omoting ‘by all practicable means the improvement of design in the products of British industry’.
Nearly 75 years later and our purpose and activities have evolved tomeet the economic and social needs of the day. However, from our early focus on elevating the UK’s industrial design standards in post-war Britain to our current work tackling complex socio-economic challenges, we've always championed design and its ability to make life better for everyone. In 2011, Design Council was merged with the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). This extended our remit to include design in the built environment, and its ability to help shape healthier, more inclusive places.
We aim to inspire new ways of thinking drawing on design tools and techniques, encourage public debate and inform government policy. We build on the successes of our past to improve life today and help meet the challenges of tomorrow. Browse through our timeline here to learn more about the work of Design Council and design’s historical contribution to the UK.The Design Centre, in London's Haymarket, was officially opened on 26 April 1956 and [IT] was whilst studying Art at GCE 'O' Level that our class went on our visit, and where for the first time I saw an exhibit of Dieter Rams work in the form of his design for a modern radio, that was not made out of bakelite !!!???
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e old order, and only luke-warm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order. This quality of lukewarmness arises partly from a fear of adversaries, who have the law on their side, and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.”
Machiavelli - The Prince - 1513
ONLY when the last tree has died
and the last river been poisoned
and the last fish been caught will
WE REALISE that ...
WE CANNOT EAT MONEY
BuckminsterFuller's concern with fine-tuning
communication, developing and using words that
are consistent with scientific reality, is one facet of
the role of language with respect to synergetics.
http://letschangetheworld.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?q=Synergetics+…
2 million years ago and not long afterwards, groups of hominids started
to fan out from their African homeland in search of new food sources. These early migrants
from the species Homo erectus are thought to have reached Southeast Asia via the Near East,
and they may have penetrated southern Europe. A second wave of migration began about
800,000 years ago. As the early humans adapted to their new homes and to the various
environmental and climatic conditions that they found, different sub-species and races
developed, among them Java Man, Peking Man and, in Europe Homo heidelbergensis and
the Neanderthal race. Meanwhile, in Africa, a new type of human evolved - one that would
eventually spread across the globe and supplant others. Homo sapiens sapiens, the modern
human race, dates back to about 100,000 years ago and around 40,000 years ago the species
reached central Europe and had arrived in Australia.
The Americas were the last continent to be populated
- by settlers crossing from Asia by way of the Bering
land bridge. The very success of Homo sapiens
sapiens in displacing all of its rivals is due to y[our]
species' greater mental capacity and, in particular, its
complex language skills. Human culture took a giant
step forward in the latter part of the Old Stone Age,
from about 40,000 to 10,000 years ago.
It was during this time when humans were
beginning to shape the environment which they
lived in and as they did so they began to feel the
need to express themselves through art. Art seems
to have been an exclusive preserve of y[our] species.
The number of works they produced increased
dramatically in the course of the last Ice Age as
y[our] ancestors spread around the world. The rock
drawings and engravings they created still have a
very powerful impact today, as do the small human
and animal figurines that the first sculptors carved
out of mammoth ivory. This carved limestone figure
gets its name from where it was found, near the
village of Willendorf in Austria. It stands just 11cm (4.3in) tall.
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g preoccupation into the realistic prospect of
a spontaneously coordinate planetary society." Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
Buckminster Fuller
Synergetics is a product of Fuller's passionate concern with models. Concerned that society's ignorance of science is seriously destructive, he devoted years of thought to ways of alleviating this ignorance. In the 20th century, we suddenly find ourselves confronted with an "invisible" atomic reality in which the average person understands very little about how things work. Although confronted daily with "incredible technology", which to Fuller includes the natural phenomena of Universe as well as the ever-expanding inventory of human invention, the vast majority assume such phenomena to be out of their reach. Fuller attributes this widespread discomfort to both the "invisibility" of science and the devastatingly complicated mathematics without which, scientists claim, their findings cannot be described. The dangerous chasm between scientists and lay people, with the truth guarded by an elite few and the rest resigned to ignorance, thus seems inevitable.
The origin of this troubled state of affairs? An incorrect mathematical system! Long ago human beings surveyed this environment and, seeing a never-ending flat Earth, decided upon cubes and orthogonal planes as the appropriate measuring system. Today, says Fuller, we're still stuck with that uninformed early guess, and as a result, nature's behavior has seemed irrational, perverse, and difficult to describe because we're using the wrong kind of yardstick. With accurate models, he claims, this gap can be closed. The purpose of synergetics is to make the invisible events and transformations of Universe visible, through tangible models that elucidate the principles behind our energy-event Universe. Human beings will thereby be able to "coordinate their senses" with a new understanding of reality.
Synergetics is full of tantalizing models; the difficulty comes in assigning them to aspects of physical reality. However, a number of notable examples, in which a newly discovered scientific phenomenon is described by one of Fuller's previously developed models, suggest that there may be many more such successes to come. The immediate goal therefore is to unravel and study the geometric system [IT]self.
Edmondson, Amy C.. A Fuller Explanation: The Synergetic Geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller (Back-in-Action books) (pp. 17-18). EmergentWorld LLC. Kindle Edition.
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