This is: Anne Grave

Good is Not Good Enough, The Rise of the Responsive Designer

Written by Andre Sanchez Montoya 

 As designers we need to face the hard truth, our designs, even when they are good, they might be paternalistic at best.

Truthfully, it may not be our onset intention as we operate in an industry that is client driven where our design processes are shortened or curtailed by the reality of our projects. So how can we navigate this dilemma - where we know the potential of design can result in societal shifts but are we asking “for whom” often enough? And how to do so in our market where our designs are driven by the needs of the client footing the bill?

From gentrification in new urban planning to the uncovering racial bias in facial recognition machine learning – some of our “design solutions” fail to meet the moment of a vocal demand for intersectional environmental and social justice. So, how do we get there? How do we keep our intentions to use design as a tool for systematic change?

First, self-reflection as a designer is key, as our design intentions must be examined, especially when our designs our not for the communities we personally come from.

To help frame this reflection, researchers Adam Thorpe and Lorraine Gamman talk about the rise and the importance of the responsive designer in the contemporary landscape in their article, “Design with society: why socially responsive design is good enough”:

“Responsive design is delivered with, by, and for designers working alongside other actors within the community of the project. Designers and actors of co-design are subject to compromise, viewed not as a shortcoming of co-design but a condition of it.”

“This approach to designing makes designers responsive rather than responsible in terms of the way they engage with and deliver social, political, and ethical objectives through design and that this is good enough”

In this context, we are seeing the role of the designer merge more and more with that of a cultural anthropologist, that a good enough designer is not only skilled in creative processes and iterations but also has to be adept to social and cultural environments, understanding the value of community actors. 

With Thrope and Gamman’s research in mind, I asked cultural anthropologist Anne Grave to unfold her unique position within the global Danish architecture firm Henning Larsen and how she sees the inherit value in the anthropological approach in the architectural design process.

Anthropology is no longer pinned to the ethnographic frames of case studies with isolated indigenous groups in New Guinea or South Sudan. An academic journey that blended anthropological, sociological, and urban studies brough Grave into the realm of design in the urban context.

Grave highlights,

 “Those 2 years in the beginning of my degree laid the theoretical framework that I still work with in my everyday life in understanding the networks, understanding the dynamics of people, however it was very retrospective in the theoretical frame”

 “The ability to understand human behavior within an urban context and the cross pollination of design and human interaction – that you won’t find a component that stands alone. Design only lives by the interactions of humans – it was very inspiring to me”

 “It’s not an everyday basis that I use my anthropological googles, but it is the backbone of what I do and the perspective I look through, and I think now working in a studio like this, which is not only large scale in a Danish context but also has a global outreach it has to be an imperative in the way we work, that we work interdisciplinarily and with different methods. 

And you also posed a question of where did it ‘click’ between architecture and anthropology and I am not sure if it’s clicked yet but I think we are getting there  And we are getting there in the sense that the idea, the overall idea that is within the ethnographic approach or method is compelling for a lot of my colleagues and is something that is being integrated more and more into our projects.”

Grave talked about how curiosity is the spark within Henning Larsen and the driving factor in creating designs with social context. Thrope and Gamman list that what pushes a designer into the good enough” criteria is the involvement of the user - that seeing the community as an asset in the design process helps shape the final product into something that has more impact and a stronger resiliency.

When I asked Anne for insight into where the momentum towards human centered design is coming from, she offered this insight,

“You ask ‘why now?’ - I think it has been a movement in the sector and within the industry – the awareness of what anthropology is has grown and architects have realized that the final product will be much better when the process has been cross disciplinary.

And my colleagues are willing to listen to this perspective – to be provoked and challenged by these new perspectives”

Grave mentions that when she gets to put on her “anthropology goggles” she finds herself working with the future end users of a potential building or masterplan, especially when a project is in a different place geographically and culturally. The insight’s, grounded in her ethnographic techniques to collect observations and data, provide the design teams and architects valuable design parameters in project competitions. 

“From a distance, we are trying to understand the cultural context we’re competing in, and we are working to convince the client and the end users of our designs and the end users are not 2020 end users, the time frame for projects is ten, twenty years ahead – and nobody knows the future but we can do the best we can - and in order to understand that future we need to understand the challenges, drive, the different development paths that are currently happening in that local context.” 

In line with the divide between a responsive social informed designer and a top-down responsible designer, Grave notes that the true value in design does not come with building or designing on assumptions of what is best for the end user,

“The added value of design - it is not the design in itself but it is what it can do in a broader perspective.

And to go back to this idea of the responsible versus the responsive design - I think we need to be able to do both. There is this aspect of design where it is about the aesthetics but it is also about understanding the social dynamics of that specific space. 

That’s when design becomes interesting, it is when it is more than mere function and taps into specific overall political and social discourses within a society” 

This final point by Grave really sticks, as yes - we need the buildings of the future to be built with the expertise that responsible design provokes from its ivory tower of education and professionalism - but it’s beauty, charm, and timelessness comes from its ability to stay rooted in its community and social context. 

Framing this debate between responsive vs responsible approaches, paternal versus maternal design philosophies, - anthropologists and other social scientists help designers further their knowledge and techniques in human centered design through their unique lense in observing human networks and behavior and being able to qualify their findings.  This rise in socially aware approaches offers new findings for designers to actively avoid socially detached designs by saying - good is not good enough.