Radical Thinkers in Design – serie

The first book to be published on the work of their partnership (in 2001), Design Noir is the essential primary source for understanding the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings for Dunne & Raby’s work. Consisting of three elements - a ‘manifesto’ on the possibilities of designing with and for the ‘secret life’ of electronic objects; notes for an embryonic network of critical designers and, most famously, the presentation of the Placebo Project – a prototype for a critical design poetics enacted around electronic furniture-objects – Design Noir offers an in-depth exploration of one of the most seminal design projects of the last two decades, one that arguably initiated speculating through design in its contemporary forms. By detailing the logic and character of the objects that were constructed; the involvement of users with these objects over-time, and in the creation of a new kinds of spatially and temporally distributed moments of critique and engagement with things, Design Noir presents the case-study of the Placebo projectas a far more complex and subtler project than is often thought. As a bold and in many ways unprecedented experiment in design writing and book designing, Design Noir is itself an instance of the speculative propositional design it expounds.

designing designing is one of the most extraordinary books on design ever written. First published in 1984 and reprinted with this title and cover in 1991, the book was the product of ten years of auto-critique, reflection and experimentation on writing on designing. Offering a savage auto-critique of his own work on “methods”, as well as of the wider methods and ends of advanced industrial societies as a whole, this book challenges the traditional product- and progress- orientated focus on design by insisting that the world now coming into being requires designing to be understood as ‘a response to the whole of life.’ But designing designing is also unique in modern design thinking in its exploration of what writing on designing might be. Combining essays, interviews, reflections, performances, plays, poems, chance procedures, photographs, collages and quotes, Jones experiments with both form and content in an attempt to make a book which ‘is not simply about designing but is instead itself an instance of the ideas and processes explored within it.’

What do things mean? What does the life of everyday objects reveal about people and their material worlds? Has the quest for ‘the real thing’ become so important because the high-tech world of total virtuality threatens to engulf us?This pioneering book bridges design theory and anthropology to offer a new and challenging way of understanding the changing meanings of contemporary human-object relations. The act of consumption is only the starting point of object’s “lives”. Thereafter they are transformed and invested with new meanings and associations that reflect and assert who we are. Defining designed things as “things with attitude” differentiates the highly visible fashionable object from ordinary aretefacts that are too easily taken for granted. Through case studies ranging from reproduction furniture to fashion and textiles to ‘clutter’, the author traces the connection between objects and authenticity, ephemerality and self-identity. Beyond this, she shows the materiality of the everyday in terms of space, time and the body and suggests a transition with the passing of time from embodiment to disembodiment.

“Once one understands the nature and magnitude of defuturing as the negation of world futures, how one has to account for the history and making of the material world – including design - dramatically changes. Defuturing as our condition forces the generation of a new philosophy of design.” With these thoughts this book presents a radically new understanding of the history, context and futures of designing. First published in 1999, now reissued with a new preface by the author, Defuturing: A New Design Philosophy is a prescient and powerful account of what it means to comprehend that we live in world that is taking away futures for ourselves and non-human others. Arguing that designing is doubly implicated in this process, first in its roles in helping to create the unsustainable, but second, re-thought through the lens of defuturing, as a mode of acting in the world that can help contest the negation of the world, Defuturing transforms our comprehension of designing and of how futures can be constituted. Working not through abstract theorizing but through the analysis of concrete examples, the book uses historical material on design to expose the archaeology of defuturing. Shattering the illusion that the future simply “is”, Defuturing confronts designing with the challenge of remaking while offering the elements of a new practical reasoning of design acting.

This volume presents for the first time in English a curated selection of writings by the design thinker Gui Bonsiepe from the 1960s to the present day. Addressing as it does questions of non-Western design and a design practice that is both radical and democratic, Bonsiepe's work has assumed new importance for current debates inspired by global political and environmental crises.Structured into three sections, the anthology first addresses Bonsiepe's work on design theory and practice, particularly in relation to the history and contemporary relevance of the Ulm design school, where Bonsiepe was a professor in the 1960s. A second section then represents Bonsiepe's writings after his move to South America in the 1960s and '70s, where he worked as a design consultant for the Allende government in Chile before the military takeover. In writings from the period, Bonsiepe explores the concept of design 'at the periphery' and the relationship of national design traditions and practices in Latin American countries to those of 'the core' - Western European and American design. The final section comprises selections of Bonsiepe's writings on design in relation to literacy and language, visuality and cognition. This indispensable volume includes new interviews with Bonsiepe as well as his original, previously unpublished texts.

This volume presents for the first time in English a curated selection of writings by the design thinker Gui Bonsiepe from the 1960s to the present day. Addressing as it does questions of non-Western design and a design practice that is both radical and democratic, Bonsiepe's work has assumed new importance for current debates inspired by global political and environmental crises.Structured into three sections, the anthology first addresses Bonsiepe's work on design theory and practice, particularly in relation to the history and contemporary relevance of the Ulm design school, where Bonsiepe was a professor in the 1960s. A second section then represents Bonsiepe's writings after his move to South America in the 1960s and '70s, where he worked as a design consultant for the Allende government in Chile before the military takeover. In writings from the period, Bonsiepe explores the concept of design 'at the periphery' and the relationship of national design traditions and practices in Latin American countries to those of 'the core' - Western European and American design. The final section comprises selections of Bonsiepe's writings on design in relation to literacy and language, visuality and cognition. This indispensable volume includes new interviews with Bonsiepe as well as his original, previously unpublished texts.

This book brings together Kenneth Frampton’s essays from the 1960s to today which epitomize his reflections on the historical–theoretical entanglements of architecture with place, the public realm, cultural identity, urban landscape and environment, and the political question of the “predicament” of architecture in the new Millennium. The essays explore Frampton’s contention that architecture’s imperative is to assume a significant responsibility for the edification and stewardship of the Arendtian ‘public world.’ One of the most theoretically sophisticated and politically committed architectural thinkers, Frampton’s work breaks emphatically with the limits and norms of much contemporary practice and restores a sense of richness and social consequence of architecture’s ‘unfinished project,’ while offering abiding lessons not only for architecture but for social, cultural, and design criticism alike.

This book brings together Kenneth Frampton’s essays from the 1960s to today which epitomize his reflections on the historical–theoretical entanglements of architecture with place, the public realm, cultural identity, urban landscape and environment, and the political question of the “predicament” of architecture in the new Millennium. The essays explore Frampton’s contention that architecture’s imperative is to assume a significant responsibility for the edification and stewardship of the Arendtian ‘public world.’ One of the most theoretically sophisticated and politically committed architectural thinkers, Frampton’s work breaks emphatically with the limits and norms of much contemporary practice and restores a sense of richness and social consequence of architecture’s ‘unfinished project,’ while offering abiding lessons not only for architecture but for social, cultural, and design criticism alike.

This book introduces the theory and concept of ontological design: a way of understanding and confronting the increasing power of design as it shapes our lives in complex ways that go well beyond the functionality and aesthetics of products and environments.We as humans design our material worlds – our habits, notions of comfort and convenience, what we eat, what we wear, how we travel. In turn, relations within these worlds design us and, mostly, we are designed to be unsustainable. This is becoming a psychosocial as well as biophysical crisis as our ‘normal’ and ‘desirable’ ways of life are wreaking havoc on climate, land, sea, other species and their complex interdependence, with unknown disastrous consequences in the near-future. These ground-breaking essays by Anne-Marie Willis, written over the last twenty years, bring together her pioneering writing on ontological design and provide a comprehensive introduction to the topic. As wider humanities fields are increasingly drawn to the concept of ontological design as a transformative force, this book provides an accessible guide that opens possibilities for deeper responses and different kinds of design interventions, and not just by designers. Essays explore design thinking within anthropology, sociology, politics, ecology, and design writing, including speculative and literary fiction about design. The book demonstrates how design is fundamental to being human and to our future. It makes the agency of design more visible throughout the world and provides tools for tackling urgent contemporary social, economic and environmental challenges.

This book introduces the theory and concept of ontological design: a way of understanding and confronting the increasing power of design as it shapes our lives in complex ways that go well beyond the functionality and aesthetics of products and environments.We as humans design our material worlds – our habits, notions of comfort and convenience, what we eat, what we wear, how we travel. In turn, relations within these worlds design us and, mostly, we are designed to be unsustainable. This is becoming a psychosocial as well as biophysical crisis as our ‘normal’ and ‘desirable’ ways of life are wreaking havoc on climate, land, sea, other species and their complex interdependence, with unknown disastrous consequences in the near-future. These ground-breaking essays by Anne-Marie Willis, written over the last twenty years, bring together her pioneering writing on ontological design and provide a comprehensive introduction to the topic. As wider humanities fields are increasingly drawn to the concept of ontological design as a transformative force, this book provides an accessible guide that opens possibilities for deeper responses and different kinds of design interventions, and not just by designers. Essays explore design thinking within anthropology, sociology, politics, ecology, and design writing, including speculative and literary fiction about design. The book demonstrates how design is fundamental to being human and to our future. It makes the agency of design more visible throughout the world and provides tools for tackling urgent contemporary social, economic and environmental challenges.