From the origins of neon, through a contemporary shop layout, Neon: The Next Generation covers it all: gas, electrical and air supplies, gas burners, vacuum pumps, manifolds, bombarders, bending, pumping, ...
Not all design projects come with squeaky clean ethics. So what happens when social responsibility faces off with recessionary reality?
| Tweet |
By Mary Scoviak
Unless you're exceptionally fortunate, your firm could use a few more RFPs right now. But would you accept on a project on a Holocaust site or one in a country with a poor human rights record to keep the lights on? Would you work on a U.S. project with contractors whose employment practices are suspect to save some jobs on your own staff? Or would you blink?
With the pipeline choked down in many parts of the world, design firm principals have some long hard thinking to do in regards to ethics versus the economy. Consider the situation in Kiev. The Ukranian capital has proposals for 28 hotels in anticipation of the UEFA 2012 soccer championships. That's a lot even in good times.
Most are projects designers would love to tackle, scattered in green enclaves near the city center. One wasn't. It was to be built across the street from Kiev's Babi Yar memorial, the mass grave of some 100,000 Soviet citizens killed by Nazi forces from 1941 to 1943. Although thousands of Communist party members, resistance fights and ethnic Roma are buried there, the victims were predominantly Jewish. Roughly 33,000 Jews were killed in a two-day operation in September 1941 alone. Speaking against the development in comments reported by the news agency, Interfax in late September, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said flatly, “We will never allow it (the development)…this is holy ground.”
But what if the city council resolution supporting the investment plan for the hotels hadn't been leaked to the press? Or what if someone other than Yushchenko had been president?
The hotel would have gone ahead. Operators would have fought for the management contract and someone would have designed it—just like the various companies and firms who buried the rubble of what was once Hitler's Eagle's Nest retreat once and for all under the InterContinental Berchtesgaden in Germany. (Admittedly, the hotel doesn't attempt to sanitize history. In fact, it encourages guests to confront it via a visit to the neighboring Obersalzberg Dokumentation, a permanent Institute of Contemporary History Munich – Berlin exhibition about the history of Obersalzberg and the Nazi dictatorship—a straightforwardly unsettling mirror of the National Socialist party's “central manifestations.” )
I asked one of the designers who worked on that 2006 project how that commission was ethically justifiable. I have no way of knowing how much of the reply was simply convenience and how much true conviction. But the off-the-record rationale was this: The plans for some of history's most appalling atrocities may have been planned at this mountain retreat, but it is not sacred ground like Babi Yar. A bombing by the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Air Force in 1945 virtually razed the site. And all parties agreed from the outset to tell it like it was, however appalling. “We need to acknowledge what happened in this place so that it never happens again,” said the designer. “But we also need to say that we will do something to build a different future.”
These Faustian issues are only going to multiply. And they're not going to be confined to sites of mass tragedies or factories in far-off countries. As recovery continues to takes its own sweet time in coming, U.S. workers have to be more willing to accept conditions that would have had them walking off the job when times were good. At the same time, firms under increasing pressure from client need to get projects in on budget.
So do you look the other way, comforted by the thought that you're getting one person one more paycheck—however small? Or do we, as an industry, create a set of ethical standards that will take “social responsibility” from being a tab on our web sites to a functional—if sometimes challenging—part of our business model. Sanctions are a powerful tool for writing policy, but only if there's industry-wide buy-in. Can you afford to say “no” to any project that has a negative cultural, social or ecological impact?
Designers are facing a lot of tough questions. I'd love to hear your answers. Weigh in, whether on our web site or on LinkedIn or Twitter. Maybe it's time we wrote a code of ethics for the industry—together.
Did you enjoy this article? Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
