| Futures
Lidewij Edelkoort (Speech at the Doors of Perception 3 Conference)
Table of Contents: * * * * * * They commissioned this work about a year ago. I found this quite incredible and typically Dutch: a government institution hiring a fortune teller to tell them what would be possible in the future. That is how many people think of me. Fortunately, they saw that there is some sense in trying to describe lifestyles before they come about in their entirety.
* * * First, I would like to discuss the identity of the European in the future. This is an ego-centred, hedonistic person which is looking for a very healthy life indeed. Health has become a major pre-occupation in people's minds. With health comes the idea of a beautiful, well-cared-for body. Health and body go hand in hand.
This brings us to the idea of eternal youth. Our opinion is that we will never want to be old again. So we have a series of portraits here to say that people over 50, over 60, 70 and 80 will look more modern, act more modern, be more modern then ever before.
Of course everybody knows and it is reconfirmed almost every day, that there is a quest going on for a spiritual life, which sometimes ends in disaster.
We have noticed that there is a feeling for the extended family, making the choice of your family out of friends, neighbours, adoption; no longer necessarily only blood relations.
* * * There is also a growing world population which is of mixed race. And ultimately, they might change the face of the earth.
There is also an exchange between men and women. We are not all becoming unisex. I would claim the contrary, but what happens is that we seem to be much more open to accept the other gene, the other gender in ourselves. So men accept their more feminine side and vice versa. This brings us into a new, almost comrade-like type of relationship. You see that men are getting softer today, in a way.
The voice of the individual is becoming more important every day. First with fax, now with e-mail, outdoing everything ever done with telephone or writing, we see big corporations, big stores and big brands getting more and more feedback from their clients. We see that individuals are speaking up, making their own choices, absolutely unsatisfied with government and with the current situation, making use of their power as a group or an individual. Corporations do not necessarily like it. But the big groups are forced into political gear, because we, the public, ask them to speak up for us. A company like Esteé Lauder went from 20 letters a month to 2000, probably because word processors made it easier to compose an angry letter. This means that this type of company is directly linked with their public and can react much more quickly. Most of these letters are complaints about excessive packaging, animal testing and demonstrators who do not smile. So this means for us (we really noticed this in our talks with retail and industry) that we are going to be king. Lip service has been paid to this idea of the client as king in the past. I even believe that ultimately, the political system will dissolve, because of the way we will be hooked up to one another. We'll be able to do a kind of referendum-type political `colouring' and thus won't need political parties per se.
So let's go into these lifestyles. We do not have one lifestyle, we have many. The same individual can have three or four. The first idea is quite frankly, simply "to be". What does that mean today ? It is about life. It is about a small baby-boom going on, about tenderness and men taking care of babies, taking "baby-leave". It is about the two essentials at this point: air and water, which constantly recur. I think water is a much more important vector then it is considered today -- for transport, health, life, and many, many elements of the future.
Every day, everyday life is getting more beautiful and more designed. Designers are actually re-styling the flacons of soap you can buy in a supermarket, the tactility of packaging is discussed, even a bar of soap is going to be more beautiful in the future.
So there is a tremendous need in the design community and in the industry to make `everyday-life' products better.
There is a growing resistance to having everything at all times. So we feel that there is a return to the idea of using flowers and food according to seasons. Strawberries in spring, mushrooms in autumn. This is very true for the flower industry, which tried to give us chrysanthemums all year around; at one point, we did not want them even in autumn, because we were sick of them. Yet, it is a beautiful flower and we could re-magnify this flower if only we could wait for autumn to look at it, because it belongs to autumn. If this trend continues, which I think it will, it would ultimately mean that we are going to be less global in our tastes. Or at least that if we are going to have food, for example, that we have Thai food one evening and Italian food the next, but not the type of dinners we have today, where the entrance is English, the main course is French, followed by something Italian and then something else again. I think that is fading out rather rapidly.
The consumer is going to take more time. We are going to take more time to prepare coffee, to prepare tea, to shake cocktails, to talk to people. There is a growing if perhaps still latent feeling that we have to take more time. This implies the importance, the enhancement, the putting-on-a-pedestal of everyday items like bread. Look at how bread has become a design item recently.
We will be making our nest much more than a cocoon. It will become an open, incoming, outgoing situation. Furniture is getting rounded and generous. It is a matter of scale sometimes: we upscale, over-scale everyday products.
There is a lot of relief effect, a lot of tactility in simplicity. It is generous but simple. Cotton, paper, linen. There is a tendency towards cosiness, that is why so much candle-light can be seen. The fastest growing hobby in the world is gardening and the second one is cooking. I think that people want to live in relation to growth and earth, which is a very healthy feeling.
Our future life will change dramatically, because we are going to work more at home. Our office will be only one corridor away from our kitchen. We will work with the kids around us. We will work in our own way. There is no fashion or software-fashion for this yet. There are no interiors for this new office. Nobody is prepared for something which is already there; it is very bizarre. Design is late. Well-being is a second step, so important because our bodies and our relaxed minds seem to be of such obsessive importance to us. We will find escape however we can, whether it is in virtual situations or in real life.
We will want to relax, whether actively or passively. We will take care of our bodies definitely and profoundly. We will almost be biblical about being relaxed. We will use music, reading, all sorts of techniques to relax.
Then, there is this very important new notion of Friday. American and Japanese companies allow men to dress casually on Friday. Friday is free day.
This means a nine billion dollar business extra, because these guys do not have any casual wear. They have to buy it. But the efficiency of industry and offices on that day have gone up dramatically. So dramatically that a company like IBM has decided to force them into casual dress every day. Prohibited to have a blue blazer on! (It is really funny.)
The world is shifting dramatically away from meat to fish or vegetables. It is a big problem for the meat industry (unfortunately, it is called an industry.) At this point, they are putting more effort into selling their meat, which does not make it look any more appealing, in my view. Our problem will be that there will not be enough fish. Fish farming will have to receive a great deal of the government's and our own attention.
For many things, we will shop from our homes. So going out to shop is not going to be the same, ever again. We are going to be amused with cyber-sex, net-betting, casinos, games. All this is going to take a lot of attention and time and give a lot of pleasure. We will remain very interested in sports and active sportswear. The leisure industry will grow increasingly. Outdoors will continue to be important, but the outdoors might be closer to home. Outdoors will perhaps become almost an obsession. In architecture, we will not actually see tree houses, but we will see the environment, nature trying to get into the house and vice versa. We will use water and plants for our health and body. Water is a major element to get in shape. There are a lot of water-based products, starting now, becoming more and more important. We see that people want to have healthy food, not `health food'. And they are interested in bio-agriculture, not because of the environment, but because of taste. When we spoke to the bio-farmers of Holland, they said that ultimately, and in a very short period of time, the only solution for Dutch agriculture is to use bio-farming. Because the stuff has taste. Holland is in a big conflict with Germany, which refuses our watery tomatoes without any taste (and they are right). Also, very interestingly, they told us that they no longer have any trouble dealing with the traditional problems of bio-farming. Information provided by the military after the cold war has allowed them to identify natural enemies very effectively.
The new service industry is going to be very important. Ahold is actually doing a try-out with a self-commanding fridge. It is a digital fridge which will order and replace things you're getting low on. A dream. Many, many people are starting to reflect on having goods delivered. All the commodities will be delivered immediately to our houses, flats, apartments, businesses.
We believe that this trend towards well-being will ultimately be the death or the problem of tourism. The discussions we've had with people and our own intuitive feeling lead us to believe that there is going to be a slowdown in tourism as from 5 years from now and that people are going to invest more money in having a holiday every day very close to home. This would mean that urban planning would have to embrace the idea of smaller swimming pools, of public spaces, public gardens, solariums and gymnasiums. It would mean that we would live in a very different way than the well-known pattern of work, stop, work, stop, then holiday or weekend. Rather, work and holiday and free time are going to be intertwined.
There is a new idea of solidarity. First, we had to be an individual like Madonna to make all our own choices every day: what colour hair, what outfit, what house, what boyfriend, what music, etc. We see now that people are weary of this and that they want to re-find themselves in others. Instead of seeing the most beautiful girl in the world, the top model, we see the top models together. Suddenly, they become a tribe.
The couple fighting to stay together is important. There is a new interest in trying to make it work. The importance to the couple of black and white, male and female is reflected in design. We also see a burgeoning interest in things that are `pileable' or which can be put linked as in a chain. Looking for links.
We think here of a garment industry which is much more sober and almost uniform-like. We think it is important for us, the consumer in the future, to have a more limited scope and choice and still to have variation. Suddenly everybody is interested in different sorts of rice. And somehow, I do not know why, we do not need that much difference in pasta any more. We made our choice, in a way. So we seem to be interested in certain key items at certain moments.
Suddenly, we find ourselves wanting to have bigger tables, to have the extended family around us, collections, interiors and exteriors looking much more industrial. And variation within one product, for instance, beer and tea.
The importance of a uniform look; the importance of blue as a group colour. The importance perhaps of a comeback of a pink communism. I think there is going to be a possibility of a comeback of a renewed form of communism. The tribal, primitive use of colour, very bold. The importance of linking, hooking each other up; for instance, in the car business, there is a lot of renting, leasing and linking going on. The importance of a choice within a given item. If you buy this chair, you belong to the taste family of that chair. But the way you mix the chairs together colour-wise is your choice. Mixing different green salads has become a major new agricultural industry in the United States. The importance of service, having community-type services, taking care of things, household chores we do not want to do.
* * * I did research with Liesbeth in 't Hout, my colleague and friend in Holland, and in order to arrive at these rather bold remarks, we did random workshop groups. Weirdly enough, the groups we found the most creative and expressive were the farmers and the housewives. The housewives were incredible. They had no problem putting themselves into a future situation. They wanted to have houses with a sort of device on top of the house so they would never have to dust any more. Another very good idea was to put Holland under water again, so everybody could have a house with a little boat and go by boat from one to the other, which happens a lot in Amsterdam. They were thinking of living together in new sorts of communities, but keeping their independence for old age. They never wanted to cook any more. Just delivery, or maybe their husband could cook. And the most disappointing group was the designers. For designers it is very difficult to think that tomorrow we might not even design goods any more, but, rather, immaterial things or ideas. That was really difficult for them because they are so hooked into the material right now. The kids were nice, as well. Especially little Eva, who wanted to live on Venus.
Seduction is something I personally like much better than this showing off, because it also seems serious, but it is more intimate and sophisticated. It is giving presents to yourself and to the other. Haagendas is one of the big and earliest examples of that. It is about making yourself into a present, giving yourself as a present or giving a present to somebody else. It is indulging in 95% pure chocolate or Havana cigars (this is coming back very strongly into the US). Quality is important in this: like a very nice glass of wine (not French at this point) or a cashmere blend in your blazer. A new sort of rounded, streamlined forms can also be seen in wood. Square items, traditional yet precious to use; luxury food together with simple food. To pay attention to detail in simple things like a bar of soap or sweets. Detail and tactility are becoming more important every day. The feel for material; the feel for fragrance in a flower. Believe it or not, people now have to pay a lot of money to have fragrance put back into flowers.
* * * We pick out items which are like toys. We use colour frankly, brilliantly, funnily, make new shapes. Sometimes, we make figurative shapes to make us laugh about everyday gestures. There is a use of multitudes of colour in every domain. The use of print and pattern. Furniture looking like children's furniture. The use of colour in all places -- hair, for example. The importance of small items, like small tomatoes. In every supermarket today, you have a lot of goods which are undersized. Undersizing or oversizing suddenly makes us feel small, like a child. This is why you see the soft drink industry changing all the sizes of all the packaging. Sometimes, very soft and baby-like colourings on adult products recover and preserve the baby in us. To live in a new world, it is important to fantasise about this future world, which is already there at some point in cyberspace. To live these new products, packaging, materials, synthetic and plastic materials, moulded shapes almost streamlined, like a wet look, like oil itself. Oil ultimately is nature -- it is the way we use it that is bad. But we are getting into gear to make all those products better, especially in the textile industry. There is a lot of new development, of new yarns, which are totally or partly friendly to the environment and thus ultimately better than wood, linen or cotton. Like eco-plastics. Not only recyclable plastics made out of potatoes or maize.
* * * The importance of vacuum-packing and lightweight recyclables. The importance of this new research in materials called bio-technology or bio-mimicing. There are a lot of new paints which are not paints at all but are derived from beetles and butterflies. The car industry is beginning to notice that by imitating this biological build-up of a wing, they can capture the light in the same way, so they can have brilliant, bright cars, even iridescent cars, without using pigment or paint.
Fascinating things are happening in this world. There is a lot of new natural fibre as well, which is developed using bacteria. For example, spider silk is now being made, not by spiders but by bacteria.
These materials are coming out of laboratories, and design is lagging behind. It is too difficult for us to catch up, I believe. There are too many things happening.
* * * So we will purify our foods and make them simpler. Purify shape, colour, beauty and hence enlarge everyday things. Pay a lot of attention to very minor details. We will still have groups and series of things, but they will be very sober. Furniture will become square, like Donald Judd's designs. Light will be important. The bathrooms and kitchens will be almost clinical. Graphic design will be very pure and minimalistic. There will be a new and simple, sober elegance. Water will return.
Having said all this, what were the main points of our talk with the government?
We felt that we had to think of ecology in a much more elementary way, because the public at large is interested in the elements which become dangerous for them, especially air and water. Cities like Paris are becoming so dangerous that you cannot take your kids outside. Old people cannot go outside. There are a lot of respiratory problems. There is a growing anguish. It is not yet a revolutionary feeling, but I see that young mothers are really building up some anger, and I think we need a second period of anger.
First, maybe we should learn that we are the earth. The Gaia-principle is very important. This means that we do not say: we and the earth, we and the globe. Through all means, we have to learn, especially young people, that we are the earth. That we do all this to ourselves. That is not being discussed today, unfortunately.
We feel that ecology should become second nature in people's minds. Something you do not discuss any more; that you cannot be proud of any more as an industry, but something almost expected to exist everywhere. We believe that perhaps a new form of regional organisation of agriculture and smaller industries could save a lot of trouble and clean up some acts. There is a lot of regional grocery-shopping going on already in this country. We think we could work on that. We believe that the approach to the problem should perhaps be much more creative -- more daring, appealing, avant-garde.
An idea that recurred in all of our discussions is `recreational' ecology. You might imagine a sort of ecological Madurodam (this miniature reproduction of the Dutch landscape and built environment is a popular tourist attraction -- ed.) We need to teach people what the earth is and how it works.
Our belief is that tourism will slow down gradually. That is probably going to solve part of the transport problem, meaning that people are going to invest money to have paradise in their house. This may be an important factor for governments to take into account in urban planning, transport planning and environmental planning itself. We are almost convinced of the existence of something we call humanitarian ecology, meaning that products coming from other countries will need to have a local label not only about how they are produced, but by whom and under what circumstances. This could ultimately mean bring back part of lowest-price production to our countries. We could create this idea of regional economies.
We do not have enough data about innovations and inventions. There is a tremendous problem today in industry and in design: we do not know exactly how far we can clean up our act. We said to the Ministry that a data bank must be set up. We need it desperately and it should be updated daily.
Elegant ecology is just a little note saying that we cannot continue to have grey recycled paper with green print and that it is important to put this whole discussion on a different level. As soon as we realise that ecology is also economy, things will go more rapidly, as always with this consumer-driven society.
And something I cannot really comment on in depth, but which I found really fascinating, is that in most of our get-togethers with people, the idea of magic was involved. Think of magic, especially for kids, but for the rest of us, too, because we all still are kids. |
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url: DOORS OF PERCEPTION editor@doorsofperception.com |