The existential delights of the designer: towards a notion of works

In the notion of design is hidden the notion of designer, just as inside the notion of the created world there is the notion of a creator. Designers tell stories of what they design, how they design, why they design and what it is to design. Along with their personal and existential stories, many designers offer explicit accounts of what it is to work (undertake socially significant tasks) and what it is to produce works (socially and possibly spiritually significant outcomes). These stories, from designers, offer general accounts of the uses of designing as a human project; they also offer insights into the larger possible significance of design as a social activity for an evolving society. As Ettore Sottsass asks: "And what else?". Neither I nor the others [as children] considered ourselves designers, artists, craftsmen, or engineers for the public, and even less in any way distinguished from the public: we were not looking for consumers or observers, nor did we seek any approval or disapproval beyond that we all found in ourselves. Whatever we did was rewarded by the very act of doing it, by the desire to do it; and anything that was done was, after all, part of one extraordinary sphere only: life. Design was life itself: it was the day from dawn to dusk, it was the night-time vigil, the awareness of the world that surrounded us, of its matter, lights, distances, weights, resistances, fragility, use and consumption, birth and death. And what else? (Sottsass, 1973, p. 284).