Hyperlinks: design as humane radar

Design is coming closer to us. "Hyperlinks" at the Art Institute of Chicago (to 20 July 2011) curated by Zoe Ryan and Joseph Rosa encompasses a myriad of projects united in their identity as contemporary equivalents to the utopian, socially-driven projects of Corbusier, Constant, Archigram and others. The selection tells us that design is a best friend of our times, there not just in need but also provoking interaction; phenomenological, an artificial augmentation of biology – and above all, a dynamic, customisable tool.

To work this way requires acute 360° perception about human needs and foibles, to counter the impersonal nature of contemporary life. This is design as both humane radar and alternative self, whether the protagonist is an architect, 3d designer or interaction designer.

Keiichi Matsuda's concept of architects as programmers breaks down those distinctions, demanding that solutions are applied not abstract. Open source Processing language software devised by Casey Reas and Ben Fry in 2001, or Stamen's Walking-Papers.org, a site with free geographic data users can edit and update online, personalising locations, has been used for humanitarian relief efforts, like Haiti, and in disenfranchised areas with a real lack of on-the-ground information to help lobby for changes to urban infrastructure.

The selection encompasses the practical ephemeral, for example the on-demand laser spray-painted bike lane, visible even in ambient light (Evan Gant and Alex Tee) and the new multiple object, like Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram's Breeding Tables, whose algorithmic design disregards the standardisation of mass production.

Their metaphorical name embodies the heart of Ryan and Rosa's curatorial agenda, for the influence of biotechnology and biomimicry on designers' experimentations enabled by new modelling software and other digital tools is manifesting itself in works that challenge the homogeneity and immutability of contemporary environments such as Simon Heijdens' Tree. This computer-generated work is projected on walls, giving the effect of leaves fluttering and swirling on the ground that passersby are apt to play with. For the exhibition, the curators commissioned Heijdens to make Shade, a window piece based on a new application for liquid crystals that when charged by an electrical current plays with opacity.

Work by multidisciplinary design trio Troika plumbs the scope of synthetic plant forms while Design Academy Eindhoven graduates Mischer'Traxler use solar energy for making objects. At the hands of some architects and designers, digital breeding is a natural homage to genetic mutation and the power of the computer to morph form, but there again we might come to cherish a chaise or dining table inspired by the sinuous metanarrative of the Batmobile and iconic 1948 La Chaise by the Eames (Hérnan Diaz Alonso).

Architecture traditionally aspires to work at a grand scale, but now in "Hyperlinks" the practitioners featured are able to demonstrate a little, but not nearly enough, of their more socially adaptive capacity. KOL/MAC's PARALing, a spatial coloniser, is surrounded by work of designers like Ross Lovegrove (Alpine Capsule) or work by Jurgen Bey, who takes on the potential symbiosis of urban design, architecture, landscape architecture and product design manifested in Prooff, concepts for temporary work spaces in non-places, with furniture such as the Work Sofas (with a ledge on which to take notes) and Ear Chair (protrusions creating privacy), and the tiny Slow Car that travels at a maximum of 25 miles per hour.

Slow Car is an obvious update of the utopian interchangeability of structures by Constant's New Babylon, not only privileging the car as a place of inhabitation as much as a vehicle, but also a nod in the direction of the much discussed urban nomad. It further evokes the Existenzminimum provoked by homelessness and moreover the cocooning refuge of Laugier's hut. Encompassing easy, humorous reinventions of use as well as more challenging ones, Hyperlinks, one can nonetheless conclude, is about design reborn, framing a unity of biological metaphor and process with a friendly, existential, 'coming home to ourselves' agenda that continues to resonate throughout the emerging transdisciplinary design landscape. Lucy Bullivant