The challenges of coronavirus may revolutionise production and design, according to a practice-led researcher from UNSW Art & Design.
Dr Guy Keulemans believes the current challenges to offshore production models caused by the coronavirus have the potential to bring about a reinvestment in local manufacturing.
As a designer focused on repair and reuse, a move towards greater sustainability rates high on his list.
“One of the things we see being tested by COVID-19 is globalism and the decades-long agenda for off-shoring manufacturing and production.
"Obviously any near-future changes will happen first with medical products, but I think there may be a renewed interest in critically examining our country’s supply chains and re-investing in local manufacturing.
“This might be a response to address unemployment, or reduce precarious casual employment, or neither, but regardless it would be good news for our designers and craftspeople.”
His own design work explores concepts of transformative repair and reuse, and the environmental impacts of production and consumption.
To focus on transformative repair is to take on “an activist role as a designer”, Dr Keulemans argued.
“I think we need more designers to be activists, and I mean that in the kind of social and political activist sense.
"Transformative repair in that sense isn't just the transformation of the object but the transformation of the system, the society the object exists in.
“A big part of the underlying theoretical framework that I draw from is critical design.
"It's useful because it creates an imperative for a designer to be critical, to not accept the status quo and to actively seek to challenge the damaging institutions and impacts of industry.”
Repair and reuse offers a solution of sorts, he added.
“If we can keep products in function for longer, then we lessen the impact on the planet."
His work calls for a greater focus on design for circular economy where the typical cycle of make, use, dispose is replaced with one of make, use and reuse.
In his new ARC Linkage grant: Designing for sustainability using a transformative repair model, Keulemans will test out the viability of transformative repair in the market.
The project is in partnership with UNSW Art & Design’s Trent Jansen and partner investigators Brian Parkes from JamFactory, Lisa Cahill from Australian Design Centre and Claire Beale from Design Tasmania.
They will aim to help develop a sustainable design economy in Australia.
Keulemans said it will encourage conversations around repair and reuse.
“The model for this has been my own practice, although I'm not the only person doing it, but it's really fun and interesting to introduce these new concepts for repair to existing practitioners."