 |
||
INTERVIEWWork Worth Doing: An Interview with Lorraine Gauthier and Alex Quinto
as featured at blog.industrialbrand.com
"Ladies and Gentlemen, Greenland is melting!" This was how Lorraine Gauthier and Alex Quinto introduced themselves at this year's ICOGRADA in Seattle. It was early in the conference and the first statement that truly made us sit up and take notice. We would learn that the pair had worked on Bruce Mau's exhibit Massive Change, a massive undertaking unto itself tackling the world's most critical problems from a designer's perspective. They then went on to create Work Worth Doing, a design studio "working at the intersection of the business, cultural and philanthropy sectors bringing design thinking and design processes to a host of social and environmental challenges". Yes, Greenland is melting. This can interpreted as a catastrophic event, threatening ocean circulation patterns and Europe's climate. But from a different perspective, it also stands as an untapped economic resource for Greenland and a potential water supply for Africa. From this latter view, the Greenland issue no longer becomes a problem, but a solution. It is all in how you approach the challenge. We recently interviewed Lorraine and Alex to further discuss the potential of design in creating positive change in the world. WWD: We want to be active players in making positive change. And by starting Work Worth Doing, we could collaborate with other people and projects that are trying to do that, but also initiate projects that we care about. When we worked on the Massive Change project with Bruce Mau, we realized many individuals around the world are doing things to improve others’ lives. From entrepreneurs to non-governmental organizations to corporations, people are either designing new ways to transport people, better water purification systems, empowering entrepreneurial women in villages in Bangladesh, and so on. When we saw that the common denominator in all these projects was design in the broad sense, we got excited about doing something similar as designers and communicators. IBC: How did working with Bruce Mau on the Massive Change project affect you? WWD: Bruce Mau is a very optimistic person and the Massive Change project is really an expression of that optimism. So when you work with an optimist on a project in which you’re mapping all the new ideas, inventions and practical design solutions that are changing the world you begin to see things that way too. We’re not blind to some of the major problems in the world, but we were encouraged to find so many people working on solutions. We also learned the importance of iteration. Bruce likes to keep the creative process open as long as possible. So as we worked on the exhibition and book content and design for Massive Change we created hundreds of approaches. Sometimes your best ideas are the first ones, but most of the time they’re not. IBC: The clients and projects you work with tend to be those already existing within the social responsibility camp. What is your advice for designers working with clients who are perhaps not as keen on such practices? Is it our responsibility to educate them? Most companies are looking for better, more efficient ways of doing things. Patagonia, for example, doesn’t recycle your old hiking underwear because it’s good PR, although it is that too, they recycle it because they can reduce energy use by 76% by not using new materials and reduce CO2 emissions by 71% and save money to boot. If you want to nudge a company toward more social and environmental responsibility think of ways for them to do that that make good business sense. Is it a designer’s responsibility to do this? Not necessarily. But as a human being, it’s probably worth thinking about. IBC: How significant do you feel the designer's role can be in shaping a client's view on socially responsible actions? WWD: What designers have that most other consultants can’t bring to the table is the power to visualize. If you have a good idea, show them what you’re talking about. We were trying to show a client the benefits to their brand that greening their building would achieve. So we took pictures of their building, blew them up to 8’ x 4’ ($19 at Kinko’s) then cut out pictures of solar panels, wind turbines, green roofs and applied them to the building. It was simply a large sketch, nothing too polished. But they got very excited by the image. Because they could see their now green building, they could imagine the impact it would have on how they are perceived. If you work inside a large corporation, you’ll probably find employee groups who are working on social causes in the community or who are looking for ways to improve the company’s environmental practices so signing on to one of these teams is a good way to help make things happen. WWD: The most pressing problems in the world are many and vary depending on each person’s perspective and location. However, our perspective is that various pressing problems in the world could be solved in a relatively short amount of time if the world’s key decision-makers and institutions wanted to. The money, technology, and knowledge are available to solve problems such as those defined by the United Nations in their UN Millennium Goals agenda -- eradicating extreme poverty, reducing child mortality, improving sanitation and water access, and so on. Addressing challenges such as those identified by the UN takes political commitment and commitment by NGOs and the likes of the Bill and Belinda Gates Foundation. This is where we are hopeful that designers and communicators can play a part by engaging multiple audiences around complex global challenges, visualizing possible solutions, and implementing part of those solutions and initiatives. We have the benefit of looking at things from different locales and cultural perspectives. For the past year, one of us has worked in Toronto and one in Mexico City. Whether we’re working on sustainable housing in Toronto or illegal migration on the border of Mexico, we can see most problems are interconnected. The lack of water or the overuse of water, the lack of shelter or the over consumption of natural resources in building process, poverty, proper nutrition, environment, these are global issues but they’re also local issues. It’s hard to know which one is the most important. You just have to pick one and start working on it. IBC: Do you see the current move by corporations toward social responsibility as trendy, something that can be spun as good PR? And if so, is doing good for the wrong reasons all that bad? WWD: We don’t care what the motivation is, if a corporation is moving toward greater social and environmental responsibility it’s a positive thing. If it’s strictly a PR campaign it won’t take long for people to figure that out. Honda can play up Environmentology in their ads because they have the credibility of having designed, manufactured and sold the world’s first hybrid. IBC: What do you hope will be the result of a project like The Now House? Do you see a proposal or communication to Wal-Mart or similar companies and possible relationship with them as a desired outcome? WWD: Now House has been an online resource of green building materials and products. But starting this fall we plan to go live with a store, exhibition space and resource focused on sustainable innovations. Our ambition has been to help consumers find green products and information about sustainable products more easily. For about two years we’ve been encouraging Wal-Mart via “send an email to Rob Walton’ on our website to build more green stores and carry more green products. Enough people sent emails that Wal-Mart sent us an update on their intentions of greening their operation. Recently Wal-Mart hired the Rocky Mountain Institute to help them green their truck fleet. So, we think it’s unlikely they’ll hire us, but we take some credit for encouraging them to go green. Would we showcase green innovations from Wal-Mart in Now House? Definitely. IBC: What are some of the projects that you have done that you are most proud of? WWD: You can find these projects on our website: The exhibition: What if Greenland was Africa’s Water Fountain? done in collaboration with Bruce Mau and part of Too Perfect: Seven New Denmarks; The book: Hyperborder done in collaboration with LAR/Fernando Romero to be published in 2007 by Princeton Architectural Press, The upcoming launch of Now House™, the store, exhibition and resource centre featuring sustainable innovation. Recently, the Now House Team’s proposal was chosen by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) as one of twenty winning teams across Canada chosen to advance to Phase II Design Phase for their Net Zero Energy Healthy House project. IBC: Do you collaborate with other designers? WWD: Coming out of Massive Change we tend to view design in the broad sense. For example, on Hyperboarder we’ve collaborated with researchers, academics, politicians, social geographers and anthropologists. Recently, we met with a city councilor whose support we were after for a project we’re doing in her riding. Out of that discussion came a potential project to redesign a pedestrian route that feeds into a major subway station in her area of town. She’s a politician, but she understood the problem from a design point of view. So, we tend to see most of the people we work with as designers. And yes, we collaborate with industrial designers and architects a lot. IBC: What is the ultimate goal of WWD? Where are you heading in the future? WWD: We’d like to expand the articulation of “work worth doing” beyond the limitations that a two-person design studio entails. We are exploring the possibility of creating a network of like-minded individuals and engaging in collaborations with others who are, like us, using design as a tool for positive social and environmental change elsewhere in the world. We’d like to share tools and “know-how” with a larger group of individuals for the purpose of collectively designing the most effective methods for positive change. There are various similar models already in existence, such as World Changing, ThinkCycle, and INDEX, so a similar framework could work for us in the near future.
|
 
|
 homeaboutportfolio
|
