Necessity

Up to this point we have considered reasons to travel that could be called "motives of the traveling designer." This week, we contemplate the world in which the designer works and travels. The voluntary trip—to say nothing of the dream or luxury voyage—is just one kind of travel. Some people travel because they have to, to find work or freedom or to escape oppression. Some are forced into travel, or invited to travel and then held against their will.

Concluding a good trip, it is common to feel for a while as though the world has changed. Yet one could argue that far from being an exceptional experience, travel defines the world we live in. A study of the Grand Tour might examine its relationship to the slave trade between Europe, North America and Africa—and countless other paths or "flows" of people moving in, through, across, cultures in past times. If the freedom of a designer "on tour" contrasts with the necessities that govern many kinds of travel, to plan a trip is to approach a complex human landscape. What if we contemplate the various kinds of necessities that govern the flows of people that make up a culture—in contrast to the static entity a culture may be thought to be?

In the article we have as a resource this week, Arjun Appadurai aptly describes the world in terms of flows (i.e. the "ethnoscapes"). More important, he asserts that imagination—by filmmakers, writers, and other artists—plays a crucial role in defining the terms that draw people from one place to another, the way they see one place or another. And what about designers? A designer imagines. To think of the world as flows of people driven by imaginary images and mythical objects may be a good first step in overcoming the apparent helplessness of design in the face of inequality, suffering, poor distribution of resources, and other issues seemingly determined by social and political realities.

What can a designer contribute to a situation in which the movements of people are bound by necessities? Might there be specific places, like Lampedusa or Guantanamo Bay—or Dubai, or New York—in which design is entangled with politics and geography in a way that exposes the potential—or limits—of design? Where else would you go to explore these issues?

And in such a place, in what objects would you examine the designer's input: tents, shelters, boats, billboards, maps, bags, brochures ... ?