One of the themes in this week’s readings is designing for the long term, or projective thinking (projective designing?). Banham argued that products should be thought about, from the pre-design stage onward, how they will or will not live a long life and if they do how they will be regarded. Will they been seen as great artifacts or crappy remnants of the past? He uses Bugatti and Buick engines as comparative examples where the Bugatti engine, obviously much more expensive, has the obligation to create a super sleek and impressive design. To accomplish this, the engine, courteous of its designers, is simplified on the outside; the major workings and components are hidden from the eye, and in addition, the engine can only be serviced from the side. The big criticism here is that the functionality and interworking of the engine are hidden where from an engineering standpoint is the beauty of the engine. The Buick engine, however, showcases the engineering which also allows for easier access (from the top). Banham states that is the more beautiful piece of engineering, which even more interestingly, results with a significantly lower price tag. The crux of this comparison is that if a man far into the future comes across two ancient artifacts, a Bugatti and a Buick engine sitting side by side, that of the Buick would be favored.
In subtraction, Easterling discusses the increasing interest in the use and deconstruction of buildings. It has gotten to a point where components of a to-be deconstructed building are essentially ‘put up on craigs list’ and the avid sustainable consumers we are are scrounging it up as fast as we can. Similar to the foresight of aforementioned product life, more and more the lifecycle of buildings is being thought about in the design process. This Includes the design for adaption reuse, where a building designed for a specific function can easily be converted to a different function after its initial use as well as designing the building with the intent of deconstruction to maximize the efficiency in the tear down and disposal/recycling of materials.
These readings really get the mind rolling around incorporating projective thinking in the design process rather than just designing for the moment. What we design, whether products or buildings do not just serve a purpose to us people now, but also will affect future generations in some way and it is our responsibility as designers to do what we can to make that effect as positive as we can. 