The Limits of Design

The design of everyday objects and the spaces that we inhabit leave much to be desired. The reason behind the drastic decline in House Sparrow population, for instance, can be seen as a design failure. House Sparrows nest in and around human dwellings: above the girder, along a wooden beam, under an overhanging eave or in a gap in the stone wall. Our houses once had space from them, until they came to be designed with just the human occupants in mind.

Our design, be it for houses, communities, or cities, is limited by our awareness, our aesthetics and at a deeper level, by our ethics. Our designs are a reflection of what we find beautiful, what we are aware of, and what we think is right.

 

We are our aesthetics

We strive to change our world in ways that align with our aesthetics. Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film, Inception, that blew our minds with its ingenious plot also left many of us feeling let down when it came to background design, especially in the finale. If you could design (or actually, just dream up) any space you wanted, why would you choose to live here (1), and not here (2)?

1. Inception

2. Why not here?

Obviously, there is much to be said about individual aesthetics, (and what we find incredible) but once you begin to interrogate the functional underpinnings of your surroundings, you come to realize how important it is to be rooted within natural systems. But what if we’re not aware of such systems?

 

We are our awareness

We can only design for things that we are aware of. Our windows come with wire meshes to keep out mosquitoes but other than that we’d be hard pressed to find features in our houses that can boast of ecologically awareness.

In Akira Kurosawa’s adaptation of Vladimir Arsenyev’s novel, Dersu Uzala, we meet Dersu, an itinerant hunter who lives alone in the forest and makes a living trapping sable. He talks of the birds, animals, trees, and even the sun, fire and wind as if they were people.

3. Dersu Uzala

Personhood is a powerful idea and one that reflects a deeper awareness of one’s natural surroundings. Dersu shrugs off the Russian soldiers whom he’s guiding and who lack his awareness, saying, “You all like little children. Got eyes, but don’t see.”

 

We are our ethics

Dersu’s perspective of the world is an ecological one and it comes from living close to nature. His ethics, too, are a reflection of that. If a community of shepherds were to write a constitution for their village, it would be a very different document, ethically and philosophically, than the one we have today. For one, it would be more ecologically rooted.

If we become aware of the complex ways in which beings interact with each other in nature, maybe it could inform our own conduct and our morality; why, it could even inform our design!