Lecture Series from Design and Spaces Without Borders: Chaos + Surrender in Design

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Given at the 70th Jubileum of the Finnish Institute of Architects and Interior Designers 23.5.2019

Normally, my talk would have been around sustainability and the push for innovation around this subject by taking back control of the plastics waste problem. It’s not that I don’t believe in the importance of circular design or sustainability, they are indeed incredibly necessary topics for today. However, since the theme of this talk series was Design without borders, I began to think, what about our mental borders?

Can you think of the last time you felt succumb to the feeling of powerlessness or the need to surrender to the fates? Perhaps a loss of a loved one, a tragedy in your life, or an undoable mistake?

This is a particularly personal talk for me. I stand here also facing a very turbulent time in my life, faced with grief and loss and a sense of helplessness. As a strategist, and a creative, my world was centered around control. Patterns, models, branding, everything had to be in perfect balance and control for the desired effect. Everything orchestrated and under tight supervision.

When I faced a crisis, I was stripped of my ability to control. Every part of me that wanted to control the damage, made everything worse. I was humbled by the chaos, and am now living in a state of surrender. This experience has revealed to me a new understanding of surrender, and the possibilities therein, of which, I would like to share with you today.

This feeling of powerlessness is all around us in the world we live in today.

We are in a turbulent time, with many upheavals in our human and natural world. Chaos stirred from the environmental backlashes are destabilising our societal infrastructures, and challenging our idea of control over the natural world. Human disconnection, rise of extremism, a threat to our ideas and beliefs are also on the rise, creating chaos and anxiety in the human consciousness. Our human response is also, more control. Satiate our anxiety by more control, control over desires, in single serving sizes, available at the swipe on your phone, 24 hours a day, wanting to reward us for each act of control.

Does this result in less chaos? I would argue, it has perhaps been a deadly combination.

Society has taught us that control is safety whilst death and destruction is to be avoided at all costs. With control, we reduce chaos, we stave off death and decay.

Evolution rewarded control in our species. As much as we venerate Nature, it is also our biggest threat to survival.

What about the natural cycles of death and transformation? Just like the principle of yin yang, where chaos and order are nestled and intertwined in an eternal balance, requiring the equal weight of both entities for balance and harmony. What do we miss when we reject chaos by control?

Let me tell you a story.

About 700 million years ago, Earth turned into a frozen snowball. The polar ice sheets expanded until they covered the globe. The oceans turned to slush. Temporary relief came in the form of massive volcanic eruptions, which spewed carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and triggered a period of global warming. But that, too, spiraled out of control. Earth became a greenhouse — its oceans hot enough to cook their inhabitants, its landscape further ravaged by floods. Then, suddenly, something about the shifting continents or ash-darkened skies prompted the planet to cool again. The snowball returned.

It’s hard to imagine a less auspicious time to be a tiny creature trying to carry out an existence. But this period, called the Cryogenian, is when complex animal life started. From the wreckage of this ice-and-fire-scourged planet emerged the revolutionary group of multicellular animals that would give rise to jellyfish and corals, mollusks, snails, fish, dinosaurs, beetles, birds and, eventually, all of us.

This is no coincidence, that the appearance of complex, multicellular animals is inextricably linked to a boom in algae enabled by the same destructive forces that made the Cryogenian hell on earth.

What happens when we surrender?

Surrender means relaxing our fixed agendas, and unclenching our fists, so that we can respond to what is unfolding in a humble rather than controlling way.

Humility is the operative word. Derived from the Latin root meaning “from the earth,” humility provides a grounded awareness of where we stand in the universe and the limitations of our own power. Thus, humility becomes the antidote to pain arising from the grandiose belief that we ought to be more in control than we are. Surrendering to the practice itself opens a space between who we are and what we don’t know.

There can be no creativity without surrender, since creativity is welcomed from the unknown. Without surrender, we’re unable to feel that power that is greater than our will, deeper than our thoughts, and wider than our dreams. Humility is everything, we come to see.

What about the balance between control + surrender?

How does this manifest itself as creatives? How much do we allow control to rule our creations and ideas? What shifts if we allow ourselves to surrender to what we can’t control?

By rationalising our relationship with control v.s. surrender we can reimagine our position as creator, allowing a new order to come into being.

After all, creation is centered around human aspiration and the idealisation of who we wish to become, a longing for connection to something greater. Filling in the emotional void in our consciousness. Ever seeking and curious.

We can manifest and play with the ideas that arise from control v.s. surrender.

The image above shows microscopic particles found on mars superimposed on brutalist architecture. A pathway into the venerated unknown. Emulation, amelioration, a monument and the boundaries of human knowledge. A monument to everything we know and don’t know at the same time. A plea, a humble gesture, to the universe and what we cannot understand but so desperately want a connection to.

Chaos and destruction is a necessary part of life. It is the only force that allows for rebirth and transformation. We would never change if we didn’t have to, no one likes change. Just like the first multicellular life forms born in the hellish broth of earth, our humility to the ever changing forces at play of chaos is an opportunity to transform, and to believe beyond what is controllable, to reach to ever new heights and wisdom.

The future is just within reach, but first, we need to fall.

Thank you for reading.

For a link to the original lecture along with the other lectures in the series, you can find it here: For a link to the original lecture along with the other lectures in the series, you can find it here: SIO Lecture Series

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