Radical Craft (Metropolis)

A Few Stories (and Podcasts) from the Source
Metropolis captures the conference that explored the craft in architecture, technology, fashion, science, and more. (link)

"Radical" means edgy, out there on the fringe, but it can also mean root, or even effecting fundamental changes in current practices. Over two days in March at the Radical Craft conference at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, more than three dozen speakers tried to explain--sometimes directly, and sometimes by demonstrating their own work--what the term "radical craft" means in the world of design. And, consequently, in the broader sense in which we live. It wasn't easy: "craft", like "design", is a slippery idea, especially when it's applied not to macramé but to (among other things) spacecraft, magic, music, lexicography, New Yorker cartoons, and (of course) iPods.

I spoke with six of the Radical Craft speakers, several of the conversations were conducted right after their presentations. Two of the speakers are from design's corporate realm: Claudia Kotchka, Vice President of Design Innovation and Strategy at Procter & Gamble; and Jim Hackett, CEO of Steelcase, who brought along James Ludwig, his director of design. Two speakers approach design as a political tool: Maurice Cox,the former architect-mayor of Charlottesville, VA and a professor at UVA's school of architecture; and Martin Fisher, CEO of KickStart, a non-profit selling a water pump as a means to eradicate poverty. One approaches design from outer space: Constance Adams, spacecraft architect. And finally,Chee Pearlman, guest program director refines the term "radical craft."

Maurice Cox
Maurice Cox is an architect and professor at the University of Virginia, but from 2002-2004 he was also mayor of Charlottesville, VA, and continues to serve on the Charlottesville city council. Recently, he's helped the people of Charlottesville erect a monument to free speech: a 70-foot long chalkboard in front of city hall. He talked about the importance of design for democracy, how design can become a tool for empowerment, and how he's trying to densify Charlottesville.
Click here to download the discussion (MP3 file).

Claudia Kotchka
Claudia Kotchka is Vice President of Design Innovation and Strategy at Procter & Gamble, where she's been asked to translate the language of design to the company's 100,000+ employees. She also gave distributed copies of Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart's book, Cradle to Cradle--with an executive summary attached--to the senior managers at Proctor & Gamble. After her presentation, we talked about preaching design, the steps she's taking towards sustainability, and the relationship between design and experience.
Click here to download the discussion (MP3 file).

Jim Hackett & James Ludwig
Jim Hackett is the CEO of Steelcase and James Ludwig is his director of design. Recently, they've been thinking of ways that space can become a "cognitive prosthetic"--enhancing the ways information is exchanged, processed, and developed in the workplace. The three of us talked about sustainability, their working definition of the term Radical Craft, and what furniture has to do with Google.
Click here to download the discussion (MP3 file).

Martin Fisher
Martin Fisher is the founder and CEO of Kickstart, a non-profit working to eradicate poverty in Africa by selling (among other products) foot-operated irrigation pumps--which he says is just the tool to lift a subsistence farmer into the middle class. Costing $100, the pumps make their owners an average of $1100 a year, enough to put healthcare and education within economic reach. As he crystallizes Kickstart's logic: "A poor person really only wants one thing, and that is a way to make money." He talks about Kickstart's work, the design of the pumps, and the trouble with the $100 laptop project.
Click here to download the discussion (MP3 file).

Constance Adams
Constance Adams is an architect working with NASA designing buildings, crafts, and systems for space. She started her presentation at Radical Craft with a mind-boggling premise: if the earth is an organism, it must propagate--we literally must reproduce the planet, through exploration. As she puts it, we must "terraform": shape places like earth. Adams talks about the zygote of planet earth, the design strategies to accomplish that, and how a Yale-trained architect ended up at mission control. (Hint: "Doing kitchens and bathrooms for the stars wasn't going to work for me.")
Click here to download the discussion (MP3 file).

Chee Pearlman
The award-winning former editor of I-D, Chee Pearlman spent two years programming the conference, carefully choosing and arranging the speakers like the articles in a magazine or the works of art in an exhibit. The morning after the closing night party, I found her on the porch of the spa of the Ritz Carlton Huntington in Pasadena, and asked her about the beginnings of the conference, her highlights, what Radical Craft means, and if she can bare to think of 2008.
Click here to download the discussion (MP3 file).