Teaching, resources, references

lab.3000 Digital Design Biennale

I visited the lab.3000 Digital Design Biennale at the Melbourne Museum as part of another trip to Melbourne, it wasn’t quite what I expected from an event called a Design Biennale. I expected a showcase of the best designs from Victoria instead it was a survey show of work from Victorian design schools, plus some showcasing of good work by designers and artists. It’s great to see the focus in the Design Biennale not being on current designers but on future designers, the people that are going to be making a difference into the future. The education institutions are where the seeds are planted and future networks developed, design schools are like the foundations of the design industry.

I’m not a fan of design exhibitions; possibly because I don’t see design objects as having a strong role in gallery. What was great about this show was the way in which it brought together different threads of the digital design community. What I’m not so sure about was the design of the exhibitions space, the circular space worked well to bring together the different threads, the spiral display boards across the ceiling was a great idea but they are hard to read. What were disappointing were the actual display stations, some housed interactive work, and some housed non-interactive work. What was frustrating from my point of view was the fact the interactive works looked the same as the non-interactive display stations to me this is a bit of way finding design gone wrong.

As a design educator it was great to see work from currents students in Victoria and it was personally great to be able to feel confident that the quality of work that our students produce is comparable. But question started to form in my head. Maybe the best way to talk about this question is to think about the project I spent the most time with. This was Eco Sense by Benjamin Statkus from the RMIT University School of Architecture. The proposal was for a building on the St Kilda pier that had displays linked to underwater cameras situated around Port Philip Bay. I was interested in this project because of the linkages to my own PhD work and because what was shown at the exhibitions wasn’t just the final outcome of the project, it also included the design notes and rationale etc. At the same time as finding the project an interesting idea I wonder if it could be achieved. The project is a great idea, but it’s only an idea it wasn’t applied and in many ways lacked the dialogue that good design should have between a problem, audience, design and the logistics of getting the project done. But at the same time this is extremely difficult to achieve in a student project, and hard to design into a teaching program especially in an area like building design. What these unapplied projects do allow is a freedom for the students to explore ideas, but does it prepare them for real design problems? Maybe this observation also comes from a person that finds it easy to develop ideas, but is not also great a realising those projects.

http://www.lab.3000.com.au/biennale/biennale/biennale.jsp

Posted by robin at February 3, 2005 01:29 PM