Can a Product Designer Be a City Planner?

Today I read a really interesting post from meshcities.com, it talked about the design concepts of a distinguished designer being introduced into the planning of cities and since he’s one of my all time favorites designers I was instantly hooked. It was Dieter Rams, the creator of Braun designs and from whom Apples head of design Jonathan Ive inspires his philosophy of design for his products (check this article from Forbes).

I really liked this article from Meshcities.com since it was one of those times when you ask yourself “How didn’t I think of this before” as the principles of product design, good product, they can also be applied to designing neighborhoods.

Dieter Rams philosophy is special and works great for urban design because it focuses on minimalism and practicality, “good design is as little design as possible” taking from it any unnecessary element that might bring any kind of confusion to the user; also, his design focuses on the subtraction of elements that interfere with each other and that don’t really serve any purpose while forcing the design to be aesthetically pleasing, sustainable and long-lasting. These are the things that create a successful neighborhood development as well, we need neighborhoods to work well while making it easy for its residents to work, live and play without a cluster of unnecessary elements that cloud the important, while being sustainable and being relevant for the decades and generations to come and of course, being beautiful. Once again the theory of design crosses boundaries and shows that these concepts can be applied in a huge range of practices, were seeing designers taking on boat design, building, product, interior and now urban design.

check out the original post from Meshcities.com here.