Ross Honeywill

CULTURAL RENAISSANCE  IN A NEO-MODERN WORLD

Look around. We live in a designed world and a world of designers— graphic design, interior design, garden design, architecture, and industrial design. From mobile phones to motorways, billboards to office towers, t-shirts to airports, design has an impact on how we understand and experience the world.

Design directly touches the human mind and the human spirit. It springs from a passion for more beauty in an increasingly ugly world, and so it is that design has assumed a dominant place in the hearts and aesthetic minds of an influential band known as the new economic order (NEOs).

Australia’s 4 million NEOs and America’s 59 million NEOs favour design, beauty, aesthetics creativity and imagination ahead of function, features, price, deals and discounts. They spend more, earn more, read more, know more, are better educated, collect more art, dominate tertiary consumption and use design as an expression of desire.

In the trend of design exemplifying desire, Apple’s iPod has become the new I Ching. This ancient Chinese philosophy encompassed ‘the dynamic balance of opposites, the evolution of events, and an acceptance of the inevitability of change’. What better description could there be for the piece of design that is an archetype of the revolution of the music industry and a symbol of its intersection with consumer electronics and the Information Age? The iPad is a product that is beyond product definition. It is a leitmotif for NEOs.

Functional products that are also beautiful enhance our life. Virginia Postrel, in her book The Substance of Style, describes this change as ‘design moving from the abstract and ideological — “this is good design” — to the personal and the emotional — “I like that.”’

NEOs are less passionate about possessions than their socially conservative cousins known as Traditionals. NEOs desire experiences which recognise that there is life beyond functionality: that tertiary experiences matter more than things, that ideas and concepts can be captured without names, that not everything that has value can be owned and produced by a corporation.

NEOs have been social influencers for much of the past century, but they emerged as a commercial, social and political force in 1991 with the birth of the Information Age, when $US112b was spent on machines to gather, process and distribute information, well ahead of the $US107b spent on machines to make and move physical objects. In this decidedly postmodern world, NEOs took center stage.

Ten years on, the brutalism of 911 reasserted concrete truths abandoned by postmodernity, but those reasserted truths came back in a different shape. They exhibited neither the ephemeral subjectivity of postmodernism nor the structural formalism of modernity. Instead, what surfaced was the post-structural, self-defining world of neo-modernism.

Almost everyone has a different idea of what postmodernism is supposed to be. For some, it begins with John Cage, Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg and conceptual art. Unquestionably, postmodernism can legitimately be seen as a rejection of the purism, the rules and the certainty of modernism. Modernism was characterized by a central, mainstream culture, separated from popular culture, defended and explained by authority figures. With postmodernism came pluralism in art, criticism and philosophy; a cultural framework in which every individual became an authority, personally interpreting the meaning of art, literature, music and design.

American philosopher Richard Rorty, who sadly died in 2007, argued that revolutionary achievements in the arts or science typically occur when someone realizes that two or more vocabularies interfere with each other, and a new vocabulary is necessarily created to replace them both. With the advent of 911, we witnessed the terminal clash of conceptual postmodernism and concrete modernism, and both were replaced by the vocabulary of neo-modernism.

Neo-modernism eschews both antecedents. It is the new artistic, philosophical and economic vocabulary, the social compass of the NEOs. This is where products and functional brands carry vastly less value than the symbols that have risen in their place — the experience and discretionary choice.

NEO behavior is based not on a desire for things alone, but on the unique personal meaning of things to each individual consumer. Swiss jeweler Otto Kunsli created a matte-black rubber bracelet titled Gold Makes You Blind. The bracelet has, under its black rubber exterior, a secret cache of pure gold. Only the wearer, and those in the know, are aware there is gold beneath the matt rubber. This is inconspicuous consumption in the extreme. This is the tertiary consumption of neo-modernism where symbols and passwords outrank the mere objectivity of things.

Imagination, creativity and desire combine at the heart of this social and economic transformation, where tertiary consumption enters the realms of ethics and principles, where a rewarding experience is filled with rich information and exciting secrets; where concrete reality has returned in a self defining, creative framework that looks nothing like either modernism or postmodernism.

In the neo-modernist world, personal productivity has become more relevant than the mass production of goods and the delivery of basic services. In this NEO economy, objects keep their practical utility but also convert into signs or symbols of meaning. Objects are transformed into symbols that convey messages, not just about themselves but also about the people who value them, the people who consume them. They become symbols of desire.

So, NEOs have moved on — they are deeply engaged with experiences and meanings. How things look and feel outrank functionality.

But how does this play out in everyday life, in a neo-modern world?

The first step for information-hungry NEOs is usually to tap into the wellsprings of knowledge by buying specialist books. NEOs are four times more likely, for example, to purchase quality design and lifestyle magazines than non-NEOs, and this growing interest of NEOs has fuelled the growth in this sector of the magazine industry.

In the year 2000, five new titles were launched in this magazine sector in Australia, and since then the total number has soared past twenty-five.

The impact of this change on how we live, work, and play will be profound. Currently, only around 3 per cent of the population choose an architect to design their new home — a small percentage of the overall housing market. But imagine the impact of an increase in demand for quality design. The current housing stock in Australia is valued at something approaching $2,000 billion; and each year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, an additional $5 billion is spent on new housing. A rough calculation, therefore, shows that architects account for at least $150m of residential work each year, and that for every 1 per cent of additional residential work undertaken by architects, the impact on the economy is another $50 million.

Brands at the forefront of discretionary spending are beginning to realize that, as Postrel so neatly describes it, the consideration of aesthetics has become too important to be left to the aesthetes. The Starwood Group has been a forerunner in differentiating its hotels through design.

They first did this with the 5-star W Hotel chain that sought out individually distinctive buildings that had character and provenance built in. Within their design framework, they then built-in diversity rather than the sameness of the past. Now they’ve taken on the motel experience with their ALOFT brand, planning to roll out 500 roadside and airport motels by 2012. They’re using natural materials and high-tech services to create a ‘designed’ experience at the lower end of the price spectrum, focusing on creating enticing public spaces that draw people out of their rooms. The concrete reality of commerce mixes with the imagination and creative framework of neo-modernity.

‘Luxury is not what something costs,’ says the designer David Rockwell, ‘luxury has more to do with a kind of sensibility and a sense of sophistication. Consumers appreciate smart design more than anything else, and they respond to things that make them feel good’. Well, at least that’s true of NEOs who spend more and travel more.

Cultural tourism is a new reality of the neo-modern world. Events such as the Venice Biennale, the Basel Art Fair, documenta and the Munster Sculpture Project all attract high-spending NEOs as cultural explorers, and provide them with an art trail across central Europe.

The legendary contemporary art festival documenta occurs every five years in the small German town of Kassel and, according to Australian artist, author and academic Peter Hill, operates on a budget of more than $30 million. It is regarded as the pre-eminent art event in the world, is far more curatorially rigorous than say the Venice Biennale, runs for several months and attracts millions of visitors.

Elsewhere, art and design intersect on a grand scale, as in the case of IM Pei’s exquisite East Wing of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Pei is perhaps more famous for his controversial pyramid structure at the Louvre in Paris.

Another example of design meeting art is Frank Gehry’s sculptural masterpiece in the small city of Bilbao in northern Spain. The design he created for the Guggenheim Bilbao, completed in the dying stages of the last millennium, is today hailed as one of the most significant cultural buildings in the world and delivers neo-modern proof positive that design can be harnessed to serve mammon without losing its integrity. The museum was central to the revitalization of the recession-ravaged city of Bilbao. In commercial terms, Gehry’s architecture, the Guggenheim’s art and the far-sighted Basque government, who funded the construction, have proved such an irresistible combination that approximately one million people visit the Guggenheim Bilbao every year, only 17 per cent of whom are locals. This fascination with art and design yields more than $300 million to the local economy, representing the equivalent of almost 5000 jobs. That’s not generated by a new manufacturing plant or huge software office park. That’s all the work of an art museum.

Buildings like Guggenheim and David Walsh’s extraordinary MONA (Museum of Old & New Art) in Hobart, and events like documenta put cities on the global map, are economically robust and are good for tourism and civic pride. As Peter Hill says of art events, they brand a city in relation to its neighbors. ‘Get these things right and you create jobs, and people want to move to your city to fill those jobs and support your housing market.’

The design wave is also reaching our otherwise functional airlines. Important parts of the future flying experience, dominated as it is by NEOs, whether for business or leisure, are being curated for Qantas by leading designers, but are being driven by a clear business and marketing strategy to attract, engage, and retain valuable NEOs. In a forward-thinking move, Qantas has given responsibility to Recaro for the complete redesign of seats in their new economy-class cabins. Recaro is legendary for designing perfect precision seats for Formula 1 cars. Marc Newson, the iconoclastic Australian designer, has designed the new Qantas business-class beds, and has been instrumental in redefining the concept of an airline lounge from one of traditional comfort and function to one of visual and emotional stimulation, rewarding the traveler with the sought after treasured experience.

It is no longer enough to have a lounge with chairs, work desks, power points and coffee machines. NEOs will assume that this kind of functionality is present and is the best an airline can do; it will merely be a hygiene factor in their spending decisions. Their deciding vote will be cast through an emotional connection with a positive and uplifting experience. Design will be the key that unlocks this vote because design can make connections at the symbolic and aesthetic level that are entirely and uniquely personal. And where else than in an impersonal international airport is feeling like a valued and understood individual more important?.

Design inhabits every category of our lives. Every time we walk down a city street we are surrounded by design decisions: some are beautiful, some not. Our computers are designed, as are our iPhones; our televisions; our knives and forks; our wine glasses; the label on our wine bottle; our cars; our plane seats; our shoes; even, sadly, our pets. In the world of modernism, design was largely of a functional and industrial nature, with only the fortunate few enjoying the beauty of an architect-designed interior living space. In the postmodern world, design was deconstructed, became transient as it was freed from the constraint of the modernist grid and the stricture of form following function.

Design is, in the neo-modern world, coming out of the straightjacket of modernism and the anything-goes indulgence of postmodernity as NEOs, yearning for balance, emotional experiences and beauty, are insisting on it in every aspect of their lives. More and more consumers can afford it, and even those who can’t afford to invest in a new architect-designed home will increasingly experience the pleasure of design in airline lounges, on planes, in hotels and restaurants, and in their pockets as they listen to their favorite music being played on the symbol of the new design aesthetic.

Design is the new Zen.