Four Design Links: September 17, 2009
It's wouldn't be Thursday without Four Design Links. Get 'em while they're piping hot!
1. How do you build for evil?
This fall, Kazys Varnelis
is teaching a graduate architecture studio on the topic of evil.
If one simply does not care about playing by the rules of the game, but only about seizing power to further one’s own ends, it becomes possible to shed layers of complexity and thereby continue society.
The human cost, of course, is quite high, as Mussolini’s quest to get the trains to run on time in Italy demonstrates. Still, with the recent economic success of authoritarian regimes—and the open advocacy of such regimes as clients by notable architects such as OMA—evil is on the table again as an option for architects to pursue.
This studio looks at how one might design for an evil client… How do you build for evil?
2. The Billion Dollar Gram
David McCandless, of previous Four Design Links fame, is on a roll. His latest visualization, The Billion Dollar Gram, compares and contrasts the billions spent on wars, bailouts, and various humanitarian causes.
I was particularly shocked by the bailout comparison shown above. The big yellow box is the US bailout; the big blue square is the New Deal!
3. Citizens rally for better site design
I’m not sure what to call this. A scandal; a case study? The newly launched Birmingham City Council website, which cost an appalling £2.8 million, is of generally poor quality and rife with bizarre design decisions. Things even a web designing nephew couldn’t get away with!
What I was most interested in was this Tumblr page someone created to visually document the site’s faults. In a surprising turn of fairness (for an anonymous mob), the critics even note the problems which have been fixed. That’s a trend I’d like to see: design accountability.
4. If Lottery Tickets Told the Truth
Cracked strikes a blow for design ethics with this humorous layout of (brutally) honest lottery tickets. Have a larf.
Comments on this post
1.
Kazys Varnelis “The only way past complexity, evil can no longer be confined…” [if you don’t want to think too hard about it.]
Dangerous. It’s an interesting topic, Nick. There are probably some good blog posts to be written about the ethical responsibility of teachers (I bet quite a few read BlogLESS).
It’s interesting to contrast the Jamais Cascio point. Good finds, both.
2.
Norway recently had a disaster very similar to the one of the Birmingham City Council website. The new site of the norwegian Police cost very close to £3 million in development alone, no designers seem to have been involved. At all. The result is probably far worse than the Birmingham City Council:
www.politi.no