JOHN CHRIS JONESDRS LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD SPEECH: TRANSCRIPT 20th March 2003
An address by Professor Nigel Cross is followed by the Award presentation by Professor Richard Buchanan, (RB) President of the Design Research Society. (The initial version was transcribed from a voice recording by AR and made clearer and more informative in this second version by jcj ) (RB HANDS AWARD TO JOHN CHRIS JONES) DB Congratulations and appreciation on behalf of the Society.
(Audience Laughter) It would have to be! (overheard comment of Bruce Archer, laughing) RB Would you like to make a comment to the group?
AUDIENCE APPLAUSE I am very struck that this is transparent… although it is very heavy... its poetry is intangible. People often ask me - what do you design?... expecting me to say nothing. And I feel annoyed at the question because I design... well... designing methods, really ...or designing situations in which good processes can happen. We are all getting acquainted with this now, I think... and how difficult it is to explain to others what we do. But you recognise, in making this piece, that I value the intangible (along with the real of course). So: thank you very much for this... a nicer thing I could not have imagined... that someone could have thought up... for such an occasion. I have a few notes here. Nigel said I don't need to prepare a speech... but I come from Wales where we have so much of the gift of the gab that I can't possibly resist. AUDIENCE LAUGHTER. I thought I'd first make, briefly, ...a mention of ...(pause)...a similar event that happened to me sometime ago, when they asked me for a CV… I hate writing CV's so I asked myself... ‘how can I transform this writing of a CV into being not an egoistic process? How could that be done?’ Then it struck me (after some thought) that it could be made COLLECTIVE... in that what I've done has been with other people... it couldn't be done alone… Similarly, everything everyone else has done is done with other people.) We are brought up in a kind of a-social society that pretends we are independent - but in fact we can do nothing without each other. So I wrote for that occasion, and I will read a little bit of it for this, a COLLECTIVE CV: It's about the people I encountered, or who encountered me, and helped me very much during my life. It's in alphabetical order and it will take a little while… but it can be read as a poem. You won’t know all the names, although some of them are present... and some of them have... died, I’m afraid… Anyway it starts off with letter A, of course. I have only ticked the ones to do with design - otherwise it would be too long. I will omit those to do with poetry, and plays, and other things that I got involved with after design methods. The first name is... Alan Welford... (then others that I won’t read). Then: Alan Worsley; Alec Robertson;... Andrew J King (who I hoped was going to be here); Annetta Pedretti; Arturo Montague; Celia Bird; Charles Fluerscheim; Chris Baelus; Chris Crickmay; Chris Goodwin (there are a lot of Chris’s in this)... Chris Rivlin; Claire Mitchell (Tom Mitchell’s wife); Daniel Weil (who was professor here, of Industrial Design); Denis O’Brien (there he is); Denis Thornley (who, I have recently heard, has died... he was co-editor of the 1962 conference proceedings along with myself); Donald Broadbent (who has also died I’m afraid, quite a while ago); Feichin O’Doherty – Monsignor Feichin O’Doherty (who wrote what to me is the most interesting paper in that book. He also has died... ); Fred Scott (many people here will remember him, I think); Geoff Hollister; Hans Haenlin; Marie Haenlin (where is Hans sitting?..- do you remember the play Marie and her brothers were involved in? Hans says yes);... Harry West; Hiroshi Arai (who invited me to Japan, ages ago); Hywel Murrell; Ian Hughes; Jack Howe (we were talking about him at dinner); James Powell (he and Nigel Cross are I suppose the most prominent ex-students of that course);... J.Baldwin (who wrote an exceptionally nice review of my book in the Whole Earth Catalogue); John Blake (who edited Design); John Cage (who influenced me greatly); John Cox; John Holden (he was Principal of the Regional College of Art in Manchester); John Page (he was the Chairman of the committee which set up the 1962 Design Methods Conference); John Thackara, Jorge Glusberg; Jorge Villa-Ortiz; Kay Moon; Ken Baynes (many people will remember him I think); Kenneth Brayshaw; Leslie Huggard; Leslie Saxon; Michael Coombs; Michael Farr (he has died also - he was the editor of Design who comissioned many articles from both Bruce Archer and myself); Miguel Angel Roca; (and now my family are listed here); Nigel Cross; Nigel Gough; Olof Ribbing; Otto Edholm (prominent in the early days of the Ergonomics Research Society); Paul Oliver of the Architectural Association);... Peter Slann (he was the co-initiator of the 1962 conference with me - if anyone knows where Peter Slann is I would be very glad to be put in touch with him);... Phil Roberts (who was I think teaching here); Philip Newman (who invited me to teach at his design course in Antwerp); Pierre Goumain (where is he?...ah over there ..yes); Ray Gray; Ray Howarth; Reg Talbot (I am sorry he is not here); Robin Roy; Robert Jungk; Roger Coleman; R M Kay (with whom I worked at Metrovick/AEI in Manchester); Robert Adams (the sculptor, who introduced me to art); Simon Nicholson (who has also died - he was with Nigel and I at the Open University); Sydney Spedding (who also taught me sculpture); Timothy Emlyn Jones (many people here will know him, I think); Tom Mitchell (many will know him also); Tom Regan; Tudor Rickards; and Vic Goevaerts (who gave me freedom to teach design as if it were art, in Antwerp, for over twenty years) ... *(Since this speech I have added other design names to this CV. You can read the complete list at http://softopia.demon.co.uk/2.2/collective_cv_names.html and descriptions of what they did at http://softopia.demon.co.uk/2.2/collecvtive_cv.html ) .. But that is looking to the past, which is not my metier, really… I prefer to look to the future... I was thinking that this meeting could easily get to be much like Volume 12 of Marcel Proust's 'Remembrance of Things Past'... those who have read it will know that the 11 volumes go through the history of a number of people… then they all meet as doddering old figures, who can't recognise each other in the final volume... (Audience laughter)... Anyway, let's go to the future. From my point of view the future of design has two aspects: Firstly, a question: will designing be done by designers, or will it actually be done by everyone? I think it is the second answer.... in the end it will be done by everyone - in conjunction with computer programs to represent the rational or logical part of what we are able to do ourselves, now, as professionals. Yes, I think the future evolution will go in that strange direction, for which we are very unready at present… But there is also another question: 'the design of the future'... (instead of 'the future of design'). I was having meal the other day with John Page (who as I have said was the Chairman of the Committee that organised the 1962 Conference on Design Methods. He's been active all his life in... climate change… and solar energy… in relation to regional planning and building design… and he is internationally recognised for his realism and his clear-headed vision of these topics). I sent him a draft of something which appears in my digital diary… *(See http://www.softopia.demon.co.uk/2.2/digital_diary_04.02.04.html ) and he sent it back with comments which included this question: 'How do we learn to become ecologically viable human societies?'... and those words resonated in my mind, as his words often do... He is a person whose example I have followed all my life. He was a fellow student at Cambridge. And then he found jobs for us both in the Festival of Britain... He has influenced me from my earliest days, and now he is doing so again… So now, as people, really (rather than as professionals - worried about our reputations, and the rules of our professions - that sometimes get in the way of doing the right thing…) let us end with thinking of ourselves… (pause)... 'as people'... and give ourselves hearty congratulations that we are here! Thank you. AUDIENCE APPLAUSE.
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