Why I design - 21 SURVIVAL KIT 2077
Course:
Basic contemporary design
Lecturer:
Andrea Maragno, Tommaso Russo
Students:
Alessio Ruppolo
Brief
Why design? What drives us to make our way in the world of design with the constant feeling that everything there was to create has already been created?
To paraphrase Paola Antonelli, the intellectual of the future is in all likelihood the designer, and as an intellectual he or she is called upon to ask numerous questions and to question pillars of design as much as of existence itself, seeking to depart increasingly from a self-referential form of design.
The designer of the future needs real design motivations that can guide his or her projects, and convey his or her authorship without imposing it in designed forms. These motivations rarely have to do with the design itself, but with the answer that each designer has been able to give to the questions: why do I design? Why do I do design? Why is design important? These are difficult questions, the answer to which is constantly evolving like the discipline of design itself after all.
George Orwell, with his essay Why I Write, sought to explain to himself and his audience why he wrote. To do so, he used the medium of writing itself. Explain “Why I Write” by writing.
Along the lines of this essay, first-year students were asked to answer the question of “Why I project” by designing.
SURVIVAL KIT 2077
The project is intended to be a synthesis of my answers to the question “Why I Design?” The result is a kind of chimera, composed of several parts, each representing one of my answers. The project is basically a survival kit for a dystopian future. The kit itself represents my idea of an interactive and useful product that needs a dose of DIY to be used. The name of the kit is taken from a series of memes* (Cyberpunk 2077) showing a whole range of bizarre and questionably futuristic ideas.
Within the kit we find a number of elements:
- Hibernating bees, to have the ability to create your own swarm that can restore the place where you are. This element represents my side wanting to be mindful of environmental issues in the development of new products;
- 100% renewable and biodegradable bamboo toothbrush for oral hygiene. Instead, this element is meant to represent my desire to explore the possibilities of using simple and innovative materials;
- A Geiger counter, radiation detector, capable of showing safe areas in which to settle. It represents a functional, essential device that serves man’s basic needs;
- A holy card with Dieter Rams’ decalogue, the kit’s good luck charm. I want to outline with this the belief that everything that is designable should be designed with good principles upstream.
