What is the relationship between social practice and design thinking?
PowerHouse. Image courtesy of Model D Media.
Discussing this question with colleagues in the design field, they universally agreed that design thinking has been rendered inert through overuse in academic rhetoric. In my mind, the same can be said for social practice, a term co-opted by the MFA machine to package a framework that is inherent to any creative practice: social engagement. In this short essay, perhaps the question to which I’ve more accurately responded is: where do design thinking and social practice meet? The answer I came to: in communities that are drawn together to make––reimagining perceptions, forging new vocabularies, and crafting knowledge––through direct engagement with the material landscape of everyday life.
In 2008, architects Gina Reichert and Mitch Cope purchased a home in Detroit’s northeast Banglatown neighborhood for just under $1,900. Following decades of abandonment and decline, crime and corruption were endemic citywide, but Banglatown in particular––an area celebrated for its unique diversity and rich cultural history––was mired by its reputation for drugs, petty theft, and vandalism. Rather than transforming their new home into a post-apocalyptic bunker or attempting to mediate neighborhood unrest with the acoustic guitars of naïve neo-homesteaders, Mitch and Gina got to work, initiating high and low-tech creative strategies to dissuade violence, initiate dialog, and cultivate community.
The Power House quickly became notorious for installing Sculpture Security Systems rather than steel bars, and exploring off-the-grid living by tinkering, building, and gardening with anyone from the neighborhood who felt like stopping by. What began as a single home has since expanded to become Power House Productions, a non-profit organization comprised of nine houses and three empty lots within a four-block radius. All told, Power House is a continuously evolving test-site in sustainable design and social change––a two-pronged approach to neighborhood rejuvenation.
“Within its first summer of renovations the Power House became known within the neighborhood as the place where children could come and help build something, paint something or grow something. To the adults it became known as curious way to renovate an old house sparking daily conversations about renewable energy and the role of art and design within this old working class neighborhood.” – powerhouseproductions.org
What makes Power House Productions a continued success is the convergence of design thinking with social practice to produce a methodology that leverages creativity and dialog in service of grass-roots social good. Traditionally, design thinking is defined as the process by which designers identify something that could be better, research the related human needs, brainstorm a multitude of possibilities, and finally, prototype innovation. As outlined here, design thinking implies a problem to be a static thing—a preordained presumption or a site of binary resistance. This system precludes true innovation, a process akin to inventing a new language that upends existing systems of meaning, knowledge, and perception. It is here that social practice can come into play. As a project rooted in engagement, social practice manifests problems as conversations that are catalyzed through social exchange and continue to evolve through the flows of participation—a necessary step beyond the conceptual limits of design thinking.
Embedding social practice within design thinking allows designers to move away from anticipating and responding to desires to create new vocabularies that enrich everyday life, raise awareness, and initiate dialogue; however, where both design thinking and social practice fall short is in the marginalization of making—or doing—as an active agent in the processes of knowing. To quote the excessively quotable Buckminster Fuller: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” [Reference 1] Build, indeed. Though perhaps not the intended emphasis, this statement expresses the importance ofmaking as an essential ingredient to crafting possible futures. The craftsperson learns through making, merging being in and knowing of the world through ongoing correspondence with the materiality of it. It is through doing that we are able to fully know, and an artist/designer must know in order to think, discuss, imagine otherwise, and innovate.
While design thinking and social practice are fleeting––subject to the ebbs of contemporary desires, interests, and conversations––craft and transformation of material by hand is eternal. The tactile experience of being in the world will continue to the greatest source of knowledge available, and it is the responsibility of artists and designers to allow that material engagement to work in tandem with social and cultural dialogue to cultivate truly transformative creative practice.
Special thanks to my collaborators for their inspiration and editorial commentary: Kate Bingaman-Burt, Eric Cheong, Briar Levit, Byron Oshiro, Tsilli Pines, Jason Sturgill, Zaneta Taylor, and Namita Gupta Wiggers.
About the contributor: Sarah Margolis-Pineo is a curator and writer based in Portland, Oregon. Currently, she is Associate Curator at Museum of Contemporary Craft, as well a staff writer for Bad at Sports, Contemporary Art Talk. Previously, she was the Jeanne and Ralph Graham Collections Fellow at Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. museumofcontemporarycraft.org, badatsports.com.