Puck van Rosmalen

I want to work as a social designer that focusses on making people feel good in a space without them necessarily being conscious as to why they feel good. I think it is important that people are encouraged to establish contact with each other and have interactions together.   

This goal stems from a personal wish that people would have more compassion for each other and become more empathetic. I would like for people to give one another some space to be themselves without thinking that the space other people take up affects their own. I would like to give people the realization that each person that you see during the day, and plenty of those who you don’t see, lead their own lives, which are just as complicated as your own. 

As designer I want to focus on high-rise buildings in the Netherlands, among other things, and facilitating the social cohesion of those buildings. High-rise should not only be seen as a residential block, but as a vertical stacking of a neighborhood. Those buildings should fulfil the same provision requirements as a traditional horizontal residential area. With playgrounds, a coffee place, a village square, some stores, lots of greenery and space to meet your neighbors. 

This I won’t be doing by solely designing the space in between the homes, but also by providing well-designed homes for the individual residents. If you have the space to be yourself at home, you will also be quicker to invite others into your space. Which then creates more contact, which in turn is good for the individual and society. 
 

I think that as a designer I am in service of the people and society around me. That could be with something ‘simple’ such as a design for a good desk lamp, or a more complex assignment such as a design for urban planning. I am always convinced that designers should be thinking about more than their idealistic worldview or economic assignments. Designers must think of what happens with their design when they let it out onto the world. Only designing based on an idealistic idea does not always hold up in practice. Only designing based on cost efficiency often shortchanges the user.

It is important to me to find the balance between my idealistic worldview and the economic assignments that designers get. In the end, as a designer you are never designing for yourself but always for the other. And I want to give that ‘other person’ a good experience and invite them to be part of society.

Designbypuck@protonmail.com