Bruce Mau Interview

• Your exhibition "Massive Change" just completed a highly successful showing at the Vancouver Art Gallery and is currently at the Art Gallery of Ontario. For our readers who might not be familiar with it, can you give us a quick summary of what the exhibition is all about?

The original project was commissioned by the Vancouver Art Gallery on the future of design. At the same time we were asked by George Brown College in Toronto to develop a program for them that was new and unique - something off the educational grid. We decided to put the two ideas together and that's how the project was born. We subsequently brought in other partners - to do a book, and a radio program, and a speaker series. The exhibition is really about the human capacity to plan and produce desired outcomes. Rather than the traditional view of design as being about objects, we decided to look at it from a citizen's perspective, as a process leading to outcomes.

In our view, the definition of design is not just the production of objects but is actually the expression of human capacity. Design is the tool we have always used to shape the way we live and Massive Change is an exhibition of both the way we want to live and the tools we are going to use to get there.

The more we got into it the more we saw a real conflict between what we saw happening around the world - - this new, unprecedented period of human possibility, where all systems and economies are becoming global, relational, and interconnected, which was a very positive, optimistic story - and the general mood of the day as reported in the media - which was very pessimistic.

And then, when we began our research, we came across a speech by Lester B. Pearson, the former Canadian Prime Minister, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957. In this speech Pearson quotes the British historian Arnold Toynbee, who wrote that the twentieth century would be remembered as the time when we first dared to imagine "the welfare of the whole human race as a practical objective." That's exactly the pattern we've been seeing, and so we set out to see if it really was true.

What we found was quite interesting, and went one step further than Toynbee had; this is, in fact, the first generation that dares to imagine the welfare, not just of humanity, but of all life on the planet as a practical objective. We realized that we now have the capacity to shape the world however we want. And based on this, we came to a new question: Now that we can do anything, what should we do?

So the exhibition itself tries to look at this question in the context of each of the key areas of our lives - what do we seem to be committed to? And when you really look at it, there are collective projects we're committed to. An example of this is in the movement economy. If you look broadly at what is going on around the world, you see that we are committed to sustainability in the movement economy. If you look at the success of the car, and the fact that all over the world, independence of movement and mobility is enthusiastically embraced, it's clear that getting the 9 billion people on this planet to get out of their cars is not the answer: sustainability is. And the way to get to sustainability is through design.

• How close are we to this goal of sustainable mobility?

We're very close. There are some amazing examples of this in the exhibition. There's this wonderful vehicle - the Twike. It's an electric and pedal-powered vehicle that costs .5 cents/100 kilometres to run. And there's another, a beautiful little electric vehicle from India , which if released here would be a huge success. What we need to do is deliver what people want - mobility - more elegantly, intelligently and responsibly than we now are. Right now though, the relationship of the specifications of vehicles are completely out of whack with their actual use. For example, the SUV that could get you safely to and from the Outback which in fact gets used to pick up a carton of milk from the corner store. That's what we have to change, and we will.

• Your studio is recognized as among the world's most innovative and creative. What has been the key to your success?

When we first started The Institute without Boundaries, we went to George Brown College and talked with some students who had put together this amazing magazine. And we asked them how they'd been so successful. Their answer was very enlightening. They said, "We had to learn everything." That's the model for our studio. We do things that, when we first start, we don't actually know how to do. And, neither does the client who brings us the business. Often, no one in the world has ever done these things before, so there is nowhere we can go for advice: we're building prototypes that have never existed before. So what we do is put together a collaborative team to tackle the problem - it's really a distributed problem solving model and the solution can come from anyone on the team, including the client. This collective model of iterative study is really the way we work. We call it "kissing frogs." You iterate. You produce lots of possible solutions - frogs. And eventually one of those frogs becomes a prince.

• Innovation is one of the buzz words of the new century. Business leaders, politicians, everyone seems to be telling us that we need to be more innovative. Is innovation something that a company, or an organization, or, for that matter, a country, can learn?

Yes. Innovation is absolutely methodical. It's not about some kind of mad inventor. It's about creating an environment where people can take risks, and where you have the infrastructure to support that risk-taking. And that requires leadership. It's incredibly stressful to be in an environment where risk-taking is allowed and encouraged. When people are out on a limb, sometimes the only sound they can hear is a saw. And when they cut that branch and fall, as they inevitably will sometimes, you have to have a culture and system in place that catches them. Innovation is absolutely a cultural methodology and requires leadership to produce a certain kind of organizational culture.

• When you talk to an audience, what do you want them to walk away thinking, feeling, and ready to do?

There are two things that I really want to get across to people, and that I feel are most important. The first is understanding that a collaborative model - which is essential to innovation - also requires great leadership. And that's paradoxical because you're saying it's collective, and , it's about leadership. But to get to a collaborative model actually requires greater leadership than in a top-down model.

The second thing I want people to walk away with is the critical idea that this is not about someone else's responsibility. The collective projects I talked about earlier require us all to take personal responsibility as citizens. There will be an outcome that you have the power to determine. What that outcome will be depends on the actions of individuals.

• Your "Incomplete Manifesto for Growth" outlines your beliefs, motivations and strategies - and also how your studio works. There are 43 articles on the manifesto. We can't get into all of them here; are there one or two that you feel have been the most compelling and effective for you over the years?

Sure. I would say certainly the first item on the manifesto: Allow events to change you. It is one of the hardest things in a career or business environment to do. Because when we're successful, we're constantly asked to do what we've always done. But in order to have growth you have to go into an environment you haven't been in before, and become a beginner, which is tough. It's tough enough to be a beginner and fall down and scrape your knees, and have to get back up when you're not yet a success - when you're not in the limelight. But it's even tougher when you have been a success, and everyone is watching you, and you're still going out there and falling down and scraping your knees and getting back up again. That's hard.

The second one would be #32; Listen carefully. One of the things we've learned along the way from working with great people, people like Frank Gehry, is how important it is to listen. People often burden their practice or their business with the requirement to give input, when what you really need to do is listen. Listen to your clients -- so often they are the experts and know so much more about the problem, and over days and weeks of listening you'll be amazed at what happens, and what solutions become visible.