Making a Map to a New World

Back in 2002, when Bruce Mau was less in demand than he is now, the Canadian designer was entertaining some two dozen prospective projects. Mau couldn't seem to resist the lure of a new challenge. At the same time, his interdisciplinary design practice, Bruce Mau Design Inc., was reeling from a series of projects that were critically acclaimed but largely unprofitable. The studio's manager, Jim Shedden, was losing patience. Feeling the sagging economy's squeeze, and pressure for the place to grow up, Shedden wasn't amused by Mau's unflagging juggling act.

So one day, he stole the show. Shedden jotted down each project's name on a separate piece of paper and laid each page face-up on a table. He then told Mau to turn over every single page, except one -- the project that he most wanted to take on. Before long, Mau turned all but five pages over. At Shedden's insistence, he eventually made his choice.

But Mau kept mulling over other possibilities. Days later, he returned to Shedden with an idea that wasn't even on the table: Take those final five proposals -- an exhibition on the future of design, an experimental design program for a city college, a product line for housewares maker Umbra, a television series on design, and a book with Phaidon, the studio's publisher -- and combine them into one gargantuan, groundbreaking endeavor.

Today, those five ideas form the foundation of the 45-year-old designer's biggest project to date: "Massive Change" -- a traveling multimedia exhibition that amounts to a global catalog of many of the world's most innovative projects as seen through the lens of design. This past October, the exhibition debuted at the Vancouver Art Gallery; since then, its ambitious mandate for design has won it worldwide attention. The two-year international tour is scheduled to hit Chicago, with plans under way for additional venues abroad. The exhibition's message: Design can reframe the world in unfamiliar and meaningful ways to help solve the problems -- social, economic, environmental, political -- that stand in the way of progress.

The Road to "Massive Change"

It's the Monday morning before the kickoff of "Massive Change" in Toronto, Mau's hometown. Outside the Art Gallery of Ontario, the words Massive Change -- big, black, in the stark typeface of Mau's choice, Helvetica Neue Bold Condensed -- are emblazoned across the museum's entrance, along with a giant photograph of a pink, featherless chicken. Inside, Mau is pacing the floor, talking with his hands flying; as usual, his loose black shirt is untucked. His commanding presence is occasionally punctuated by a burst of laughter. In due time, he will explain the deal with the chicken. Right now, he's about to give dozens of his staffers a tour of nothing less than, as Mau himself puts it, "the design of the world."

When most of us think about design, we tend to picture its outcomes -- Apple's iPod, Ford's Mustang, Nike's Swoosh. Mau is drawn to the innovative thinking that went into creating those icons. Case in point: A cluttered room in the exhibit is papered with life-size, color photographs of the workshop belonging to Dean Kamen, the modern-day inventor. On one side stands a series of prototypes of Kamen's Segway Human Transporter, the two-wheel electric scooter. On another are a half-dozen more prototypes of Kamen's wheelchair, the one that climbs stairs. Neither invention is exactly high impact -- yet -- but that's not entirely the point. Mau revels in possibility. He wants to make visible the thing that's often hidden in a design show: the thinking. "A lot of the most interesting design is invisible," he says. "So we took the visual off the table and focused instead on the things that design makes possible."

For Mau, design is a powerful tool that's best used to attack vexing problems. The exhibition leads viewers through spaces defined by challenges where there are new opportunities -- many spurred by technology -- for design to play a problem-solving role. There is, for example, a humble but elegantly designed purifier that makes drinking water accessible to the developing world. More than anything, Mau's goal is to push people to rethink their preconceptions about design and what design can accomplish.

During an hour-long tour, Mau navigates his staffers through a hopeful spectacle. It ranges from relatively straightforward medical devices and a curtain wall of recyclables -- FedEx boxes, Coke cans, Styrofoam cups strung like popcorn -- to a replica of a featherless chicken bred to withstand tropical climates and a giant, hand-drawn map indicating the untapped solar energy in the world's poorest countries. Of course, Mau's designers are familiar with the creative process's messy starts and stops. They understand that he's trying to make Kamen's iterative mental model (and others like it) apparent to the rest of us. But for most of them, this is their first time seeing the show, live and up close. The reason: They weren't part of the actual project -- which is, instead, the work of a bunch of (mostly) thirtysomething students.