Translator: Sára Valuska Reviewer: Csaba Lóki
During the past decade, a huge and really upbeat revolution has started
in the world of design.
A breakthrough, which we don't know much about.
This revolution is based on a simple revelation.
Design, as we knew it, was the world of comfort, aesthetics,
functionality and money,
so it only served about the upper 10% of the population of Earth.
In this lay two basic problems.
Not only the issue of the remaining 90%,
or what could design do for them is in question,
but the identity of the designers as well.
It really does matter.
The world around us and the new needs,
the new challenges of the 21th century raise new issues.
It made us rethink the purpose of design and the role of designers.
Why do we need designers in today's world?
What can be the calling in it besides the profession?
Putting it simply, design means
solving problems in a creative, effective and practical way.
We should use this ability
to deal with our greatest challenges and problems as well.
However, even though being under change,
today's design is limited and field-specific.
There isn't much attention directed at the integrated context of the problems.
We focus on a hospital bed instead of the process of healing.
We focus on the classroom instead of learning itself.
Or on messages instead of democracy.
Everything around us is a complex and system-wide problem.
Sustainable traffic is a challenge now,
and not the creation of a better car anymore.
Of course what I am talking about here
hasn't started in the past few decades.
Throughout the 20th century, it went through first a slower,
then a more dynamic development.
László Moholy-Nagy, an outstanding artist,
designer of the 20th century said,
"Design is not a profession but an attitude."
Let's take a look at this year's Pritzker Prize winner,
Alejandro Averana's work.
Together with the indigent local community, he developed and planned
such a social housing system that is only half-ready.
It was half-ready on his plans and on his computer.
As those who moved in could make further changes on their own homes
according to their opportunities and abilities.
Another good example is the Lifestraw,
designed by Mikkel Vestargaard and his team,
many or at least a few of you must have heard about it.
This was the first carbon-based water cleaner on the market.
It was developed for underprivileged regions,
where having clear water is a huge problem.
Seeing the success of the product, they created a version of it
that the upper 10% can use for hiking.
The money coming in from it was used to get these products
to the undeveloped regions.
When somebody, who is a designer,
working at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design,
and wants to do something, likes to teach, sees this kind of practice,
then she asks herself what to do.
Obviously, she invents something new.
Naturally, designers work best in teams,
so with my colleagues we started the sustainability research group
of the University, called EcoLab.
Our aim is to create tangible solutions
to the ecological and social challenges of the 21th century.
Sustainability is a really wide spectrum.
We only focus on social sustainability: on Social Design.
We do this as we think, in today's Hungary,
this is one of the most important issue.
We left the University's building, and started to work on the field,
where the problem exists.
When we started this 4 years ago, we had a few basic assumptions,
to outline our path and help us with our work.
What I will show you is a more polished version, of course.
I will explain later, why it is.
Immersion is the starting point of all creative process.
We need to leave our own world, step out of our own shoes,
before we step into someone else's.
MOME is Hungary's outstanding training center,
where the country's best designers, car designers
and fashion designers, just to mention a few, are qualified.
The Valley of Bódva is one of the most socially disadvantaged
regions of Hungary and of Europe.
These two are only 250 kilometers far,
but it feels like the whole world is between them.
From Bódva, the MOME could be on the Moon as well.
Besides, real relationship is really essential,
as understanding and empathy forming from it
provides basis for design.
So we are thinking in long term.
With the then first year student of the Elementary school in Bódvaszilas,
we started to work on a program
where regular presence creates real relationships.
Vince from this picture, who worked in this project for years,
has developed a real friendship with Nikó from Bódvaszilas.
But creative cooperation is just as important.
We bring the essential elements to the same place:
the kids, their teachers, our students and our professors.
We create an environment where with creative collaboration,
helping and supporting each other,
we create such energy that leads to a real solution.
The context is the continual improvement of the school yard.
Correlation has real power hidden in it.
Mutual learning and leaving our comfort zone
creates such an incredible situation,
which we, designers, love to experience,
and our aim is to provide the opportunity to more and more students and designers
to experience this feeling.
Two experts meet like this in this picture.
The sophomore architect student, Reni,
teaches Petra from Bódvaszilas how to screw-drive.
And Petra teaches her songs and dances,
and shows the power of creativity of those living in deep poverty.
Evolution is the best teacher -
it needs to be done.
And we need to believe that learning,
and learning from failure will bring us forward.
As experimental learning in this context
has great importance.
So we did the same.
The yard is developing year after year,
and our connection with the local community becomes deeper.
Of course we have made many mistakes.
But we learned from them a lot
without harming the local community,
and that is really important.
It took us some time until we realised
that we should work with the children.
The issues of the adults are so severe
that with our abilities, little progress can be made.
You can't just go somewhere
and try to help.
First, you need to get to know the local community,
and you need to find a local power who you can support neutrally,
and who could be a bridge to the local community.
The program started in 2012, and has been going on for 4 years now.
This is an educational program
for the MOME students and the children from the Valley of Bódva.
This is an incredible learning process
for us, teachers and designers as well.
The name of the project is Cloudfactory.
Cloudfactory. How comes cloud?
Imagine that it's summer, and you lay down in a meadow,
and from the high grass you're watching the sky,
and watching the clouds.
In this moment we feel that we could do anything, nothing is impossible.
The factory's first product was the Cloudbook.
We asked the then 6-year-old kids
to watch the sky following this feeling for a month,
and draw the most beautiful clouds they saw.
Drawing diaries were born, all beautiful.
Then we asked Hungarian authors, poets
to use the children's work as inspiration
to write fairy tales and poems.
That's how the Cloudbook, the first product of the factory,
was created,
which we brought to the kids.
This became the source of our common work and the mutual trust.
Our first important realization
was that we need to get over the cracks of the faith in possibility.
If we forget to dream,
if we can't imagine that we can change our life
and that we can be successful,
then something starts to die inside of us.
In my and your environment,
it only starts in the 30s of one's life.
But in the Valley of Bódva, it can start even at the age of 4 or 5.
By the age of 10, it is hardly reversible.
This "dreamwave" is what inspires us,
and makes us do our best.
In spite of hopelessness and problems,
we need to keep this spark burning.
So we are improving the school yard.
We have built a garden play place,
and a little village that can be used as a playground or training place.
We also designed together with the kids the cake of the school, the Bódva-cake,
and we also provide graphic and photographing workshops,
just to mention a few.
So today, this project is an international success.
That why I can stand in front of you now.
Experts and social designers come to us from the Netherlands and the USA
to learn about our methods.
This is awesome, we are really happy about it.
But it is more important what happens to our students and the children.
We brought color to the children's life in the Valley of Bódva,
we give them essence, trust and courage regularly.
And we believe, that the students of MOME become better designers by it.
Creating and building with us
taught them empathy, and they also learned
that design is more than simply planning a furniture or a building.
It is worth to deal with it in a systematic level.
And I believe that this is what we need to deal with
in the second decade of the 21th century.
We need this.
We need kids, who regardless of their background,
dare to create their own future,
and we need many young and energetic designers,
who with empathy and a systematic overview
can envision those invisible tomorrows.
Thank you.
(Applause)