BRUCE MAU: MC24
Bruce Mau has long applied the power of design to transforming the world. Developed over the past three decades, this remarkable book is organized by 24 values that are at the core of Mau's philosophy. MC24 features essays, observations, project documentation, and design work by Mau and other high-profile architects, designers, artists, scientists, environmentalists, and thinkers of our time. Practical, playful, and critical, it equips readers with a tool kit and empowers them to make an impact and engender change on all scales.
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Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for whole-system transformation. Across 30 years of design innovation, he’s collaborated with leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. A serial entrepreneur since the age of 9, he became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas. He is the author of Massive Change and Mau: MC24, and co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in Chicago. His zest for connecting the world brings out the best in people and projects, and resonates at home, too, in the life he shares with his wife Bisi Williams and three daughters in Winnetka, Illinois.
Practically everything we do today needs to change. We are still doing most things as if we own nature and have unlimited resources. We work as if waste is not a problem. We treat nature like a pantry and a toilet. We think short term, party like there’s no tomorrow, and pass the check to future generations. We dump problems we can’t solve into places we can’t see. And many of our solutions create more problems than they correct. Things gotta change. Now.
Bruce Mau
First Inspire is the first of the MC24 principles for a reason. As design leaders, we take responsibility for inspiration. We don’t leave it to chance. Inspiration is not a side effect in massive change design. It is our first responsibility. It defines our way of working. It is the engine of change.
Bruce Mau
While the MC24 principles are not meant to imply a linear sequence, we must start with inspiration. As designers, we don’t have the authority to force change. We have the power to inspire change.
Bruce Mau
Most of the great challenges we face today are the problems of success, not failure. Success problems need solutions at a higher order of complexity. To confront these new complex challenges we need to push our design method to consider the welfare of all of life, not merely our human needs.
Bruce Mau
Every business today is a design business, or it won’t be a business for long. Business is about designing new possibilities, and the capacity to visualize those opportunities is central to future business.
Bruce Mau
How do we define "more", in a way that doesn’t mean greater environmental impact? That doesn’t demand more resources, or take away from the future of our children; or leave them with a toxic legacy. How do we create more of what we love using less of what we need?
Bruce Mau
If ever there was an opportunity for a different way of thinking, of exploring new possibilities, it’s in a post-crisis condition. Everything has to change. Now is the time.
Bruce Mau