9th Study of Design Fundamentals Seminar “Re-Questioning Rational Order -- Redesigning Closed Communities and Bounded Societies”

We welcomed Ms Yoko Fukao from Osaka University, Graduate School of Language and Culture, Studies in Language and Culture, to give a talk, “Re-Questioning Rational Order — Redesigning Closed Communities and Bounded Societies”. There were about 25 participants for this event. Professor Toru Koga, from Kyushu University, Faculty of Design, gave an account of the seminar.

To clarify things, identify problems, and solve them effectively, perspective and a framework are necessary. Without the framework, there can be no design or academics. However, the more design incorporates science and precision, it tends to follow its own set of rules, shut itself off from the outside, creating closed chambers and getting trapped within. As a result, the design fails because the elements removed from the framework play a decisive role. In design, this kind of paradox is called “wicked problem”.

Ms Yoko Fukao says that the houses and villages on the Loess Plateau have developed along the branches of the river tributaries.

In this place, the individual perspectives and framework for the family, villages, the whole valley has been unframed. The information structure becomes open and universal. This unframing is actualized through “enriched talk” done by people of all sorts of hierarchy.

What is enriched talk? It is a “chat” without any aim and dependent on the attractiveness of the information. Language in meetings and academic papers discuss matters with specific perspectives and frameworks while chatting always relativize and disrupt, making it difficult to achieve a goal.

However, an unframed language has the roots of creativity and self-innovation in a seemingly random manner. Ms Fukao argues that the design should be done in accordance to the unframed talk, in line with the logic, which is enriched unintentionally. Is this possible?

In fact, for the Loess Plateau, the afforestation projects that were planned and implemented with a framework, procedures, and budgets failed. Ms Fukao said that only projects that employed methods rooted in conversation with people could be successful. The people will pass on information and belief voluntarily even after the main leading individuals are gone. Thus, woods and forests can continue to grow.

If the framework that was meant to sustain lives resulted in oppressed lives, the design to counter the “wickness” will be the spontaneous conversation. Only such an approach can bring happiness to people.

At Kyushu University’s Graduate School of Design, Faculty of Design, we are tackling the fundamental theory of design studies with the objective of systematizing design.

Speaker

Yoko Fukao

Yoko Fukao graduated from Osaka University of Foreign Studies in 1985 with a major in the Chinese Language. In 1987, she completed her doctoral studies in Oriental history at Osaka City University. Then she continues with the university as an assistant, subsequently, a lecturer and assistant professor. In 2007, when the university merged with Osaka University, she was appointed an associate professor at the Graduate School of Economics Global Management Course. In 2018, she returned to Osaka University Graduate School of Languages ​​and Cultures, Studies in Language and Society, and was appointed a professor in 2019. In the meantime, she will travel back and forth between the loess plateau in inland China and Japan, to conduct longitudinal studies over 25 years in one village. She has published numerous works, including “What is the decolonization of souls?” (Seitosha); “Global Management of Asia Dust” (Osaka University Print); “The identity of a giant water bug woman who eats a Japanese man”; and “The End of a Frog Man Filling Japanese Society” (Kodansha, aShinsho). She has also jointly authored “Loess Plateau Village-Sound, Space, Society” (Kokon). Furthermore, she has edited “Loess Plateau, people who create and cares about greening – Green Saint” (Fukyousha); “Manchu Formation-Forest Exhaustion and Modern Space Formation” (Nagoya University Press); and “Hong Kong Barricade” (Akashi Shotenn).