Tireless work of design

Bruce Mau believes we have to keep remembering that the major crises in the world today are primarily crises of success.

This is a recurring pattern. Many of our greatest triumphs inadvertently produce disasters, which can then lead to new triumphs.

Our success in such fields as reducing disease, improving sanitation, and growing food has crowded the planet with over seven billion people. Our success in providing cheap transport, abundant energy, and all the comforts of consumer products has put the environment in danger.

In other words, our current problems are the direct consequence of earlier solutions. These problems must now provoke us to generate new solutions at a higher order of complexity: that’s the optimistic part.

And our next solutions will produce a whole new class of problems and requires an endless pursuit of better solutions.

This is the tireless work of design.