why do we design?

today we were posed the question in a lecture for dgn, "why do we design?"
its an interesting question, and one which there is obviously no difinitive answer to however i, as most people have a few ideas about why I design, or at least i think i do

i design for a few reasons, mainly becuase i started young, with things like lego building and changing their plans, improving. As we all know nothings perfect and that means that something can always be better and that drives me to design and create. that however is just one perspective. design to me also is an obligation to humantiy, if your skilled at something, share it with everyone. An iteresting idea came up that if every designer spent 10% of their time not designing chairs or cars and doing something to help people who are less fortunate, the world would be a much better place. Its a thought to keep in the back of your mind , when desiging a race car or space ship. however if your passion is race cars or space ships it should not stop you from desiging them but you should at least think of their affect on the now global village.

After just listening to a lecture by phillipe stark his ideas were quite good and i think the most important thing he said was that we all have the obligation to see. Metaphorically, walk with your head held up so that you can see the world around you. We have to be intelligent, or at least strive towards it. Western society for the most part, especially in australia has it good and we can design $1000 shoes or bags, however we should never loose sight of the bigger picture. On a final note, im not some hippy save the trees no nukes kind of dude, i just feel that we should design for the betterment of humanity in the long run and not as much for the betterment of our selves. i know just because we should dosent make it so, but we should at least try once in a while to do something that makes a difference