Development,
Part 3c
Design is Politics
Glen Mills’
excellent, short, 2006 Business Day article “Thinking out of the matchbox” (attached) briefly summarises the
general situation in South African housing, which has not changed much since
then.
There is
still no public discussion of design, except at the “Top Billing” level of
snobbery and eclecticism, or otherwise at the level of the most banal, hopeless
utilitarianism.
Mills’
article brings in the vital question of design. His argument is true, and
tragic. Design is the politics and the propaganda of the eye, and the enabler
of freedom. It is the politics that is lived in, as opposed to being merely
read or spoken.
Design is
terribly impoverished in South Africa. This part of our politics has been
neglected.
Today, 30
January 2012, Glen Mills has published another article in Business Day. It will
be posted to the forum separately, but we can use it as part of the same debate
on design and urbanism, which as much as ever, needs to be pursued towards a
political conclusion.
In the next
part, we look at the rural side of things.
Image: “Plug-In City”
- The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Thinking
out of the matchbox, Glen Mills, Business Day.
- To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.
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