Design Observer :: Join the Discussion http://places.designobserver.com/feature/aesthetic-potential-of-sustainability/34338/ en-us Design Observer Group 2012-06-07T19:04:32-05:00 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0
Beauty functions as both a diversion and a device to propagate continuity in sexual selection and I think architecture remains bound by some of the same.

Virtue alone is not enough to change our aesthetic language and it may require a major cultural and social shift, or environmental disaster, to reshape our eye beyond the shiny surfaces and ,most importantly for conservation, new surfaces that we are drawn to.

I don't know if it undercuts your argument but there is some belief among that the "Fountain" was manufactured by Duchamp. Scholars were outraged and said it made the work less important but I saw it another layer of Duchamp's jester persona. The same kind of upending that time played with those seventies energy efficient dwellings.

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/20/arts/taking-jokes-by-duchamp-to-another-level-of-art.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm


]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/aesthetic-potential-of-sustainability/34338/#comments 2012-06-07T19:04:32-05:00
1. The conversation of "sustainability" rarely gets to the brass tacks of BTUs consumed per occupant; if & when it does (as a fan of Henry Gifford, I am dubious that actual energy savings is a genuine concern of the "sustainable" crowd) it will find that many aesthetic prototypes exist, most of which are huddled together, of modest scale, and frankly much more akin to the conditions Walker Evans photographed than anything we're accustomed to in the first world. My sense is all the energy hogging gadgetry (as epitomized by the iPhone and Chevy Volt) is some passive-aggressive transference of this, but who knows...

2. The single family detached house - modern, traditional, federal, just whatever you want - with its reliance on motorized transportation and industrial roadway infrastructure can be encrusted with all its gadgets (and oriented sensitively) and declared an off-the-grid solar decathalon winner, but it remains a gluttonous thing. The new aesthetics may not be staked out yet, but to see the architectural press still entranced by these exploitive forms of occupation, clearly not for the masses, a pure dead end - well, its like those hunting magazines at the HEB, some dude in a gimme hat with some once beautiful dead animal hiked in his crotch across the cover. Yes, people like to trophy hunt, and always will, but isn't it gross? Makes a fella wonder what Bear Run was like before those concrete cantilevers... ]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/aesthetic-potential-of-sustainability/34338/#comments 2012-06-07T14:11:02-05:00
I got used to think in products such as OLPC (one lap top per children), SAYL (Herman Miller chair) and GINA concept by BMW as a "new aesthetic" in design. One that merges beauty, efficiency and ethics.

Also, because of this new scenario that you exposed, I am a critic of product design courses that do not consider more technical disciplines (such as Technical Mechanics and Material Technology - as we say in Brazil). How can we even talk about sustainability if we Designers have to guess (or research only at the project moment) product features such as resistance, chemical composition, process and materials specific and complex properties. The engineers - those i´ve come to meet - many times lack creative intelligence to go further with innovation. So, to reach that new aesthetics Product Design courses need to go deeper with engineer subjects.

That technical orientation based on deeper processs knowledge perhaps is that infancy on this new aesthetics.

]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/aesthetic-potential-of-sustainability/34338/#comments 2012-06-07T13:07:13-05:00