4.13.08 - LAURA KURGAN - 12-2pm
Categories: Design Heroix, Grand Rounds
(Part of the Grand Rounds Monthly Lecture Series, Design Heroix)
NYU AUDITORIUM 78 STUYVESANT PLACE NEW YORK NY 876.897.8900
12-2pm | Interrogates the spatial for the social and political.
Respondents: Stephen Zacks
Bios:
Stephen Zacks is an editor at Metropolis Magazine and a graduate of Liberal Studies at the New School’s Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science. He has reported on architecture, design, and urbanism in Abuja, Ramallah, Beirut, Panama City, Vilnius, Bucharest, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Pristina, Nicosia, and Dubai, as well as Baltimore, Omaha, Oklahoma City, Nashville, Denver, and Kansas City.
February 27th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Link to Laura Kurgan’s page in the environmental health clinic: http://x.environmentalhealthclinic.net/profile/LauraKurgan
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:39 pm
What I found most inspiring about this presentation: 1. The possibility of thinking and maneuvering at larger scales to solve problems that seem unsolvable, and to progressively alter the status quo by holistic routes. 2. The contrast btwn the experience of this DH and the last one (Jepsen)– a fascinatingly diverse platform
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Perhaps the thing that resonated most with me after Laura Kurgan’s presentation was the role of the designer in society, a point that was not brought up in the presentation but instead in the heated discussion following the presentation, in which one woman seemed noticeably irate that Laura herself was not “doing anything” with what she had designed, in this case the design is a thorough visual argument based on available data, woven into a graphically concise, convincing thesis. I distinctly remember Laura’s response “Let me be clear, I am an architect, I am not a policy maker.”
This highlighted the fact that it is often beyond the control of the designer whether or not what they have designed is actually implemented. Laura Kurgan was absolutely right, she is not a politician, she is not a sociologist (although some of the analysis and insight came close), and perhaps most importantly she does not have the money and resources to change the legislation concerning the topic of prisons.
Does this mean that in addition to being designers, architects must also be public intellectuals? Should architects and designers be called upon by legislators to ask what they think, to influence, essentially, the powerful? I don’t foresee this happening in today’s political climate. In America at least, politicians could care less what architects think and as a result architects have become largely apathetic to politics and not particularly well versed in the language in which decisions are made.
History has shown that architects don’t make popular intellectuals, probably something to do with accusations of egotistical grandeur or utopian visions, but then. So then, how should one frame the role of the designer in society, in terms of skills, thought processes, past successes/failures in design or other areas, potential for agency?
May 5th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
In addition to the poinancy of Laura Kurgan’s presentation, I was very interested in the debate that followed. People seemed to have an impossible time understanding Kurgans motives. Is she an architect, a designer or a political activist? Well, I suppose that she is all three. Laura Kurgan is a prime example of someone utilizing data visualization to display aggregate information that exposes a socio-economic relationship and a serious issue concerning our justice system. It is architectural in that it is spacial. It is a study of the urban environment and presents a new perspective on viewing the community. Data visualization such as Kurgan’s work, represents a uniquely new cultural form enabled by computing. It allows for a multitude of the worlds information to be exposed, consolidated, and represented—something unprecedented until recently. If used properly, data art and visualization has, and will continue to prove itself as an extremely powerful tool for communicating information and influencing behavior. Since the field relatively is young, the difficulty lies in determining the most effective way to present the information so that it is attractively presented, easily comprehended, and remarkably revealing.