Here at Mapos, we have a saying. It’s called “Design Matters.” Sure it’s a little biased and completely self-serving. More than a tool to produce tangible objects and buildings, design is increasingly being valued for its creative ability to approach and define complex issues. Understood at multiple dimensions and scales – and in all media – design can transform and affect positive change in every aspect of daily life.

And our favorite crush, Allison Arieff agrees. She puts the design industry – and designers, clients, fabricators, and ultimately all of us ‘consumers’ – to task in rethinking, “what do we actually need?” Well designed objects serve many purposes, not the least of which is the non-stop human necessity to express ourselves and rejoice in things beautiful and true. In this day and age, however, we certainly do need to re-evaluate what we do with our resources, from financial to fossil. As designers, we are in a particularly strategic and yes, suspect, position to cast a light on the design-fabrication-consumption-industrial-complex. Or, as Arieff says,

“At its heart, design is about problem-solving, but it’s also about problem-identifying. Instead of creating a need for things, designers can now focus on responding to things we do need. We may have never been confronted with as many problems as we are today; the blame for them can’t be attributed to designers, but many future solutions can — and will be.”