“Where do we go from here, when change is the only thing that is constant”, Christoph Boeninger, Auerberg Design

“WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE, WHEN CHANGE IS THE ONLY THING THAT IS CONSTANT”, OCT 23-24, LJUBLJANA
Christoph Boeninger, Founder/Designer, brains4design, Germany

Early in his career, Christoph Boeninger put together a design department for Siemens USA. Later he managed several Siemens design organisations until 2006, when he left Siemens to co-found brains4design in Munich. Today Boeninger works in furniture design. Various of his designs are in the permanent collections of museums in Europe and the USA, like the Aluminium Soest stool, the patented SAX-table for ClassiCon, and the A-bowl and table #28, both of which can be seen at MoMA in New York. He also lectures at various universities and serves as curator of the Haniel Foundation.
One of the major changes over the coming decades, Boeninger asserts, will be the facing of ever-scarcer resources and rising energy prices. Fundamental changes will affect people as individuals and as a society as a whole. And experience shows that the sooner we react to them, the more alternatives we might have, says Boeninger.
He offers that designers could help in creating these alternatives, first as scenarios to help people understand how these changes will affect them and what options they have. This, he says, will require experience and bold new thinking at the same time to create these scenarios.
But perhaps the biggest task is to overcome our experiences, he suggests, to “leave them behind and to reinvent ourselves, stepping into new territory? In this context design has to become political again. Designers must position themselves in the political discussion and address relevant topics.”
A fictive computer game should be designed to eliminate our mental roadblocks, he offers. The game, called “melt!” (image #1), is about controlling a nuclear power plant, similar to gaming software like autopilot (image #2). He maintains a flight simulator is not so different from controlling a power plant – the control engineering of both systems depends solely on physical parameters and interactive communication through a logical and intuitive MMI (image #3).
Playing “melt!” should create awareness for the complexity of nuclear technology without playing down any risks. Thus “melt!” should start a non-political discussion about how technological innovation and design can improve the transparency and security of nuclear power in order to regain trust. “melt!” should also create awareness among designers that design is not just a discipline, castrated by industry and solely adding hollow aesthetics along its marketing-mix strategy.

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