June 2014 - TED "Talks" / by Luke Davies

TED Talks recently printed a list of the greatest quotes about design, some of which were displayed at the Target Design Café at TED2014. The space features cloth strips that form a canopy over the café where hundreds of quotes about design are printed. Here are ten of our favorites at Gi Paoletti Design Lab:

“As an architect you design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown.” — Norman Foster

“As architects we’re trained to solve problems, but I don’t really believe in architectural problems. I only believe in opportunities.” — Magnus Larsson

“[Designs] have a moral component just in the vision of ‘the good life’ that they present to us.”— Sebastian Deterding

“Architecture is not based on concrete and steel and the elements of the soil. It’s based on wonder.” — Daniel Libeskind

“Design [is] the emerging ethos formulating and then answering a very new question: What shall we do now, in the face of the chaos that we have created?”— John Hockenberry

“If we had no bias, if we had no preconceptions, what kind of forms could we design?” — Michael Hansmeyer

“An innovator is one who does not know it cannot be done.” — R.A. Mashelkar

“Design truly is a contact sport. It demands that we bring all of our senses to the task, and that we apply the very best of our thinking, our feeling and our doing to the challenge that we have at hand.” — Tom Wujec

“Find out what the next thing is that you can push, that you can invent, that you can be ignorant about, that you can be arrogant about, that you can fail with, and that you can be a fool with. Because in the end, that’s how you grow.” — Paula Scher

“The idea of being able to build things bottom up, atom by atom, has made [scientists] all into tinkerers. And all of a sudden scientists are seeking designers, just like designers are seeking scientists.” — Paola Antonelli