About
The realization of the systemic entanglement of the questions concerning nature, politics, and design demands a radical rethink of how these concepts are framed within contemporary design discussions. What if the answer to the current environmental crisis is to move beyond a hopeless nostalgia for the environment in favour of developing ecological thought processes? What if, instead of only focusing on macro revolutions that may end up ultimately cynical in the streets, designers also start to focus on the micro revolutionary potential embedded in daily design decisions? Is it possible to move beyond the more systematic modes of dealing with the environmental question to support designers to make sense of design problems’ systemic complexity?
The questions mentioned above were at the crux of Tomás Maldonado’s work between 1956 and 1972. They are central to defining the concept of “critical ecology” in his Book Design, Nature, and Revolution: Towards a Critical Ecology (1972). Due to his fading popularity within Ulm and his struggle with formulating these ideas precisely, his work during this period has gained very little attention. Convinced that the modern university is not suited for developing the necessary modes of imagining the complexity of assembled human-nature relations, he called for different methods of teaching about environmental complexity ( a Bauhaus after Bauhaus). In the face of the multiple crises today, Maldonado’s discourse on critical ecology provides a valuable framework for understanding design imagination as part of a technological imagination that does not lose touch with the sociological imagination. This project aims at a historical reconstruction of the notion of “critical ecology,” as it appeared within Maldonado’s work between 1956 and 1972.
Throughout a semester-long project, we traced his work via engaging with his texts, drawings and listening to those who have already engaged with Maldonado’s work in different ways. Inspired by these sources and ideas in his seminal text Design, Nature, and Revolution, we designed three interactive gaming systems to help a broader audience access his main insights. The playful nature of the systems invites a broader audience to operate beyond language differences and limitations to explore key concepts in his work. The interactive systems also attempt to fill the gap between historical research and the forms of information more helpful in operational design research that aid designers to think through a design problem.
In the beginning, the participants were introduced to a (broken) board titled “Maldonado’s environment,” with eight concepts (each concept consisted of a voice prompt orienting the participants within the theoretical discussions in the book). The board containing the voice prompts was paired with a matrix that helped participants connect Maldonado’s concepts with interactive (game design) concepts. The task was to work as a group to ultimately make these concepts visible in a system (a card game, board game) that other people can interact with and learn. As a group, we engaged in theory discussions and simultaneously discussions on interactive systems.
CEM Credits
Dulmini Perera (Project Designer)
Design group:
Rama Malaysheh
Carolina Mancero Castillo
Anastasia Mirkina
Nikolaus Stiefler
Leonie Link
Belcim Yavuz
Bianca Gebhardt
Guido Campi
Himanshu Dutt (Web Design & Development)
thecp (Card Kit Digitalization)
We extend a big thank you to the Bauhaus Module at Bauhaus University Weimar for funding support, Prof. Thomas Fischer for his input on the card kit development, and all the scholars who have worked with Tomás Maldonado and worked on Tomás Maldonado, namely, Dr.Daniela Lucena, Prof. Joaquín Medina Warmburg, Prof. Alejandro Crispiani, Prof. Gui Bonsiepe, Prof.Raimonda Riccini, Prof. Medardo Chiapponi, Prof. Simon Sadler for their valuable contributions.