The other 90%

This summer, the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum in New York had a small, brilliant show in need of a much bigger stage.

‘Design for the other 90%’ is thankfully a misleading title. This is not design of the West rescuing the third world but is instead a show of genius innovation ideas emerging from communities all over the developing world, some as independent ventures, some in collaboration with nonprofits. The common themes are the most basic and hard fought needs of all – food, energy, health, housing and education – and the results are breakthrough. A drum of water you can roll rather than carry, furniture for churches built from the debris of Hurricane Katrina, little sheds which work as safe houses in disaster zones, energy to fuel a stove produced by a parabolic mirror dish on the outside of a small house, a treadle pump to irrigate fields – there are endless examples of sheer inventiveness which are cheap to make, easy to use and ease the grind of daily life.

For every startlingly obvious problem to solve, there’s one which we in the developed world might struggle to see, like the simple need to mark out a space where before there was none. This produced Public Architecture’s Day Labour Station – a mobile unit built as needed by US day labourers to create a place to wait, meet and study. It is a quick and simple way to make a temporary community.

There’s a big lesson here about how innovation happens, about designing for real needs rather than inventing new ones, even design which is first about function rather than aesthetics, but most of all the show’s message is one of massive commercial opportunity. Since 2.8 billion people live on less that $2 a day, making life-transforming products which can sell for less than the price of a chicken, and then distributing them on a massive scale, is a lucrative opportunity for everyone. It is a vital shift towards embracing developing countries as consumers, producers and industry leaders rather than the recipients of charity.

More at www.cooperhewitt.org/EXHIBITIONS/other/

6 October 2007, posted by Suzanne Livingston