Creation Explorer

Catalog “Cruzados, nuevos territorios del diseño de vanguardia.” Barcelona, 2003.

Martín Azua

The designer is the archer who aims at the target (the problem) with the desire to hit the center, the place of compromise and balance among the many factors of a project. The artist is another type of archer who consciously shoots the arrow outside the range, with the will to go looking for it to know what lies beyond the limits of what is possible. This attitude of prospection, which until now was considered to be typical of art, is shared by many disciplines. Let’s say that what counts is the degree of experimentation with which projects are approached, the ability to ask questions that question reality. Can the world be split into two? One that responds to our need for change, and another in which the essence of nature endures. These types of questions are transversal and can be of interest to any type of creator. Another fact to be noted is that references are shared; the world of art is the same as that of design, but also that of medicine or any other discipline. Thus, a work in the field of genetic research can suggest or generate answers in the context of architecture. In the realm of ideas, there seem to be several planes of action, where concepts, processes and technologies are shared. The result of this situation is the democratization of creative fields, the overcoming of the supremacy of art over other minor disciplines; in fact, many artists are dealing with problems that are typical of design and architecture and are no less transcendent for that. In the artificial environment, spaces and objects, observed in their multiple connections, can be as revealing as a globalizing reflection detached from the close and every day. In this sense, design also claims new fields of action, different from the traditional ones (industrial design, graphic design, interior design, architecture…), all linked to a certain idea of production, more or less serial or commercial, which by themselves are incapable of dealing with complex problems. Design is interested in ideas and discourses. It is not a theoretical reflection to use, but a will to create and express concerns and questions. “What would happen if…”. This attitude is not new, in fact, it was in the origins of the discipline, when after the industrial revolution many tried to integrate art and industry. The journey of design is already beginning to be long and it seems that the industry, far from facilitating speculation and experimentation, has been more concerned with pragmatic issues linked to the market. Some groups of designers question this situation and, from the independence of the creator, try to reflect on the real problems of our environment, the needs and expectations of the people. Their answers always generate new questions in a process in which the professional identity of the creator is becoming less and less important than his or her inquisitive attitude of continuous affirmation in the face of the question: what is the role of applied creativity in a world that is reinventing itself?