12 Feb 2010 1948H

Let’s just call design what it is

From my private study, from all the reading I have done and the observations I have made, I think it is now safe to declare design what I really think it is. Design as we know it today really is a western way of looking, thinking, and shaping, that flows from many very long aesthetic traditions in the west, guided by schools of thought most recently in what we call Modernism. In contrast what we call Asian design is not actually Asian at all. Asian design is actually the work of Asian people who have learned to look, think and shape in this way, much like learning how to cook French food. In the same way that there arrived this history of really good Asian cooks who are supreme French or Italian chefs, so too are there a lot of really good Asian designers who design in the western mode. The problem is that somehow in the design profession and in academia that the origins of the discipline have been masked, so that its biases, preferences, and proclivities are declared as universal when in fact they are not. There are historical conditions that shaped this, such as Japan’s reaction to foreign invasion through the various initiatives launched in the Meiji era, then how that affected Korea after Japan learned its imperialist lessons too well from the west, and the less well known but tumultuous responses to foreign incursions and the various indignities suffered by China in the late Qing period, and perhaps likewise we could look at Vietnam and Thailand as to how they reacted to colonialism by the French and on and on and on. Well, that’s my work right there.

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11 Mar 2010 0114H

Tim writes:

So true. And how often do we look at these iconic “Asian” designs that turn out to be repurposed from the West. The qipao and the zhongshanfu are good examples of this.

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