art in design. With the term “transdisciplinary design”, we try to dissolve
the frontiers between art and design or to make more penetrable the wall that
separates design and art. By opening their doors to daily life products, the museums
and art galleries elevate the cultural status of design objects. When Marcel Duchamp
presented, in 1917, an urinal, an industrial anonymous product, for an art exposition
in New York, he provoked a shock in the world of art. Duchamp was not interested
in design, and he did not have the intention of dissolving the frontier between art
and design. He was much more revolutionary. He wanted to subvert the concept of
art, showing the arbitrariness and the conventionalism of the art concept.
Compared to this, the current attempts of reinvigorating the design, associating
it to art, seem very innocuous. I do not consider this as subversion. In the contrary,
they are expressions of a new-conservatism that uses radical gestures to leave
everything as it is. This new class – and not that new – of products claim for itself
a special status as products of art-design. They dress themselves with an explicit
indifference, underestimation and even hostility against the criteria of utility. In
a great part, they are limited to “artistic” variations of traditional products, like
chairs – the so known chair craze – tables, luminaries and accessories for the
personal habitat.
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Cadernos de Estudos Avançados em Design - design e humanismo - 2013 - p. 131-139