Brancusi, Mondrian, Shiro Kuramata, Le Corbusier, Martin Margiela are people I respect who have dealt with their times and society, and whose fruits of deep reflective contemplation, thoughts and questions seen through the concept of art and design, have been nourishing my life. And it is true that I think about “what is design” at all times although I am not able to express it in simple words.
Reflecting back on the design conference, I feel that there was far too less time to thoroughly discuss and come to some kind of a conclusion. However, I felt the significance of people of different fields and approaches gathering together in the same place to define and share the problems of design, setting up strategy for the future and discussing honestly based on our values with the premise of the awareness of the issues facing our times. I felt the certainty of meeting face to face, looking into each other’s eyes, listening to the other’s voice transmitted as wave motion vibrating the eardrums, the transmitted information becoming memory. With the advance of science, we have flexibly accepted the developments in the means of communication. However, what has been lost, or the negative aspects of this development, such as the deterioration of the quality of communication or the change in mental structures, have not been much discussed. Once again, I realized that a new age has come where the importance of direct involvement with people has become re-recognized.
