#mark wigley

Paulo Tavares, (2018), En las ruinas del bosque, «t-e-e» 29, El Taller de Ediciones Económicas, Guadalajara, 2022 (pdf here) [Licencia de Producción entre Pares]

‘Work, Body, Leisure’ exhibition - Dutch Pavilion - curated by Marina Otero Verzier - in collaboration with Simone C Niquille, Beatriz Colomina, Mark Wigley & Liam Young - Venice Architecture Biennale 2018 ____

“Design, the act of putting constructs in an order, seems to be human destiny.” —Richard Neutra

Are We Human?, the theme of the 2016 Istanbul Biennial curated by architecture theorists Mark Wigley and Beatriz Columina has perhaps had a larger influence on my own thinking in and around design than anything else over the last few years. As they shared their research — in interviews, in essays, and ultimately in the show itself late last year — I carried their ideas around with me like a Bible and recited quotations from the husband-wife duo like a fully-converted disciple to anyone who would listen. Sometimes I think I've mentioned something about it in every episode of my podcast.

Wigley and Columina have compiled this research and writing from the exhibition into a small book, Are We Human?: Notes on an Archaeology of Design, where they outline their point-of-view on the current state of design. "Design is what makes us human," they proclaim in the introduction, "but design's ultimate goal is to redesign the human." Throughout the book, the couple examine the far-reaching, ever-expanding tentacles of design — from the subatomic to the satellites that orbit our planet. "The entire planet has been encrusted with a geological layer of design," they continue, "There is no world outside of design anymore." As they explain:

Design has gone viral. The word design is everywhere. It pops up in every situation. It knows no limit. We are ambushed by wave upon wave of design biennials, weeks, fairs, festivals, neighborhoods, capitals, stores, magazines, books, websites, blogs, awards, programs, schools, centers, departments, museums, exhibitions, associations, councils, committees, and congresses. Along with “designer” hotels, drugs, bodies, and food we can have “happiness by design”, “diplomacy by design”, “social impact design”, or “design for social justice”. A new way of “designers” shape “experience”, “interfaces”, “software”, “brand”, and “interaction”. New university programs are devoted to “biological design” and “social innovation design.” “Design thinking” has become a dominant business model affecting everything from politics to education, personal relationships, research, communication, and philanthropy. At a time in which the largest company in the world has based all its success on design, business schools now have design programs and the position of Chief Design Officer has recently assumed the same status as Chief Financial Officer. Companies that had nothing to do with design now build design into every dimension of corporate life. Politicians believe their success is dependent on design thinking. Cities have design departments whose role goes far beyond the usual focus on transportation, buildings, parks, street furniture, and signage to brand themselves. Even experts in “design risk assessment” have appeared to evaluate the danger that the incorporation of design brings to any sense. Design has become dangerously successful.

But this is not, however, another book about how design can change the world. The couple is aware and in awe of design's power but never cross the line into blind-faith and are careful not to glorify it. They write of design's role in data collection and surveillance, it's complicity in capitalism and over-indexing on materialism. In an especially fascinating chapter on perversion, they deconstruct modernism's obsession with surface that relies on hiding everything unsavory, including a story of a nude Le Corbusier painting murals on his neighbor, Eileen Gray's, home.

We can't escape the affects of design — from the alarm that wakes us up to the clothes we put on, the roads we use to get to work to the computer I'm typing these words on — we're completely surrounded and influenced by design. But the ultimate goal is to redefine what it means to be human; to redesign the human. I'm reminded of Marshall McLuhan's classic and prescient The Medium is the Massage: "we shape our tools, and then our tools shape us." The same is true of design: we shape our world through design, and then this design shapes us — sometimes literally through prosthetics, DNA, and plastic surgery, and sometimes more abstractly through how we communicate and move through the world. Design, they ponder, has made it harder to find the line between the human and the manufactured.