The Power of Design
The keynote speaker for the first Design for Humanity Summit on June 22nd, 2018, was Randy Fiser, the CEO of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID). Since being named CEO in 2012, Fiser has worked to advance research in and advance the field of interior design, recognizing that design has the ability to impact lives for the better.
The following exerpt is an adapted and abbreviated version of Randy Fiser’s Keynote Address at the Design for Humanity Summit on June 22, 2018, and can be found from the 2018 Design Humanity Yearbook here
“Today we come together as humanitarians and designers to spark new ideas and come up with holistic solutions. We will discuss and engage to identify our synergies, our gaps and how we can collectively act to really change things.
The challenges ahead for both communities are numerous, especially when we think about tackling climate change and resiliency. Displacement due to catastrophic events like hurricanes and tornadoes will increase in the future and we need to focus on how to create a different environment and outcome than we are currently dealing with in our society.
As the design community looks at the impact that design can have on human beings, we tend to focus on three different dimensions.
The first is sustainability, or how we can lessen our impact and footprint on the world. Buildings and the built environment often have a huge impact on climate change events. They are sometimes the cause of global warming. How do we reduce that footprint?
Secondly, we consider health, wellness, and wellbeing to discover how to create supportive spaces that intentionally brings the people we are building for, and their communities, together in a healthy way.
Finally, we look at resiliency in response to the events happening in the world that are beyond our control, particularly in the aftermath of climate disasters. How can we make communities resilient, how can we bring back entire lost populations?
ASID is focused on all three of those dimensions, because we inherently believe the built environment and shelter has a fundamental connection to us as human beings.
When we have crises, whether political unrest or a catastrophic event, such as what’s happening here in the United States at our borders, people lose their most basic needs: shelter, food, water, security and safety. We, as a community, come together to try to figure out how do we support those basic needs, but also to move beyond, up the chain of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
This is really at the heart of humanitarianism — humanitarians’ efforts are critically important to meeting the immediate needs of people who are literally stripped of everything. You save lives through your work, and you make sure people begin a pathway to recovery. When the design community joins this effort, we can bring in fundamentals fundamentals of health, safety, and welfare.
Designers bring together communities and we empathize. We bring out ideas and cultivate them. We do rapid prototyping and iterating to bring out solutions that are better than the ones that we started with. We don’t rely on the single solution, because there is always a way to improve.
We know where we have failed in the past. Let us remember Hurricane Katrina. We knew New Orleans was susceptible to hurricanes. We knew that people would shelter in the Superdome at some point, yet it was not designed in a way to handle the volume of people that were there. We did not prepare, we did not get ahead of the crisis. So what happened there was a cataclysmic.
How do we work together collectively to do better than this? People deserve better from us. How do we get to recovery? How do we think about mitigation? How do we prepare for these inevitable events in the future?
When design and humanitarian efforts come together, beautiful things can happen. That beauty adds dignity to people. Design helps them see the power of their voice, the power of their community, the power of their lives — a power they did not have after a crisis hit.
This event has brought together an amazing audience: people from the United Nations, academia, design sector, and NGOs focusing on humanitarian issues. You are a powerful voice which collectively can come up with designs and solutions and ways of working together. ASID, along with the other design professions and associations, are here to take your ideas and amplify them.”
Learn more about the Design for Humanity Summit II, taking place June 21, 2019 at Fordham University’s McNally Amphitheatre here.
About the IOM — UN Migration
Established in 1951, IOM is the leading inter-governmental organization in the fi eld of migration and works closely with governmental, intergovernmental and non-governmental partners. With 173 member states, a further 8 states holding observer status and offices in over 100 countries, IOM is dedicated to promoting humane and orderly migration for the benefit of all. It does so by providing services and advice to governments and migrants. IOM works to help ensure the orderly and humane management of migration, to promote international cooperation on migration issues, to assist in the search for practical solutions to migration problems and to provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in need, including refugees and internally displaced people
About the IIHA
The Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA) prepares current and future aid workers with the knowledge and skills needed to respond effectively in times of humanitarian crisis and disaster. Our courses are borne of an interdisciplinary curriculum that combines academic theory with the practical experience of seasoned humanitarian professionals. The IIHA also publishes on a wide range of humanitarian topics and regularly hosts a number of events in the New York area, including the annual Humanitarian Blockchain Summit and Design for Humanity Summit.
For media inquiries please contact:
Camille Giacovas
Communications & Research Officer, IIHA
cgiacovas@fordham.edu
Angela Wells
Public Information Officer for the International Organization for Migration’s Department of Operations and Emergencies
awells@iom.int
