Social movements are "dependent upon historical processes of forging solidarity, reaching common understanding, and forming culture. This politics of idenity–in the sense of making identity, not merely reflecting it–is something basic to all politics, and especially movements, not something new in the late twentieth century." - Craig Calhoun
The aim of this page is to raise awareness of the notion that we as designers play a role in shaping social self-consciousness, in shaping how society sees itself.
How often do you think about shaping social self-consciousness when you design?
Seldom Often Consistently
New Deal photographs of work, for example, were meant to serve the purpose, with good intentions, to forge an image of industrial work-life as the ideal of American life, however individual workers felt in reality.
New Deal photographs of work, therefore, were no longer directed mostly at the factory owners or the farm bosses; they were aimed at 'the people,' at mobilizing/creating 'public opinion' as a political tool. [T]he archive [of these photographs] was defined according to the codification of American society being installed by the Roosevelt Administration, and through a structuring of imagery [...] set within the framework of an ideal of American life – open, democratic, honest, hardworking, productive; urbanized and industrialized. During the decade, agricultural production was totally transformed: it was mechanized by the large landholders, and its output regulated by the government. The Department of Agriculture, in concert with the landowners, achieved this transformation, in part, through an imagery that amounted to 'bucolic' propaganda, on which comforted all concerned with the illusion that nothing really fundamental was changing." - Terry Smith
The point being made here is that the photographers, the content-producers, the designers were playing an active role in shaping social self-consciousness to be in agreement with the government ethos. This is not something that is inherently wrong, but the tone of Smith in the above paragraph raises questions insofar as he describes the imagery as an illusion meant to comfort the viewers. It is especially concerning because the viewers of the content are also the subjects of the content.
What are our responsibilities as designers?
It appears that part of our role is to imagine the kind of society we want to see ourselves living in, produce/create content which reflects these ideals, and then to have enough viewers identify with that imagery that society begins to re-shape itself accordingly.
As a case study, let's consider the democratization of space that was meant to be achieved by the grid pattern employed in New York City and repeated all the way to the West.
A basic characteristic of twentieth-century conceptions of the field is the de-emphasis of the point coordinate or individual unit. The pro-field, anti- or neutralized-point paradigm also characterized leading conceptions of the person-environment relationship during this period. [I]n the sphere of design, the artists and designers affiliated with de Stijl and the Bauhaus felt that the passionate individualism at the root of the competing nationalisms which had caused World War I must be countered by an international impulse in architecture and design that would transcend national styles and differences. It is therefore not surprising that an anti-individualist vision expressed itself in the entire spectrum of innovation which accompanied the use of the Cartesian grid. The movement proved to have much international influence in the 1950s and 1960s, although the grid itself retained the same meaning it had in the 1920s; that is, as the continuous field of rational law which underlay the physical universe much the way the grid itself remained invisible 'beneath' the final design composition. - Jack Williamson
Full essay found here.
Architect groups like SUPERSTUDIO idealized the democratization of space and the grid pattern.
There are however accounts of the grid pattern not benefiting social consciousness by the time it reaches the West. D. J. Waldie writes about his own experience of the grid and about his father who was part of the working class in California in the 1950s.
That evening he thought he was becoming his habits, or – even more – he thought he was becoming the grid he knew.
Seen from above [in photographs], the grid is beautiful and terrible.
The photographs were images of the developers' crude pride. They report that the grid, briefly empty of associations, is just a pattern predicting itself; the field is all design.
You can not make out the men. They are patterns in the photograph.
My father did not have a passion for his giving; it came from him, perhaps after much spiritual calculation, as a product might come from a conveyor belt.
The Los Angeles Daily News described the construction of the houses as a huge assembly line.
The distance between my house and yours is a separation the suburb's designers carefully planned. It is one of the principal factors in determining the number of houses per acre in a subdivision.
This is a measure of its profitability.
What is beautiful here?
Full essay found here.
