A Tale of a Water Heater, a Typewriter and Two Bank Accounts: Design (-in/g) Translation Across Continents
Paper presented at Lahore Design Summit,
RISD x Beaconhouse National University, Pakistan
March 7-9, 2024.
RISD x Beaconhouse National University, Pakistan
March 7-9, 2024.
The 1970s witnessed an unprecedented flow of ideas, people, objects and goods from the Global North to the Global South. As newly independent states in the Global South searched to rebuild their statehoods and infrastructures, they reached out to international partners. Foreign aid often materialised through concrete building projects in healthcare, education, housing and agriculture, all of which had to be designed. However, it was not just the final building that had to be designed, but the entire process of getting a myriad of objects on-site, transported across thousands of kilometres, managed by international teams and facilitated (and hindered) by heaps of paperwork. Through micro-histories of auxiliary (and generally overlooked) objects, the talk charts the often-invisible histories behind transnational design ventures. It is particularly interested in the errors, margins, and contingencies that become apparent in the moments of crisis. What happens when an instrument of bureaucratic control is mistaken? How to accommodate risks and account for the contingencies in global design projects? What happens with implicit power structures when things are (mis-) placed? By tracing the tales and trails of three bureaucratic objects, the talk explores the grey zones of potentialities created by designs in/as translation.