A design exhibition in New York's Museum of Modern Art has attracted global critical attention, writes Haydn Shaughnessy

HUMANS AND companies need to go beyond adaptability if they are to prosper in today's changing technological and economic climate, according to Paola Antonelli, curator of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York's latest design exhibition, Design and the Elastic Mind.

The exhibition, which ended last week, has garnered critical attention from across the globe because of its challenging contention that we need to do more than rely on our customary Darwinian competitiveness in order to succeed.

For Antonelli a key change we will have to make is to adopt the elasticity of mind which, she says typifies, the design profession. "Design has always been very elastic," she says, by which she seems to mean an openness to what's novel but also an ability to interpret broad sweeps of change and render them into useful information, objects or services.

"There are so many big issues, wireless technology, nanotechnology, bioengineering, environmental change, so many big issues that designers bring home to us," she says, adding that translating big issues into every day experiences is the new purpose of design.

"People don't think of design as pervading our lives," says Antonelli, "but there are many things that people need to understand about design and how it influences our lives. Take something as common as the cash machine. The relationship between people, money, the ATM, is a designed environment."

Her contention and the motivation for the exhibition is that we are undergoing fundamental changes in what we know and what we can create. Those larger possibilities, that dwarf changes in how we relate through money, will be mediated by design, making designers the single most important influence in how we experience change.

Antonelli, developed the exhibition out of a series of workshops attended by scientists and designers. She argues that science is now moving into areas that are unprecedented in the opportunities they open up, particularly in the shape of nanoscience.

"Nanoscience puts the scientist in a new position," she says "of asking, what can I make?" Whereas traditionally science has focused on understanding how things work, the nano-scientists role is quite different. Fabrication is inherent in nanoscience.

Antonelli quotes victimless leather as an example of the kind of blue-sky productivity and design that this is leading to. The exhibition includes victimless leather as an example. "The leather is grown from the stem cells of mice," she says. "It is alive and it grows. And it shows in a very clear way the revolution in bioengineering. The exhibit was microscopic but it grew."

These new possibilities have led to a growing awareness among nano-scientists that they need to draw on design skills in order to get the science right. They are now fabricators as much as they are investigators.

Paul Rothemund from the California Institute of Technology illustrates this further with an exhibition of DNA origami. Rothemund uses short DNA strands to "staple" long DNA strands into origami shapes. The difference between this and regular hand-folded origami though is that 50 billion Rothemund shapes can float in a drop of water.

At the same time designers are looking at the nano-phenomenon and realising that they no longer need to rely on fabrication to realise their visions. They too can grow objects.

An example is an exhibit from New York architects/artists Aranda/Lasch Rules of Six which uses 3-D software to simulate self-assembly of modular components in a wall relief.

Designers are also looking at biological processes for inspiration. To create his bone furniture, Dutch designer Joris Laarman used 3-D optimisation software that mimics biological growth. The result is a design where the density of the material used in the chair is optimised for the stresses it is likely to undergo.

Antonelli has attempted to broaden our understanding of change not only by bringing together designs that draw on biological metaphors, coupling these to new computing algorithms and visualisation techniques. She has tried to use the occasion to broaden our awareness of the changes we are encountering daily.

"Our rapport with the mainstays of our existence, time, space and the physical nature of objects has changed," she writes in the exhibition catalogue.

Individuality is also no longer defined by physical space. We don't need room like we used to, she says. We can be quite comfortable in a crowded subway train playing music on an iPod.

With virtual worlds we are on the brink of, for example, the manifestation of teleporting so detached have we become from our physical needs.

By collecting examples of recent changes in one place the MoMA exhibition makes a powerful statement about the extent of change we are experiencing and the role of design in bringing it home to us. Don't these changes create new human needs that, perhaps, corporate Europe and America might be slow to realise?

Yes and No. Yes we are creating more human needs but because of the Internet and continuous connectivity those needs are very quickly voiced. What's important, says Antonelli, is for companies to listen to the voice of the public.

And she might have added to develop the kinds of designs that reflect the momentous nature of change.