Global Crisis and Design : Living in the Crisis Era
Published: 2012Publisher: I:M New YorkAuthor:Ersela Kripa and Stephen MuellerType:Article in BookAbstract: The past decade has been witness to an escalation of disaster, both real and imagined, with a state of prolonged crisis becoming a daily reality for much of the world. As economic, humanitarian, and ecological disasters compound, the intensity, duration, and reach of each new crisis extend beyond any conceivable limit. As much as the material impact of each new event dramatically changes the environment it directly affects, the crisis imaginary is exponentially more expansive, transforming entire buildings, cities, and regions into extratemporal spaces of forecast and paranoia. Urban environments are recast as anticipatory staging grounds for future emergencies, their occupants ‘at the ready’ for an impending- if unnamed and unscheduled- event.
The design professions are searching to identify an appropriate role for themselves in navigating such a context, with many suggesting a conception of the architect and urban planner as a new brand of crisis response professional. In this construct, the designer is cast as an ameliorative, reactive figure, capable of reorganizing the material devastation at the disaster site (through design services), or helping to refocus future efforts of the global imaginary(through advocacy, policy, and standardization efforts). Well-intentioned, if seemingly misplaced, such operations have yet to adequately address the contingencies of scale, context, and unpredictability inherent to the crises they hope to address.Link: Click here for more information.