Arjun Appadurai is a professor at NYU & a prolific writer focusing on socio-cultural themes. He is a visiting Senior Loeb Fellow at Harvard & recently gave a series of lectures at the GSD one of which was titled ‘The Social Life of Design’. I have to admit that I am not intimately familiar with the theoretical background & texts that that he often drew upon, so the account may seem rather disjointed. Nonetheless, it touches upon some of the major points that stayed with me.
The presentation was peppered with images from advertising & began by pointing out how in today’s world we almost have an ‘object fatigue’ – we are inundated by a multitude of objects – cellphones, ipads etc that cater to our various complex needs. Often designers of these various objects (much like architects) design within a pre-existing established context. Yet what is often overlooked is that they are creating context themselves too. This context is not just the physical reality that they create but is also associational. For example, how a Mercedes ad that depicts a lavish villa in the background, includes fine dining & fashionable clothes, creates a context that extends beyond just the object, to suggest a ‘way of life’. It then creates a context for other objects that can be designed & sold separately.
According to him, design proposes ‘a’ way of doing something, ‘one’ solution to a problem, where endless other solutions may have existed. It almost acts as a source of discipline – limiting numerous possibilities to a select few. Architectural design continuously seeks to strike a fine balance between the ‘joys of transience’ and the ‘imperatives of durability’. Urban & rural planning is ‘design with a social conscience’. It should have more to do with not just creating the physical infrastructure but also the ‘intangible’ infrastructure of conviviality & happiness within communities & settlements. Historic preservation has not yet found its proper home in the space between design & planning according to Appadurai. He felt that most planning initiatives up to now have been focused on trying to create /restore order where ‘seemingly’ none existed, rather than understanding whatever it is that was still working. He concluded the talk by showing photos of some Mumbai slums as representative of his ideas of ‘intangible’ infrastructure.
