This moment of change offers an opportunity for designers to rethink their role in our society. The IMAGINING RECOVERY Competition promotes collaboration by pairing designers with policy makers to collectively write the competition brief, proposing a model wherein designers could actively participate in the initial imaginings of the policies they will be called upon to implement.
A policy discussion forum will be offered between Day 45 and Day 55, wherein designers will have the opportunity to participate in a global network of public policy students to unpack and discuss the issues of recovery, developing lines of communication and a common language. The issues raised collectively in this forum were summarized to constitute the brief of the competition.
To support their image of a lived future, the competition asks designers to offer their expertise in designing a means of getting from the present to the image of recovery. Design could be be offered in any form, from physical, built objects, to technological applications and interfaces, to campaigns to affect social behavior, to the design of phasing strategies, and beyond.
Submissions are due on April 29, 2009, Day 100 of the Obama presidency. The jury will address the public and issued awards on May 13, 2009, Day 114. The archive of the competition will live on in the After-Image, composed of the IMAGINING RECOVERY Mobile Laboratory, which opens in Rotterdam on Day 148, June 16, and a series of publications.
Recover What?
The term recovery has been adopted by the Obama administration to define the current moment of economic reform in America, and by extension, much of the world. This competition asks designers to collaborate with policy makers to define and position the term “recovery” itself.
Recovery simultaneously looks backward and forward, this competition asks designers: What is it that we hope to recover? Do we aspire to recover a historical moment? Do we wish to recover our recent past? Should we attempt to recover at all, or should we only look forward?
Specifically, what is the role of innovation in recovery? In a society adverse to risk, how can design act to hedge against the risk inherent in innovation? How can design operate in an economy hyper-sensitive to supporting innovation? How can design support the “new” in the “New” New Deal?
Imagine How?
Recovery promises to reform the way in which America operates, the way Americans live their lives. Though the Obama administration has taken measures toward making recovery transparent, the hundreds of pages of policy text, the endless online charts, maps, video addresses, and graphics used to illustrate the distribution of hundreds of billions of dollars is such a dense mass that it renders itself somewhat opaque to the public. They require journalists, pundits and other commentators to act as interpreters for the public.
This competition calls upon designers to act as visual interpreters to provide an experiential image of recovery for a public audience in the name of not only transparency, but also legibility and empathy. This competition offers a means for collaborating with policy students to determine the most salient issues to address, such that the imagery may be at once imaginative and respond to reality.
The after-image of the competition — the publications and exhibitions — will open this conversation and imagery up to the general public, and provide designers an opportunity to participate in the initial imaginings of recovery.
Design Economy?
According to President Obama, the challenges we face are new, and the instruments with which we meet them are new. This competition charges designers to design those instruments, to offer designs which can collectively imagine innovation in recovery, addressing the risk of the new through design.
An economy cannot subsist on spending alone, there must be an equal intelligence in how dollars are spent, as there is in where they are spent. This competition calls upon designers to assert the importance of design in economic, and other forms of recovery. This model is offered in the concept of design economy.