Designers must be ‘sensitive to local cultures’

By Bonnie James/Deputy News Editor    Tasmeem Doha 2011 biennial international design conference has developed into a new and interesting model, observed noted design writer and critic Alice Twemlow who anchored the event over the past four days.“Very often conferences would have a bunch of famous speakers, but no connection to the community that hosts the exercise. But here they are really making most of the fact that it is an educational environment,” she told Gulf Times yesterday. The workshops and all other activities held as part of the conference reflected on the messages given by the presenters and amplified them.“So I think this is one of the strengths of this conference, the content of which was enmeshed with the educational priorities,” explained Twemlow, the chair of the design criticism MFA Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York.The themes that she wanted to draw attention to are some calls for action. Already the students are very good at identifying issues in the community that needs addressing. “Some of those relate to urban planning, how we might unite and stratify the society,” she said. Twemlow recalled that presenter Natalie Jeremijenko, an artist and engineer, issued a design challenge for the 21st century by stating that design needs to find a way to heal the environmental illness taking place right now. “Natalie equates environmental ill health with human ill health. The basic message is that designers can engage with the issue from many different angles and help to build awareness.”Twemlow, who is also an M Phil/PhD candidate in design history programme at the V&A Museum and the Royal College of Art in London, stressed that design students need to think about how they communicate these ideas to the public that they want to connect to.“It is not good to stick up a poster on the wall. It has got to be a sort of framing a space in which the debate can happen. And that is the new responsibility of the designer as a kind of host of the conversation,” she said.Asked if she felt designers should go out into the community and create awareness right up from the grassroots level, Twemlow replied in the affirmative. “But, you have to be sensitive to the local cultural traits and cannot apply the same techniques that are used in New York to Doha. Work with what is appropriate and available and always push at it. It is also the role of a designer to be provocateur to ask some difficult questions without, being impolite.”Twemlow, who writes about design for publications including Eye, Design Issue, ID, Print, New York Magazine and Architect’s Newspaper, asserted that designers  have to constantly calibrate the fine balance with the local culture. “It does not mean that they should back away. I really do believe that a designer can be a kind of sceptic and in some cases a critic of society and that can be in a positive way,” she said.Twemlow was appreciative of the fact that a follow up mechanism is already in place at Tasmeem. The organisers start up workshops often and set projects that actually continue over the course of the next year or so.“We saw some results presented on Wednesday – the migrant worker housing project. So there is this lovely system in place for developing the projects. That is what I really wanted to draw attention to and applaud. This does not happen at other conferences and I go to a lot.”The challenge and the issue will be how people take away the messages from the conference, especially when they are a little perplexing. Pointing out that many different world views were represented during the four day conference, Twemlow said she can see that it is fantastic, enriching and complicating the situation for a designer. It could also be really bewildering. “We had Porsche’s chief designer Michael Mauer saying it is all about aesthetics and styling and then you have got Natalie Jeremijenko saying you have got to get down to the issues. “They are such different views and that is always going to be the challenge of the conference, how you synthesise that and apply at work when you get back to your studio. “And so the challenge would be how it is dealt with in classes, how students debate it among themselves and other participants, and how it feeds back into action,” she added.