Remixing Tradition

Although some traditions are relatively recent inventions, many have become so deeply embedded that they form the backbone of entire societies. Designers are constantly engaging with these traditions, because both they and their work operate within society. There are many strategies for approaching tradition: it can be rejected, but it can also be reinvented or remixed.

There are also many ways to relate to modernization. Sometimes it seems as though modernization and modernity necessarily imply the rejection of tradition, but that doesn’t have to be the case. At other times, it can feel like modernization is simply a glossy veneer applied over tradition — often with a Bauhaus flavor (by simplifying, reducing, and making things monochromatic).

What Dr. Mahmoud Bodo Rasch demonstrates is that modernity can take many forms, and that it is never about surface appearances, but about the underlying structures that arise from organizing certain principles—natural principles, mathematical principles, physical principles.

This opens up opportunities for designers from the WANA region (West Asia and North Africa, formerly referred to as the Near and Middle East) to explore new horizons without discarding what makes their societies unique. They are free to cut, paste, sample, and restructure as they wish. In doing so, a new design language emerges — one that revitalizes ancient cultures and makes them meaningful in a contemporary context.