2 essay bb

two essays on design



Aesthetics
and
Utopia



engagement can be strong
sources of inspiration for
the designer

In our view, a true utopian
design should change
people’s way of thinking,
not just their opinions.

We are firm believers in the utopian dimension of
design. It’s something we’re absolutely convinced
of. It’s our main drive. But we aren’t sure if this
utopian dimension can be found in utilitarianism, or
social messages. Those particular forms of , and in
that sense they certainly play an important role, but
they often lack a real dialectical potential. In our
view, a true utopian design should change people’s
way of thinking, not just their opinions.
If we are indeed living in a fragmented society
(and we believe we are) then perhaps the only
way to shock us out of this alienation is to counter
the fragmentation of society with the wholeness of
design. In that sense, the utopian dimension is to be
found in the internal organization of the designed
object, its inner-logic. Which brings us back to the
idiosyncratic quality of Crouwel’s work which we
mentioned earlier, or the example of Rietveld’s chair
as an embodiment of ideology. You can define it
in many different ways: Herbert Marcuse speaks
of ‘the aesthetic dimension’ (in a very good essay
of the same name, ‘The Aesthetic Dimension’,
published by Beacon Press, 1978), you can also refer
to it as the dialectical dimension, or the critical
dimension, or the inner-logic, or the internal whole.
In our view, these are all names for the same thing.

We are firm believers in the utopian dimension of
design. It’s something we’re absolutely convinced
of. It’s our main drive. But we aren’t sure if this
utopian dimension can be found in utilitarianism,
or social messages. Those particular forms of
engagement can be strong sources of inspiration
for the designer, and in that sense they certainly
play an important role, but they often lack a real
dialectical potential. In our view, a true utopian
design should change people’s way of thinking, not
just their opinions.
If we are indeed living in a fragmented society
(and we believe we are) then perhaps the only
way to shock us out of this alienation is to counter
the fragmentation of society with the wholeness of
design. In that sense, the utopian dimension is to be
found in the internal organization of the designed
object, its inner-logic. Which brings us back to the
idiosyncratic quality of Crouwel’s work which we
mentioned earlier, or the example of Rietveld’s chair
as an embodiment of ideology. You can define it
in many different ways: Herbert Marcuse speaks
of ‘the aesthetic dimension’ (in a very good essay
of the same name, ‘The Aesthetic Dimension’,
published by Beacon Press, 1978), you can also refer
to it as the dialectical dimension, or the critical
dimension, or the inner-logic, or the internal whole.

In our view, these are all names for the
same thing. Interestingly enough, we
think it is precisely his modularity (and
not necessarily his attempts to produce
furniture) that caused Judd to touch the
world of design. To put it boldly, we think
that design, intrinsically linked to diverse
processes of repetition (serial production,
graphic multiplication, etc.), is closely
related to the modularity of minimal art.

Exerpted from Experimental Jetset: Design and Art reader.
See: https://www.experimentaljetset.nl/archive/documents



Specialist
and
Generalist



Pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge is biased
in favour of specialisation—pushing in depth within a
narrow field. This, after all, is how specialisations are
developed.

Professional education suffers, perhaps even more than
other education, from the increasing array of specialised
and diverging branches of knowledge.

Pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge is
biased in favour of specialisation—pushing
in depth within a narrow field. This, after all, is
how specialisations are developed.
Today, the explosion of knowledge has
led, on the one hand, to a proliferation
of specialisation, and, on the other, to
increasing difficulty in comprehending their
interdependence. These difficulties were
less important when educational institutions
were not under such pressure from society
to address themselves to the solution of
contemporary social problems, and when
knowledge was discovered at a rate at
which it was comprehensible and hence
controllable.
The explosion of knowledge of recent years,
has led to more and more differentiation
between the different branches of knowledge,
and hence to the development of more and
more specialisation. To know something of
many branches is usually a bar to knowing
any one in depth. One consequence is that
the ‘generalist’ is frequently denigrated by the
specialist, if not actively despised. And the
student who acquires a general, rather than a
specialist, qualification often finds that it Is

of less value in the outside world than is the
qualification of his more specialised colleague
Nevertheless, the demand for specialised
qualifications that bring brighter career
prospects and higher status, frequently
conflicts with society’s need for those who can
bring some order into the chaos caused by
the increasing fragmentation of knowledge.
Consider medicine and management, to
take examples from the reorganized and
the unrecognised professions. It Is no longer
possible for a doctor or a manager to be a
specialist in every branch of his profession.
But both the patient, the raison d’etre of
the doctor, and the enterprise, the raison
d’etre of the manager, are more than a
collection of parts, each looked after by a
different specialist. Each requires somebody
to comprehend the whole. Yet in medicine
the generalist already has a low status than
the specialist and in enterprise the general
manager is beginning to have to fight an
increasing army of specialists for his right to
manage.
It is suggested that good education should
not reinforce the contradiction between
specialist and generalist (it has to be

admitted, however, that attempts so far to
provide a more rounded education—by the
Introduction of general courses before, or
general subjects into, specialised training—
have not met with more than a qualified
success). Good education, in the true sense,
consists not so much in acquiring knowledge,
either about just one thing or about everything
as in acquiring the capacity to think clearly
about anything. In addition to acquiring
knowledge about his speciality, a student
should have adequate opportunities to think
for himself, to have his ideas questioned,
and to question the ideas of others. If he is
to acquire the capacity to think, he needs
practice, and guidance while he practises.
Professional education suffers, perhaps
even more than other education, from the
increasing array of specialised and diverging
branches of knowledge. A great deal can
be gained if professional schools become
schools of the total professions, instead of
just schools of particular parts of them. If new
integrated services are to be discovered, and
pilot models demonstrated, then innovation
and powerful leadership will be required. Such
leadership will be more likely to be followed

if the institution in which it is exercised
incorporates all the teaching, practice and
research activities necessary to design and
staff the new services.

Exerpted from NID: Internal Organisation, Structure and
Culture (September 1972), produced by Gautam Sarabhai.



Wim Crouwel Experimental Donald Judd
Jetset Jon McCraken
Marcuse-Aesthetic Dimension
Rietveld Chair-Photograph lavi perchik

Experimental Jetset Studio