Event: SHOCK VALUE: Design in an intra-cultural world
Where: Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam. In the basement of the new building, room K-18
When: October 31, 2007, at 4 pm
Description
In the Netherlands, the evidence of thoughtful design is everywhere: the bike paths, the traffic crossings, the newspapers, the garbage collection, and the café menu, to name but a few. Here, design has become a habit, a way of life. The belief in its power is fundamentally unquestioned.
Yet even here, there are pockets of doubt. Imagine how much more difficult it is to come to a shared agreement when the value of design has never been firmly established and in a culture where the fundamentals of communication differ dramatically.
The speaker found herself in that situation when she did design work in Iran. For four years, she lived and worked in Tehran: a city that has forgotten design after just thirty years of explosive growth. There are no orderly traffic crossings, no thoughtfully organized neighborhoods, and few carefully designed restaurant menus. (There are, however, great posters.)
In this talk, Tori Egherman will discuss some of the communication issues that arose when she and her husband did work with Iranian companies and civil servants.
About the speaker: Tori Egherman is a partner with her husband in Ashtary Design. She is an American who has lived and worked in the U.S., The Netherlands, and Iran. You can read about her experiences in Iran at viewfromiran.blogspot.com.
