Remodelling design as co-creation in the era of globalisation

Criticisms of design frequently focus on its central role in the proliferation of consumer culture in the context of globalisation. This paper considers an experimental design that intervenes in these conceptions of design. By evoking the historical design ethos of co-creating, advocated by Global Tools in Italy in the 1970s, I contend that the furniture series Digestion (1998-2000) by French designer Matali Crasset provides a provocative and significant model of collaboration that reworks the interdependencies between developed and developing countries in a globalised economy. Drawing on art theorist Hal Foster’s account of how unresolved issues of history haunt contemporary practices in visual art, I show how this experimental design reveals a number of unresolved tensions in design pertinent to today’s ecological and financial crises. I argue that Digestion celebrates how the co-creation of mass produced products manufactured in developing countries can reconfigure collaboration between designers and consumers in an international arena. Design Accounts of Globalisation Globalisation is often optimistically discussed in design discourse as an opportunity for increased flexibility, enhanced quality, and renewed creativity in design. Design theorist Guy Julier (2008) contextualises globalisation within the liberalisation of economic trade during the 1980s and 1990s. He defines globalisation as a combination of accelerated production, the digitisation of information, strategic creativity, and the redistribution of manufacturing centres around the world. He draws on Scott Lash and John Urry’s 1987 account of ‘disorganised capitalism’, where the shift in influence from institutional regulation to multinational corporations, combined with the flexibility of digital technology, is seen as blurring differences between culture and commerce and aestheticised everyday life. Aestheticising everyday life means moulding, shaping, and penetrating every corner of daily experience. The combination of these forces has resulted in a closer allegiance of branding and design with consumerism under the aegis of economic globalisation. Julier (2006) suggests that mutuality best characterises the relationship between the economies of capitalism and the human subjects who work and live within its orbit. I contend that while Julier champions globalisation as advantageous to design, his concept of mutuality leaves little room for reconceptualising the relationship between consumer and designer in ways that acknowledge the environmental impact of the overproduction of commodities. Critical views of globalisation consider the wider socio-political ramifications of organising society according to the dictates of multinational corporations. These perspectives emphasise that the flow of capital and western cultural values across national boundaries constitutes a form of cultural imperialism imposed upon developing countries. Assessments vary as to whether globalisation produces cultural homogeneity or heterogeneity, yet many who focus on the social effects of globalisation agree that while wealth has increased overall it is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a minority elite (Woodham 1997, Appadurai 1996). Designer and design theorist Gui Bonsiepe (1999, 2006) has long discussed the effects of globalisation in relation to design and