The Collaboration Between Designers and Science

Well you know designers and artists have been looking to science for a long time for inspiration.
It’s one of the most important sources besides nature and besides each other—art and design that
they have. So definitely the communication is important. But also I think that scientists can learn
a lot from designers. And that’s why about a year and a half ago, together with a science
magazine called Seed, with Adam Blye. We started a salon at MOMA monthly. And we started
inviting the same group of about 40 people, and we had designers and scientists come together.
Four presentations every time and then discussion, and it’s become really good because people
know each other.

They’re not shy anymore. It already sparked collaborations between designers, architects, and
scientists. And what we have learned, as always, is that it’s a matter of exposure and it’s a matter
of habit, communication. So at the beginning the spheres can be quite separate. And then when
they discover each other and they start talking the same language, really it’s unstoppable.

Designers are very helpful to scientists. There are some designers that kind of have their feet in
both worlds, like Ben Fry. He’s a really interesting information architect, and he’s been trying to
help scientists work on not only their presentations, but also on the delivery of enormous
amounts of data. Visualization is very important because it’s never objective. It’s like reportage.
However, the choices that you make and what you choose to show are very important for the
final message and final outcome. So he’s been working with scientists a lot. And scientists have
been trying to really provide designers with very important tools. Just to give you an example,
nanophysics is about—one of the possibilities of nanophysics is to build objects, tools, atom by
atom.

So that has prompted scientists to start designing. What John Seely Brown, who used to be the
head of Xerox Park, he calls it “thinkering”. So it’s thinkering, but intellectual thinkering. So you
have all these scientists building things, alphabet soups, ABCs and nano particles. And at the
same time there are designers and architects that are learning the capabilities, the potential of
aggregation and self-aggregation. They’re trying to think of buildings and objects that come
together by themselves. Basically you have these initial particles, you give them a push, and then
they come together. You know you just give them guidance. So there are architects like Aranda
Lasch here in New York, or Francois Roche in Paris that are really working on this. And I’m
positive that this is going to be the future of architecture and design.