This week I started noticing how many things in public spaces feel temporary. Not in a poetic way, just… actually temporary. A handwritten sign taped to a bakery window that says “Komme gleich zurück :)”, an empty coffee cup balanced on a railing like it’s been placed there intentionally, a pair of gloves tucked into a fence near Jakominiplatz.
You can’t really design these things, but they still speak. They carry small stories, even if we don’t know what they are. They’re not meant to be part of the city, yet somehow they are and maybe they say more about the people living here than any campaign or billboard ever could. These objects and gestures weren’t made to last, but they still communicate something. A kind of honesty that polished design often loses. No branding, no grid system, no aesthetic filter. Just real people leaving traces, often without even knowing it. In design, we’re often told to think long-term and build clarity or make things clean and usable. But a lot of the things I actually remember are the ones that were sloppy, quick, emotional. A missing cat flyer with a smiley face. A badly photocopied note on a lamp post. A weird sticker that just says “mehr lasagne.”
I’m starting to wonder: what if we stopped measuring the value of design by how long it lasts, or how “good” it looks? What if we made more room for short-lived communication, for things that are meant to disappear, but still leave an impression? Not everything has to be permanent to be meaningful. And no, I don’t mean this as just another side effect of our throwaway culture. We already live in a world obsessed with speed, we scroll past images before we even process them, trends change weekly, and content disappears in 24 hours. But the kind of temporary design I’m thinking about is not the same as fast design. It’s not about producing more or doing things quickly just to keep up.
Fast content often feels empty because it’s created to fill space, to keep the algorithm running. But the temporary moments I’m drawn to are different, they happen slowly, or by accident, they’re personal and don’t ask for attention. A note someone wrote in a rush and left behind. A message taped to a broken mailbox. A protest sticker fading in the sun. These things aren’t chasing virality. They exist in the background, but they speak to us on a human level, precisely because they’re not trying too hard.
So when I talk about designing the temporary or embracing what isn’t made to last, I don’t mean more noise. I mean less pressure, less control. I mean making room for slowness, for mess, for the unnoticed things that carry meaning in a different way. Not by shouting, but by simply being there for a moment and then fading.
Sources
Fenske, M. (2010). Straßenzeichen: Wie der urbane Raum spricht. Transcript Verlag.
Höller, C. (2019). Designing Impermanence: Temporary Interventions in Urban Space. Wien: Springer.
