
Interview with Bruce Haden
DW: What are you looking forward to most about Design Currency 2010?
BH: The chance to have an open source conversation about design, particularly architecture and city making, with a full range of thoughtful design leaders.
DW: What does the conference theme “Design Currency” mean to you?
BH: Design is often though of as only having "soft" currency - aesthetics being the most common. But, it also has "hard" currency value - the chance to make measurable transformations of our communities and planet.
DW: If design was currency, who would have the most? Who would have the least?
BH: If "Design" is defined in the conventional way as professionalism focussed on the creation of pretty baubles and layered with an often spurious social or green agenda, it is certainly true that the established G7 nations have the fattest wallets with respect to both greenbacks and design currency. One could argue though - as much for the sake of discussion as for any other purpose - that a Brazilian favela dweller is more precisely tuned to design in its sense of self engagement in creating a world to dwell in.
DW: What criteria do you use to evaluate design?
BH: Joy, responsibility, surprise, engagement, endurance, limberness.
Bruce Haden will be a part of the Sustainable Cities panel discussion at Design Currency 2010.