The Designer, the Designed, Limits, and Emergency Management

A Look at Design, the End of Artifacts, the Limits of Knowledge, and Leaving Plans Unfinished. A NoiseBox Publication.

Note: I first referenced design within an emergency management context in 2016. I resumed the discussion three years later, in 2019, when I started this blog. Design for emergency management was the centerpiece of the first five-post series. As someone actively propagating design for emergency management, I realized I had not yet said a critical word about it and thought I would benefit from doing so. This post is, in general, morbid. There is no graphic violence, horror themes, or imagery. However, there is a reference to the death of designed things and designers and a vague reference to the loss of human life.

The Death of Designed Things

Designed things, also known as artifacts, have a strong sense of death. Designers inscribed it upon them in the designed thing’s form, function, pattern of usage, materials, durability, and style before they end up in a landfill. Designers have less of a sense of death. Their mortality is obscured by their relations, imaginaries, futures, goals, vi…