WHAT DOES A DESIGNER DO?
We’ve always been taught to define a designer by outputs. But, for example, Giovanni Anceschi says it is about giving organisation to things.
I really respect Giovanni, I agree with him, but I feel (also because of personal experience) that a better definition can be searched. Definitely not for the sake of discipline but to help people to better position themselves in society.
As for us it’s about building awareness and thus acting in a better way.
If I think of myself, a former architect, I cannot give a specific or univocal definition to what I do. It’s not disciplinary: I can’t say I am an architect. I mean, somehow I am, this is my cognitive imprint and culture. Not to mention the fact that nine of my colleagues are actually not even architects, not even designers. Better to say, they’ve not been trained as, but actually they are.
I can’t define myself in terms of outputs neither: they always change.
Let’s take for granted some concepts we can consider part of the everyday of designing today: interdisciplinarity, process vs product, relational layer, openness and commons, etc.
To me what a designer do is creating value.
He/she does it by (re)organizing existing or even non existing system of resources bringing value to them.
What is value? It’s multilayered and complex. And somehow includes all the other definitions we thought of before: functional, aesthetical, symbolical, economical, social, etc. It’s like a sandwich with all these ingredients. And I have afeeling that if not all the ingredients are presents then this value is not sustainable. Sustainable is a relational concept: it is the measure of the impact and consequences of any individual or group action to what’s around. Both animated and inanimated, at a scale that have to be defined case by case.
QUESTIONS:
- what is value?
2. value VS meaning
3. how can we look at that concept in an operative way?
