You must have noticed as well. The signals have been there for at least a few years, yet they are sounding ever louder. People are increasingly hungry for the real thing, the meaningful, to reaffirm not merely their uniqueness or personal identity, but also their humanity, their grounding, to deepen their experiences, to contribute to something beyond mere consumerism.

Urban farming is on the rise, DIY stores are buzzing with activity, eco-tourism is hot, slow food gains ever more adepts, homegrown fruit and home-baked bread taste for more … Is the economic downturn pulling our feet back to the ground? No, it might amplify things, but things started way earlier. Does the increasingly virtualization of our experiences, of our relationships with both stuff and people, make us nostalgic for more ‘human’, more ‘tangible’ times of direct interaction? Is the superficiality, the airiness of consumer culture making us feel lost? Are we longing to beat negative talk & hear-say with positive action? Trendwatchers say that – in large numbers – we are looking for authenticity, others call it ‘back to basics’, although there seems to be more to it than just another label. Some sociologists fear we are sitting on a timebomb, and refer to a growing gap between those able and willing to follow the ever increasing pace and demands of contemporary post-industrial society and those unable or unwilling to do so.

On several occasions, the past year, the ever lovely and inspiring Monocle magazine focused our attention on the revaluation of craftsmanship in the designworld. Yes, I hear you say, people pay for exclusivity. Indeed they do, yet there also seems to be a material and a human connection we are looking for: who touched it, whose hands made it, who/what inspired it, who breathe life into it, which story does the object tell, who fixed it, does it become nicer as it ages, what makes it mine, … A world of abundance, of anywhere-anything-anytime seems to be raising questions faster than answers. On several fronts, a sense of poverty of meaning is becoming ever more apparent.

One response to this appears to be to ‘bring back touch‘, to bring us back ‘in touch’ with ourselves, the people, things and environments around us. No, there is nothing esoteric to it, on the contrary, it appears to be hard work in the material world. Check out MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects which organizes Ghost lab, “an education initiative designed to promote the transfer of architectural knowledge through direct experience – project-based learning taught in the master-builder tradition – with emphasis on issues of landscape, material culture, and community”. One week to design a building, one week to build it with local materials and the group’s own hands, all on the coast of Nova Scotia; because architecture is more than computer-aided-design and books, databases and deskwork cannot account for the majority of tacit knowledge and know-how that leads to excellence.

Not only summerschools or craft schools, but also universities are gradually rediscovering the benefits of master-apprenticeship models of learning. A one-to-one relationship as a context for deeper learning, a stimulus to multigenerational dialogue and knowledge management, a celebration of the unicity of skills and approaches, personal attention and responsibility etc. Each and every one of these elements appears to fit remarkably well within the contemporary context of educational needs and solutions, even (or perhaps especially) in times of teamwork and participatory design.

An increasing number of universities, such as Harvard,  is actively encouraging students to take a gap-year before entering university: to strike out on their own, to set or sync their priorities, to feed their personal interests, to invest in their personal development, to give back to their community and the world at large, to take the time to grow into fuller, more complete crewmembers of Spaceship Earth …

Scanning for other signals, one could say that there is an element of nostalgia involved. Vintage design is hot, steampunk makes the futuristic seam less otherworldly, the wear and tear of materials having lived a life of meaning, having a history, makes us feel alive, it reaffirms our being human in a context in which the new is leading to fatigue. Is it a style, a fashion, a mere craze? Elements of it yes, yet it feels like there’s a deeper ground to it as well. Looking forward to hear a sociologist, anthropologist, psychologist on this instead of yet another marketeer.

What does it mean for the future people dream of? To be continued, no doubt …

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 15:38 and is filed under design, experience, future, society, trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.