Alastair Macdonald — Counter-cultures and the ethics of design practise
This week’s D&T lecture, given by Alastair Macdonald was all about counterculture. This was prominent from 1965–1971 (globalised counterculture of the 1960s) and promoted new ways of thinking.
Designers like Sir Kenneth Grange and Dieter Rams are prime examples of who may be considered ‘mainstream designers’. Their works are obviously well recognised as great design, have created beautiful products and have given a significant contribution to the world of design. However, the designers and individuals associated with the counterculture era, perhaps less well-remembered, anticipated so much of today’s concern for Planet Earth.
Alastair gave examples of this, The Whole Earth Catalog — an American counterculture magazine and product catalogue which did not sell anything, but promoted ideas and focused on product reviews.
Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes offered a new approach to construction. I am a big fan of Fuller’s work, and am currently using it as a source of inspiration for my own projects. If it was not for counterculture and the idea of steering away from what is mainstream, work like this would never be done and innovation would suffer.
Later on in the lecture, Alastair showed us the film No Impact Man. This documentary follows the lives of Colin Beavan and his family, who gradually reached the point of zero impact living. They did not use electricity, shopped strictly organic, used bikes to get around and tried to produce little to no waste. The point of the film was not to encourage people to take these extreme measures, it seemed to be more of a thought experiment to get people to assess and question their current lifestyles.
The main theme of Alastair’s talk was to get us thinking about how our work could potentially shape the future world. The counterculture movement was ahead of the curve on this, they promoted ideas of sustainability, self-sufficiency and ecology way before it became more mainstream. In a design context, the people whose values and norms steered away from the mainstream is what shaped modern technology.
