Everyone deserves good design

And that is why designer is a great profession! It is not just about creating beautiful things, it has much more deeper value and you should listen to the John Cary's commencement address delivered on May 10, 2013 to the graduates of the University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning to understand it better. It is about design and its transformative power to the public. 

Here below is part of it with which I deeply agree:

"Everyone deserves good design. I feel that in my bones. Right now, however, the vast majority of design services are reserved exclusively for people that can afford them—which is to say, almost no one. In fact, the people that could most benefit from design rarely have access to it—your cousin, a homeless veteran; your grandma or grandpa with a kitchen that’s no longer accessible to them; your wheelchair-bound sister in a suburban area planned without sidewalks.

We use words like “function” and “form” to describe design, but I’ve come to believe it’s about something deeper. It’s about dignity. You see, dignity is something design can achieve in ways nothing else can. Dignity is a kid learning in a colorful classroom that makes him feel valued and piques his curiosity. Dignity is a cancer patient in a light-filled hospital room with lots of natural airflow to support her healing. Dignity is a community where the young and old alike have safe public spaces to mingle, celebrate, and play. 

Dignity is to the public interest design field what justice is to the more established field of public interest law. In the simplest of terms, for me it’s about knowing your intrinsic worth and seeing that worth reflected in the places you live and work, the products you use, and the systems and services you rely on....

 Your most fundamental mission as designers is not to make beautiful buildings or pretty objects. It’s not even to plan roads or parks or public spaces. Those are outcomes, at best. Your shared mission, instead, is to return design back to its rightful place in the public domain. It is to not just talk about the importance of diversity and dignity, but to live it every single day in your practice. 

Look at your families who have joined you here today. Look at the friends who have come to celebrate your achievement. If design doesn’t touch their lives, what good is it? Make design part of their possible. This will not only create design that is dignifying, but it will also dignify the practice of design for all of us. It will not only diversify and expand the client base of design, it will create new, more diverse forms of design. More than anything, the act of design is a chance for you all to raise people’s expectations about what they deserve—and imagine the satisfaction of doing that for the family and friends you love most."

More on the theme of design and its role in my earlier posts.