Domus Academy: Prototyping Ideas

Ideas are not Platonic forms, John Dewey said. Ideas are plans for action. They are tools we use to adapt to the environment, and to adapt the environment to us.

When we talk about design, we often give ‘form’ pride of place. We often think that ‘form’ is more important than anything else that goes in the making of a good product. But design is much more than form. Design is primarily a good idea. And if you pay attention to it, every great designer crafts ideas to design well. Dieter Rams did not frame his 10 Principles of Good Design after the fact. His way of designing, and his way of thinking, become one.

Framing ideas is very hard, but is critical to good design. This is why Domus Academy decided to explore the ways in which good ideas can be designed with a series of events called PROTOTYPING IDEAS. The goal of the series is twofold. On the one hand, it is a research avenue into a burgeoning field of design, the design of strategic ideas. On the other, it is to harness the enormous creative energy of the school to determine the next steps of its intellectual development. The Series events is open to all members of the Domus community. Its task is to turn ideas into plans for action, into tools, that is, with which to tweak the world in the right direction, one good design at a time.

Ours is an ambitious endeavor. The goal of the Series is in fact to bring leading lights in the field of design to interact with students and faculty to frame new ways of doing design in the XXI Century. The outcome is completely open, and all parties involved have a concrete chance of contributing to it, particularly our remarkable student- body. Our students come from incredibly diverse cultural backgrounds spanning most nationalities on the planet. Their contribution is especially welcome in a world struggling daily to come together as one global community. In a very concrete way, Domus Academy is itself a scaled prototype of how to give positive outcomes to that struggle. The events in the Series will be comprised of plenary lectures, informal talks, and busy worktables where concrete design ideas will be sketched and prototyped. These prototypes will then be tested in the following moths during the Workshops that Domus Academy stages with the contribution of leading companies in several design-driven industries.