2005 | ICSID Interdesign Sustainable Rural Transport

Usually hosted by an ICSID (International Council of Societies of Industrial Design [now the World Design Organization] member society, an ICSID Interdesign is a forum in which mid-career designers from different countries and cultures work together with local experts for an intensive two-week period, exploring design issues of national, regional and global importance. Interdesign workshops focus on subjects of international significance and are aimed at providing innovative and appropriate solutions through co-operative problem-solving. Ultimately, these solutions should be implemented to make a real difference to the region in which the Interdesign has taken place. The emphasis is on understanding local cultures and actively engaging local communities in helping to find meaningful, realistic answers.

Overview:

The Interdesign 2005, endorsed by  ICOGRADA (International Council of Graphic Design Associations) and the South African Department of Transport, came about after the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) Design Insitute [closed in 2019] received a request from the North-West provincial government to develop specifications for the building of a donkey cart for specific local uses. This request created an awareness of the challenges involved with rural transport in South Africa, and it was decided that the country could benefit if the broader issue of sustainable non-motorised rural transport in South Africa was addressed by designers. Four teams of designers were created: Animal-drawn Carts, Alternative Modes of Transport, Communication project, and Bicycles and Tricycles (of which I was a member).

During my keynote Address at the LeNS Designing Sustainability for All International Distributed Conference in April 2019 I provide a reflective critique of my experience participating in this project. The relvant except follows:

“IMMERSION & CONNECTION
The first aspect of sustainable design that I would like to explore is the immersion of the designer in a particular context and his or her connection with those he or she is designing sustainable outcomes for. In 2005 I participated in an ICSID Interdesign workshop focused on Sustainable Rural Transport. Led by the SABS Design Institute, in partnership with the South African Department of Transport, it was held over two weeks with about 100 designers and academics flying in from all over the world to explore issues of rural transport in the former apartheid home-land of Bophuthatswana, currently the North West Province. Participants were divided into teams focused on Animal-drawn Carts, Alternative Modes of Transport, Bicycles and Tricycles, and Communication.
The participants were bused into isolated communities where designers would disembark with camera in hand, clicking away, as they documented the lives of rural marginalised South Africans. The bus would then return to our conference venue in an upmarket hotel in Rustenburg to discuss and compare experiences in order to conceptualise solutions to the rural transportation problems we had identified.
I will never forget overhearing a Professor from a European design school exploring one of the participating communities asking, when the typology he was witnessing did not meet his preconceived ideas, “Where is the vil-lage?” After two weeks of furious yoyo design activities, the Interdesign came to an end with many of us aware that the time spent exploring issues of rural transport was insufficient to arrive at anything sustainable.
With two of the Department of Industrial Design’s staff having worked on the bicycle & tricycles and donkey cart teams, a year later we decided to integrate a continuation of the project into our students’ curriculum for the next 2 years. In order to overcome the superficiality of the first workshop we home-stayed with community members from Pitsedisulejang for two weeks with the support of the community’s young and enthusiastic local chief. I was dropped off by bus with 5 students and no other means of transport. This embedded experience proved far more insightful. We ate the food that was locally available, walked where we needed to go, collected water from the communal standpipes and bathed in galvanised tubs at the end of the day. On one of the days we realised that we had forgotten to bring bolts for one of the prototypes, in this experience the lack of rural transport was crystallised with the realisation that this relatively simple task would require a full-day trip on municipal buses to a hardware store and back.
Being hosted by and living with people from the community lead us to develop much deeper relationships with them in comparison to the parachute design approach of the first Interdesign workshop. And even though the time period was similar in duration, being embedded meant that you were less of an outsider, and with your design-ers’ eyes, practically better able to explore the lived-experience of those you were designing with. Additionally, in moments of connection, often over a meal, external designers were able to discuss and compare with our local hosts what seemed to be our completely different worlds. The relationships we built with some of the community mem-bers, were deep enough for me to continue to remain in contact with a few of them, even though I do not believe that the carts, or bicycles we prototyped for them were ever delivered by the Department of Transport. For deep connections with any person or community to be made, designers need to be open for them to emerge, from my ex-perience this requires a deep self-reflection and mindful presence during engagements.
LAY DESIGNERS & LOCAL EXPERTS
The next aspect of sustainable design I will explore is the identification of lay designers or local experts in projects in order to arrive at outcomes that are firstly driven by local enthusiasm, and secondly, amplify existing local actions as opposed to imposing external ideas about what may need to be done. This results in endogenous or localised sus-tainable change.
An example of the importance of lay design happened on our final trip of the extended Interdesign project, which took place in 2008; this time to the community of Dwarsberg. We stayed with a local convenience store own-er, with our time there kicking off with a collective bang at the local annual donkey cart race. Donkey cart owners travelled from all around the area to compete for the coveted trophy. In the hive of activity, as they began to fill up the yard awaiting the beginning of the race, I became immersed in the pride and creativity the local donkey cart owners had for their carts. These were not basic carts, but the ingenious reuse of available resources creatively cus-tomised into South African chariots! This was sustainable rural transport made by lay designers – people without any training in design, but still following a clear design process to meet a need with the resources available to them. In line with Schumacher’s concepts of appropriate technology what was also clear was that much of the manufac-tured design of our cart prototypes needed reconsideration to be able to be maintained locally. We also realised that if we had worked with these donkey cart lay designers right from the outset, we may have had more resilient design outcomes.“

Outcomes: