Two weeks ago, Cerno’s blog featured Isang Litrong Liwanag (‘Litter of Light’), a philanthropic project spearheaded by MIT scientists. The projects goal is to deliver sustainable, cost-effective lighting solutions to third world countries, specifically in Brazil and Mexico. We ran into another article in the New York Times last Monday, which featured a design show at the United Nations called “Design With the Other 90 Percent: Cities.” The show features functional designs, created by locals in developing countries, aimed at solving key infrastructural issues; such as sustainable energy, transportation and general health improvement.
There is a growing movement of professional designers who are taking their passion for useful, artful design and using it to create quality-of-life improvements for people in the developing world. These designers are listening to the locals needs in order to tackle these root challenges with efficient and cost effective solutions.
Patterns, a design blog published by IDEO, highlights several pertinent questions that designers should look to resolve when designing for a developing region. The question a designer should ask when addressing these challenges is, “How can companies serve the legitimate needs of the under privileged not just for price but also for status, aspiration, and dignity?”
One of the primary challenges these remarkable designers endeavor to remedy is to allow the solution to shine through in an artful way. They hope to improve the local inhabitant’s quality of life on an emotional and physical level with the design’s form and function.
Kanu Agrawal, is a graduate from the Yale School of Architecture in Environmental Design. Agrawal opened a show last February at New York’s Center for Architecture called ‘Jugaad Urbanism: Resourceful Strategy for Indian Cities.’ Jugaad is a Hindi term for ‘the ingenuity of citizens living in resource-constrained environments.’
"There's always this narrative of failure and tragedy when one discusses Indian urbanism," Agrawal says. "So instead of doing that, [the show] sort of represents solutions. People respond creatively where there are shortages of resources."
This emphasis on design from the ground up is a step forward. Listening to the people who live in these compromised conditions assists the designers in their pursuit to create useful, artful and sustainable solutions. These artful solutions often breathe life back into to a village’s economy, by stimulating commerce and creating gathering places for the community to be social and interact with one another.
For most of the developing world, the gift of thoughtful design has yet to be given. But for the few areas that are fortunate enough to experience this innovative collaboration between designer and those in need, this is a positive start and we hope this movement continues to gain momentum. In the future Cerno would love to participate in such a thoughtful and impactful endeavor.
