 What's the sign? Was it the question I did at the end of my last video? And in this video I will answer it, and be sure it's not what you're expecting. My name is Consolo Reinelli, designer, architect, and I'm a PhD candidate with over 30 years of experience. So what is the sign? Aristotle in his book Metaphysics was the first one to point out that the hole is more than the sum of the parts. This idea leads to the foundations of what centuries later will become the general system theory. This theory suggests that to understand the complexity of our reality we must first observe it, in its entirety, in terms of its elements and the relationships between them. Very contrary to the position that I prevail in the sciences up to that point, which was, and in many cases still is, reductionist and mechanistic. Science, due to its evolution towards specializations, lost the capacity of an holistic observation, closing down into countless niches where it can only see a segmented perspective of reality. This is what Nicholas Newman defined as one of the most characteristic futures of today's societies. He called this the phenomena of functional differentiation. You know a lot of one issue and you know very little of everything. Umberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, a channel biologist, stated that realities are built based on our observations and what we are capable of doing. What this means is that only designers are able to construct what we know as design, and this is why we are capable of perceiving it as a discipline, a unit. Industrial groups internally produce the elements and relationships that constitute them. So why are we unable to give a common definition to what design is? Let's do some history. Design as a discipline has been around for a hundred years if you consider the bad house. Or if you go two hundred plus years to the industrial revolution, it is quite a young discipline if you compare it to other older ones. But is it really this way? Does it really appear a couple of centers ago? I don't think so. If you visit the Pre-Columbian Art Museum here in Chile, you will find out thousands of objects that were once utilitarian. The word art appears as the denial of their real value and a colonialist perception of reality. They were not created under the European conception of art, and they actually represent a far more complex understanding of their reality. If you go to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, or the British Museum in London, or any other major museum, you will probably see the same. What is alien is barbaric. What comes from overseas can be diminished and categorized as a minor art, or as a myth or not even a religion. It is a practice or a barbaric costume. Actually they usually categorized it as a handcraft. I could go on and on. Do you really think the science started in the 19th century in Europe? Really? Here I'm going to open a parenthesis. By the way, these museums and other institutions should return the stolen patrimony back to the original owners. And I'm especially thinking of the Hoa Hakana Hai Muay, which was stolen from Rapa Nui. Yeah, Easter Island, in 1869, and is in the British Museum. This is no decoration and is a center of family members for the Rapa Nui people. It's not an object, it's a living entity. It must be returned to the Iceland since it has been captured by the British Museum for the last 150 years. If you want a sustainable future, errors must be repaired. Close the parenthesis. Design was classified for a long time, couple of centuries, as a minor art. This has been discussed for a long, long time since the old debate between paleotoric knowledge or the old knowledge, what is classic of the practice traditions, and the neotoric knowledge or the new one, science theory. This was reflected by Jonathan Swift during the 17th century, in his book, The Battle of the Books. Yes, the same one who wrote the Adventures of Gulliver. But recently, last century, it has been de-agreed that design has a presence in both worlds, practice and theory. But you could say the same for every discipline, so what makes design special or different? Kirsten Ries in 2013 presented us with a solution to this dilemma. Theory and practice have usually been seen as exclusionary. She pointed out that there is a situation that would allow the coexistence of these realities. She argues that the incorporation of an internal observer would serve as a relationship between them, saving the delimitation of each of the entities and their operational closure. In other words, designers are responsible of making design what it is, making practice and theory work together, and on the same bram, becoming part of the system or discipline we call design. Edward Wule in 2010 pointed out that there are two ways to define a discipline. The first one would be by defining its method and the set one according to its object of study. Design's objects of study and methodology change project to project. Design in particular is a composite discipline, often involving methodologies extrapolated from other disciplines and incursions into other areas shared with other disciplines. Subsequently, other authors appear and state that design has its third variable. This new variable could be placed in the fields of exploration. Others point out that before and since the opinions of the Bauhaus, we can see the first attempts to explore through the joint works between craft and art. Undoubtedly, the ways in which we can define a discipline and especially design are innumerable. If you remember in my first video, I talked about how each designer has a different definition for design. If you missed that video, watch until the end of this video where I will put a card so you can view it. And if you are new, don't forget to subscribe to avoid missing my future videos. It is clear that the theoretical and practical model assumed so far is not working. An paradigm shift is needed. It is not enough to continue with the way we understand design as we have been doing it. However, it is necessary to ask how can a paradigm change be made without making design no longer be designed? Because we agree we have to change the paradigm, don't we? Francis Bacon, as early as the 16th century, wanted to establish a greater field of knowledge that will allow us to make artificial creations in order to mold and modify nature for the benefit of human beings. This is of paramount importance. On one side had this multidisciplinary idea, but on the other hand did not regard the actions of the human being as part of a larger system, nature, and how this would impact it from this moment on, human beings neglected the environment. It's not until the Brutal and Report in 1987 that we as a society present a new relationship for humans and the environment. United Nations defines sustainable development as the one who meets the needs for the present without compromising the needs of the future generations. The only difference is that through this definition we can recognize the fact that we are living on the infinite world. There's no mention of the environment in this definition. The idea behind it is that we can keep on consuming. But let's not consume at all, otherwise we, they, won't have anything left to sell to the future generations. It actually just promotes a way to sell the products we design. Yes, we design them. Sounds very familiar to what Francis Bacon argued, don't you think so? It also remembers me of Bernard London, who in order to stop with the Great Depression between wars, proposed a law that would oblige users to return the products after a few years. This way they would buy new ones. The law was called Program Obsolescence. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? When products last at lifetime? Or even more, shouldn't we as designers find ways to stop creating unnecessary needs? That is why today design as a discipline must assume its large share of responsibility. In 2009, Nathan Shetcher published a book called Design is a Problem. The future of design must be sustainable. There he stated that designers had created incredible things for human benefit, but at the same time had been the cause in many ways of our environment disaster. Poorly-designed objects, processes, buildings, messages had led to the increasing deterioration of our surroundings. But way before Shedroff, Buckminster Fuehler had published Spaceship Earth, another text which evolved around the same idea, and we can't forget Victor Papanec with Design for the Real World. This authors and many others lay the foundations for what we know now as eco-design, or sustainable design. However, its scope has been almost imperceptible in the industrial development of the second half of this 20th century, and the beginning of this first century as well. I recommend you to read The Story of Things by Annie Leonard. Link of this and the other books below on the description. Design, as we know it, is obsolete. Things that rise from the tradition are useless in our context. Just take a look around, look at the COVID-19 issues, look at the social revolts all around the world, and especially look at the environmental catastrophe we have created, as designers. The model is not working, and Buckminster Fuehler stated that. You never change things by finding the existing reality, to change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. In my next videos, I'm going to start talking about components that should be present in design in order to hopefully change the way we practice our discipline. Yes, design is a complex system, only practiced by designers. Yes, design is a discipline, only created by designers. Or you really think you are doing medicine when you apply Band-Aid. Fashion, design, design thinking, usually, but not always, trends, and other nonsense aren't designed any longer. But before talking about design components, I'm going to ramble about what is not designed in my next video, so don't forget to subscribe and share this video. Ciao!