Co-creating Atmospheres: the Use of Design for vā/wā, Community, and Common Sense

Abstract

Design is usually understood as a professional activity by which objects and processes are given form through the deliberate and innovative deployment of aesthetic means. While design disciplines are branching out beyond their traditional concerns, and co-design increasingly involves nonprofessionals, designers’ conceptual engagement with the perceptual processes set in train by design remains limited, even though they know them to be important from experience. Aristotle’s common sense, for instance, is not commonly discussed in the design literature—yet its communal aspects could enrich not only co-design. Another expansion of perception beyond the individual occurs in atmospheres, which we register when we sense the moods in which we are immersed, or when they affect our bodies and dispositions as something Other. Atmospheres can, no doubt, be produced, but something about them seems to resist targeted and scheduled design processes.

To address some questions raised by this journal issue, we reflect on a design project conducted by the Vā Moana Research Cluster at Auckland University of Technology – Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau between 2019 and 2022. The Global Talanoa Platform was created as part of a funded research project, “Vā Moana: space and relationality in Pacific thought and identity.” From a method to coproduce and disseminate knowledge, it morphed, from March 2020, into a resource to respond to COVID-19 conditioned restrictions. Amongst the guiding principles for the GTP design was atmosphere, along with kin concepts such as vā/wā (Samoan, Tongan/Māori), qi (Chinese) and ma (Japanese). In the process, we found that design, including its theoretical foundations, principles, and methods, had to undergo profound changes to generate atmospheres that would include all participants.