The Return of Culture and the Return of Design (I)

one. Culture and design

Culture has always been a topic of concern in the design community. I think this may be due to the inextricable link between design and culture. What kind of connection? Design embodies the spiritual will of human beings in creations, and specifically designs people’s material ways of life through creation, which is the carrier of culture. The spiritual level, behavioral level, system level, and artifact level of all cultures will eventually be reflected in a certain kind of people's way of life, that is, embodied at the level of specific people. Therefore, while design creates a new material lifestyle for people, it is actually creating a new culture.

To understand culture in this sense, we can say that culture is life and culture is human.

Since design is creating a new culture, due to the continuity of culture, it is necessary to find the basis for creation from the cultural tradition. This may be one of the sources of design inspiration and the motivation for designers to care about culture.

From this perspective, how should we look at culture?

When it comes to culture, we all seem to face the same object, but different observers should have different conclusions because of different perspectives and motivations, and get different inspiration from them. And when we look for cultural enlightenment in the discussion of design and culture; when we listen to the designer's discourse on culture; when we look for a unique experience in a design that is said to embody a unique understanding of culture. At the time, we always seem to have the same result. It is the concrete ideas of the sturdy predecessors, the artifacts created by the predecessors, some kind of system in history, customs, and some design symbols that have simply been converted into this.

We should have a unique perspective of the designer.

Different cultural researchers have a common historical mission under different specific purposes, that is, for the development and progress of culture. It is in the eyes of development that we see culture, which allows us to link historical cultural phenomena to a system embodying connection and development under the clue of “development”. Only by looking at culture from the perspective of development can we reflect the development of culture in our practice, instead of merely satisfying the understanding of the tradition or even simply applying it and copying it. Only under the cues of a certain concept of development, specific cultural and historical phenomena can give different insights to different people who pay attention to culture.

Then, as a designer, what kind of development should be used to watch the culture?

Culture is life. Designing and creating specific artifacts that do not exist, embodies people’s different understandings and attitudes towards life. At the same time of embodying such spiritual factors, they set people’s daily behaviors through the presence of specific artifacts, thus causing changes in people’s lifestyles. It can be said that the evolution of culture was actually carried out through intentional or unintentional "design".

The center of culture is people. Both the development of culture itself and the development of design itself also have a problem of judging criteria and where to develop, that is, the ultimate value of development. This ultimate value can only be human, human development.

Based on this understanding, we can look at the development of culture to find such a main line: the development of culture is the continuous understanding of the self-developed self in practice, and the process of caring for one's own practice with this understanding of self. This kind of self-care for the people is reflected in people's "design" of their own way of life and production methods.

What is the significance to our design practice of viewing culture with such cultural development?

First of all, such a development concept embodies the role of design as a subjective factor of human beings in cultural development, and reflects the responsibility of design creation for cultural development.

The development of human society is based on objective material and is based on the understanding and transformation of the objective world. Therefore, the cultural development of human society reflects the objective regularity. However, this objective regularity is reflected by and can only be achieved through human activities that have subjective consciousness.

Design as a manifestation of the subjective will of man, based on the understanding of the factors of the objective world, on the one hand, derives from the scientific and productive practices of human beings; on the other hand, based on the understanding of human factors, that is, the material and spiritual aspects of human beings. Understanding of needs and understanding of the relationship between people and the environment. Through the understanding of both things and people, the design then embodies this understanding in a specific creation, that is, the human will is returned to practice in a corresponding manner.

This process embodies the same mechanism of design and cultural development. Culture is constantly evolving and embodying different styles through the conscious or unconscious design of the world in which one lives. Looking at the culture to be treated with this development has created a common language between culture and design, which is more in line with the purpose of drawing nutrition from the culture; the role of design in cultural development is viewed through this development. By being embodied, we can better reflect the development of culture in our design - in line with the development of historical logic - from practice to practice.

Second, this concept of development reflects the consistency between the ultimate value of design and the ultimate value of culture.

We say that design is creating a new lifestyle, but design is not created out of thin air. Any change in lifestyle has its own deep ideological and spiritual factors. This spiritual factor comes from people's practice and is determined by the human understanding of themselves. Therefore, design plays such a role - to embody people's spiritual pursuits in creations, and to pursue people's pursuit of matter as a unique form rich in culture, art, and rationality. This is precisely the specific role of cultural development in the design of this cultural phenomenon. This cultural role of design reflects the consistency between its pursuit of value and cultural development, that is, for the development and improvement of man.

Thus, when we look at culture with this concept of development—returning to self-knowledge from practice and taking care of practice with human self-knowledge—it is best to see how culture affects design and how design influences culture. Thus, when we look at the future development of culture with such development, we also see the future of design.

Looking at the culture to be seen in such a development can enable us to have a clear idea and a clear purpose when we look at culture - how culture is developed, where is the direction of cultural development, what is the relationship between design and culture, and the direction of design and development? where is it. With such a basic perspective, it is possible to obtain from culture the enlightenment that is truly beneficial to design, consistent with the ultimate value of design, so as not to lose judgment in the numerous cultural phenomena and not be disturbed by secondary and one-sided things. The direction of design. Looking at the culture to be seen in this kind of development, culture is not a rigid tradition but a living reality. In the realistic design, the independent thinking of the subject can be embodied instead of the traditional cultural symbols.

two. The return of culture

The evolution and development of culture is the process of returning from the practice of recognizing and transforming nature to the evolving human self.

Human practice follows such a process of reincarnation: experience and theory are acquired from practice, and experience and theory are used to guide new practice. In this process, mankind constantly recognizes and transforms the objective world, and eventually returns to the understanding and transformation of man himself. Without this practice of returning care, there will be no ultimate value of development. Its theoretical system and practical behavior will all become manifestations of simple physical properties. This will inevitably lead humanity to embark on a humanistic property that is attached to the material world. No return.

It is the human understanding of the self that sets the human form of survival, production, and ultimately guides and embodies the development of human society.

From the practice to the theory and then to the practice of reincarnation, the material foundation of the ever-growing culture is built. The people who return from this kind of reincarnation recognize and transform themselves as cultural superstructure—system and spirit. It is through the spirit and system (that is, self-identification that returns from practice) that human civilization establishes social practice at the material level, and spiritual and institutional progress is the fundamental symbol of human social progress. In other words, the realization and transformation of the object world only realises the value of this practice when it is promoted to the understanding and transformation of the subject itself.

The return from practice to mankind is a force that promotes the development of history. This kind of regression makes people continuously deepen their understanding and transformation of themselves. The perfection and development of man is the perfection and development of society. Every time the return from practice to humans is increasingly awakening human care for the self.

The upper layer of culture always acts on the material aspect of culture—the so-called spirit's counteraction to matter—and it is embodied in the material aspect of culture. Therefore, human care for self begins with self-recognition and transformation in the cultural upper layer, and it must also be reflected in the concern for material practice, so as to conform to objective laws and to reflect the rational development of human beings based on subjective self-awareness.

The specific form of artifacts embodies the spirit and institutional culture of a particular era—that is, human self-care. This manifestation was created in the early days by craftsmen and is an unconscious reflection of the individual's cultural environment in which they live. In modern times, as design becomes the creation activity of human introspection independent of creation, this reflection of culture (self) through creation becomes more and more a conscious subjective behavior. The awakening of this kind of consciousness is the change from practice to the value of human care from the unconscious to the conscious change.

The awakening of design and the return to the human self will prompt humans to consciously view themselves from the object world and promote more rational human creation practices, thus creating a reasonable way of life for us and planning a bright development prospect.