Working (and thinking) smarter, not harder

“And so I am arguing that in the coming age of scarcity, the focus of the designer needs to shift away from simply using less, as under the rule of austerity, to understanding the constitution of scarcity — where and why and how resources are lacking — and grappling with this in a creative manner.”

Throughout the reading on Scarcity and Austerity from Jeremy Till I couldn’t help but keep thinking about a call to action as designers to work (and think) smarter, not harder. Austerity, the political response to an economic status/crisis, and scarcity, the lacking and dwindling of resources, both effect the traditional means of operation of architecture in terms of the discipline and profession. But that’s just the thing: traditional means. Instead of believing that both of these factors produce a “nonnegotiable limit to growth”, I instead want to choose to believe that a shift in thinking new creative solutions can actually produce an unforeseen growth with the ultimate possibility of providing social, or even political, stability. (Yes I realize that comes across slightly idealized but let’s just go with it for a minute). I think Jeremy Till provides many successful examples of looking outside of the norm of design and construction, such as the Newcastle Project, and ultimately I think it allows us the opportunity to address inefficiencies of not only resources or ways of living but also design. Despite being in a culture of scarcity, there’s still an abundance of something. It just may not be what we’re used to using and requires an open mind to discover this abundance and further produce a creative alternative solution. This idea of “scarcity thinking” or “super use” doesn’t necessarily require us to be innovative, but just redistributing what already exists such as using “surplus materials otherwise destined for landfill or incineration”. Not only does this “smarter not harder” mindset help us in the race against austerity and scarcity, but I think it inherently produces a very contextual response that goes past just the architecture itself.