I was very lucky this weekend to have the benefit of a visiting artist’s time to teach me some of the basic principles of mixing colours. One of the exercises was to draw 35 boxes, each 2cm square, and to colour them in however seemed appropriate at the time. She remarked how helpful this exercise was as it avoided the need for the student to face a blank canvas – which was often the greatest block to fledgling artists.

It struck me how true it was that a blank canvas is the hardest obstacle to overcome in any project and wondered how this was best tackled. Does the first stroke or action really matter? It can be morphed into the desired shape or colour later down the line. Surely the best way is simply to start and be confident in the knowledge that that first mark is as anonymous as many of the marks that follow it.

When I saw the Barbican were holding a debate on whether good design could change the world, I was very excited at the prospect of what ground might be covered. A wide range of architect personalities was promised, including the controversial Zaha Hadid. Within the audience, I saw many journalist’s notebooks open and frantic hands dancing over the sheets, attempting to capture the atmosphere of the event.

One aspect of the debate I was particularly interested in was the engagement of the community in design and the importance of close collaboration with the end-user. This neatly ties into the philosophy of John Thackara’s Design of the Time – a subject I have recently been reading about as part of my ThinkUp journey.

The original notion that the community should be encouraged to participate in the design process, was floated by Cameron Sinclair, co-founder of Architecture for Humanity (AfH). He chose to focus on the charity’s work in New Orleans, where Architects were helping stimulate the local community into considered and thoughtful rebuilding of their city. It would have been fascinating to have delved a little deeper into the process and how the mechanics of community / architect collaboration was managed, but alas this was not the place. Another avenue to be followed! I was greatly encouraged that the act of being engaged in the design process made the community actively interact with the end product, using it as was intended through the design process. Conventionally, a neighbourhood would be designed and built using only the professional team’s specific knowledge, potentially resulting in a contrived environment which does not meet the community’s needs – in the most extreme cases, I believe this contributes to the social decay which is evident in so many communities the world over.

I can imagine that community collaboration is fairly straightforward on the scale that AfH work on, but how might this work in town planning or high rise buildings? Certainly the presentation from Zaha Hadid’s practice (she was unfortunately unable to attend at short notice), seemed to be in a different universe. The emphasis was on parametrically modelled computer generated cityscapes and presented a seemingly impersonal design approach, if anything creating barriers to social collaboration. Zaha Hadid’s practice came under much fire from the rest of the panel, descriptions varying from “banal” to “just bad design.” The question of enabling social collaboration when conceiving major projects is a difficult one to answer and is an area which requires more thought.

While the tools Hadid’s practice were showcasing can be exclusionary and impersonal in the wrong hands, I think that used effectively they have the potential to empower designers, identifying solutions which were impossible to realise as little as five years ago. I don’t feel this came out of the panel’s comments and I fear that the audience may have made the link between bad design and computer generated content.

While this was an architectural debate, with a panel of architects, I believe the question “Can good design change the world?” is fundamentally more far reaching than architecture alone. The question was the right question, in that I believe that, yes, good design can change the world for the better. In my opinion though, good design is the product of a collaborative philosophy where all the stakeholders have the opportunity of participation. It felt to me the panel was quite a narrow selection, in many ways ill-equipped to truly debate the question in hand.

It’s still early days at simplyretro.com and we are currently updating the site to make it look better and more functional. Hopefully within the next few days, much of this will be straightened out…