The Idea of Metadesign

A Colloquium aimed to facilitate 11 Authors to Collaborate on a Possible Book

Morning session - DAY TWO - 29th June 2007
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10.00 - What Can Metadesigners Learn from Ecology?

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by Batel Dinur?

• Sustainable design may provide some valuable solutions to current environmental problems, within the design profession.
• However, it has yet to change in the way people behave, therefore many environmental problems still persist.
• Ecology can help us to understand how highly complex systems interrelate and develop side by side.
• Ecological systems reveal complex organizational patterns that are immensely flexible and adaptive.
• All parts of the whole are interdependent, and create benefits for mutual growth and development.
• By looking at the way ecological systems are organised, designers may learn how to become Meta-designers.
• This may inspire a new design approach in which participants work together in a social, cultural and ecological interdependence.

12.00 - How Can Metadesign Enhance the Quality of Life?

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by Ian Grout

• The emergence of an increasingly ecologically aware society raises fundamental questions.
• It also creates fundamental challenges for designers and design educators.
• This situation is likely to become even more complex and urgent in future.
• A different model of design (e.g. metadesign) may not attract current designers to its new agenda.
• They might, for example, adopt a different role, or act in a totally different capacity.
• How should we prepare the next generation designers for the challenges of a rapidly changing society?
• Politics has tended to talk about a 'standard of living'.
• However, in exploring these questions, it will be necessary to challenge this notion
• We might, for example, reflect upon what we mean by the 'quality of life'.
• Human centred experience is what we currently understand.
• Perhaps this needs to be broadened to create a society with important qualities.
• These might include: lively, playful, creative, extended, connected, integrative, transformative, democratic, participatory and inclusive.

12.00 - How Can Metadesign Augment Design Management?

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by Naomi Gornick
The questions one might ask could include: How do we teach ‘metadesign’ to design students and to practising designers? Should traditional design education transform itself into metadesign education? Could traditional design education transform itself into metadesign education (bearing in mind an equally traditional reluctance among design educators to countenance change)? Should there be a separate discipline of metadesign education, alongside traditional design education? Or should design education remain as it is, highly discipline-based, and other related professional disciplines - ie sociology, anthropology, media - move into metadesign education? While the world of commerce is becoming more creative and innovative designers are making a broader contribution to corporate strategy and to society at large. It's a convergence. We can begin to see complementary goals and processes emerging between companies and their design consultants, giving their collaboration the unique value of being both creative and strategic. Long-term success goes to the designers who can deliver a fusion of strategy with creativity in their client relationships.

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