Text: Jens Persson, January 2019
He believes that by untapping the creative and inclusive
potential inherent in design, we can start to radically imagine
what different futures could be like, and begin to put them into
existence.
We might not always realize it but when we look around, almost
everything in our lives is designed. Our computers, our cars, our
tables and our houses. Design is what pushes our boundaries and
tells us what life can be like. But design can also contribute to
cement bad habits that may no longer be beneficial to us. In his
thesis, Søren Rosenbak, PhD student at the Umeå Institute of Design
at Umeå University, suggests that we should not be afraid to think
differently, and to challenge conventional ways of doing
design.
Søren Rosenbak opens up a new way of understanding what design
is and what it can do. Through a number of innovative field
projects he has aimed to chart an alternative direction in design.
The goal is to harvest the imaginations of not just designers but
also citizens, from all walks of life.
So, what does this kind of design look like? In one project,
aimed at creating new ideas for the "smart cities" of the future,
Søren went to Hasselt, the smartest city in Belgium. The city
received this recognition based on quantitative metrics such as air
quality, energy consumption and mobility. But what if these
traditional ways of measuring progress, often relating to
cutting-edge technology, is only one way of assessing the
"smartness" of a city? Could another way be through the
interpretation of lies about that very city?
"I was actually more curious to see what they chose not to
measure in Hasselt, like politics for example. To trigger the
imagination of the citizens I asked them to tell me a lie about the
city. Obviously, the answers resulted in a set of complicated data
that is difficult to analyse. This doesn't, however, mean it isn't
worthwhile, as every lie contains a grain of truth. In other words,
figuring out what the city is not, is another way of figuring out
what it is. Based on the interpretations of the lies, a set of
participants started prototyping new urban futures for the city",
says Søren Rosenbak.
One of these sessions led to an early morning public celebration
of a library located in a public space that had an uninviting
reputation amongst local citizens. Another session resulted in an
effort to make the equally unwelcoming train station area cozy by
staging a tea party with comfy sofas, inviting people to discuss
the future of the city. These initiatives should perhaps less be
seen as fully-fledged design solutions but more as methods for how
we can organically generate fresh ideas while at the same time
involving the public.
Photo Credit: © Yanina Schevchenko
/ Participants in the field study in Hasselt stage a surprise
celebration at the local library.
"Today, design processes are sometimes very one-lane, top-down
and consensus driven, thereby failing to produce a range of other
imaginative perspectives. Part of this comes from the fact that
design often is being informed only by citizens who already feel
empowered and entitled to contribute. I believe that there is so
much untapped creativity and imagination out there. We need to find
better ways of unleashing all that potential together".
Realizing that design influences such a big part of our lives
also leads to the conclusion that design has the power to change
things radically. Design is what makes things possible. Looking at
the future, and the way in which our possibilities will decrease,
through climate change for example, this sensing of the possible
becomes crucial.
"The first step to changing things is to be able to imagine how
things could be different. Design has a crucial role to play here,
in its ability to not only imagine other solutions, as some
theoretical exercise, but to bring them into existence".
Søren Rosenbak was born and raised in the northern part of
Jutland, Denmark, and completed a Masters of Arts (MA) in Design at
The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Design (KADK),
Copenhagen, in 2013. As part of his Master's degree, he visited
Media Lab in Aalto ARTS, Helsinki, throughout the whole of
2012.
Read
the whole thesis digitally
About the dissertation:
On Friday 25 January, Søren Rosenbak, Umeå Institute of Design
at Umeå University, defended his thesis titled: The Science
of Imagining Solutions: Design Becoming Conscious of Itself Through
Design.
The dissertation took place at 13:00 at Umeå Institute of Design
at Umeå University
Faculty opponent: Andrew Morrisson, Professor at the
Institute of Design, AHO (Arkitektur- och designhögskolen),
Oslo.
Press photo / Credit: Sara Eriksson
