A companion to contemporary design since 1945 9781119111184, 1119111188

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A Companion to  Contemporary Design since 1945

WILEY BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO ART HISTORY These invigorating reference volumes chart the influence of key ideas, ­discourses, and theories on art, and the way that it is taught, thought of, and talked about throughout the English‐speaking world. Each volume brings together a team of respected international scholars to debate the state of research within traditional subfields of art history as well as in more innovative, thematic configurations. Representing the best of the scholarship governing the field and pointing toward future trends and across disciplines, the Blackwell Companions to Art History series provides a magisterial, state‐of‐the‐ art synthesis of art history. 1 A Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945 edited by Amelia Jones 2 A Companion to Medieval Art edited by Conrad Rudolph 3 A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture edited by Rebecca M. Brown and Deborah S. Hutton 4 A Companion to Renaissance and Baroque Art edited by Babette Bohn and James M. Saslow 5 A Companion to British Art: 1600 to the Present edited by Dana Arnold and David Peters Corbett 6 A Companion to Modern African Art edited by Gitti Salami and Monica Blackmun Visonà 7 A Companion to Chinese Art edited by Martin J. Powers and Katherine R. Tsiang 8 A Companion to American Art edited by John Davis, Jennifer A. Greenhill and Jason D. LaFountain 9 A Companion to Digital Art edited by Christiane Paul 10 A Companion to Dada and Surrealism edited by David Hopkins 11 A Companion to Public Art edited by Cher Krause Knight and Harriet F. Senie 12 A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, Volumes 1 and 2 edited by Finbarr Flood and Gulru Necipoglu 13 A Companion to Modern Art edited by Pam Meecham 14 A Companion to Medieval Art, second edition edited by Conrad Rudolph 15 A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945 edited by Anne Massey Forthcoming 1 A Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art edited by Alejandro Anreus, Robin Greeley and Megan Sullivan

A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945 Edited by

Anne Massey

This edition first published 2019 © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. The right of Anne Massey to be identified as the author of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with law. Registered Office John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA Editorial Office 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK For details of our global editorial offices, customer services, and more information about Wiley products visit us at www.wiley.com. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print‐on‐demand. Some content that appears in standard print versions of this book may not be available in other formats. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty While the publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this work, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives, written sales materials or promotional statements for this work. The fact that an organization, website, or product is referred to in this work as a citation and/or potential source of further information does not mean that the publisher and authors endorse the information or services the organization, website, or product may provide or recommendations it may make. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a specialist where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication data applied for 9781119111184 (hardback) Cover Design: Wiley Cover Image: © Paper Boat Creative/Getty Images Set in 10.5/13pt Galliard Std by SPi Global, Pondicherry, India Printed in United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Contents

List of Illustrations

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About the Editor

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Notes on Contributors

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Acknowledgments xviii Series Editor’s Preface

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Introduction 1 Anne Massey Part I  Time 1 Contemporary Design History Sarah Teasley

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2 Nostalgia 32 Elizabeth Guffey 3 Design Futures Damon Taylor Part II  Place 4 Transnationalism for Design History: Knowledge Production and Decolonization Through East Asian Design History Yuko Kikuchi

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5 African Fashion Design and the Mobilization of Tradition Victoria L. Rovine

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6 Urban Sights: From Outdoor Streets to Interior Urbanism Gregory Marinic

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Part III  Space

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7 Virtual Space Rina Arya

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8 Interior Atmosphere Lois Weinthal

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9 Home Truths: Identity and Materiality in the Postwar Interior Ben Highmore

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10 Design of Contemporary Mega-Events Graeme Evans

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Part IV  Object

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11 The Vibrant Object Alexa Griffith Winton

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12 The Consumed Object Jonathan Bean

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13 The Object of Design History: Lessons for the Environment Kjetil Fallan

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14 The Fashionable Object Christopher Breward

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15 The Written Object: Design Journalism, Consumption, and Literature Since 1945 Grace Lees‐Maffei

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16 Destabilizing the Scenario of Design: Queer/Trans/ Gender‐Neutral 326 John Potvin Part V  Audiences

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17 Luxury and Design: Another Time, Another Place Jonathan Faiers

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18 Amateur Design Paul Atkinson

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19 The Professionalization of Interior Design Mark Taylor and Natalie Haskell

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20 Design Education in Higher Education Vicky Gunn

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21 Design Against Consumerism Paul Micklethwaite

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22 Guilty Pleasures: Taste, Design, and Democracy Malcolm Quinn

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Index 479

List of Illustrations

2.1 Interior of vintage clothing store, Truro, Cornwall, UK. Source: © Nik Taylor/Alamy Stock Photo. 37 2.2 Sales display of vintage television sets. Source: © Bill Burke/Stockimo/Alamy Stock Photo. 38 2.3 Old Volkswagen Beetle display at the Autostadt or Car City in Wolfsburg, Germany. Source: © Iain Masterton/Alamy Stock Photo. 47 2.4 Classic Volkswagen Beetle with its redesigned namesake. Source: © Konstantinos Moraitis/Alamy Stock Photo. 48 4.1 Cover of the proceedings of the 10th ICDHS conference. Source: Wong et al. (2016). Reproduced with permission from Blucher. 86 5.1 Wax prints for sale in Djenné, Mali, 2009. Photo: V. Rovine. 97 5.2 MaXhosa by Laduma sweater on display, BHV (Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville) department store, Paris, France, 2017. Photo: V. Rovine. 100 5.3 Mimi Plange leather dress adorned with trapunto embroidery. Photo: Mimi Plange. Reproduced with permission from Mimi Plange. 106 6.1 The Galleria ice rink, Houston, Texas. Source: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Public Domain. 120 6.2 Eaton Centre. Photo: Gregory Marinic. 122 6.3 Persia Court at the Ibn Battuta Mall. Photo: Gregory Marinic. 128 8.1 Blur Building illuminated at night. Photo by Beat Widmer. Image courtesy of Diller Scofidio + Renfro. 160



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8.2 The kitchen island at the Tom Kundig‐designed Studio House in Seattle, WA, USA, is a collaboration between Tom Kundig and Gulassa Metalworks along with another subcontractor who produced the cast‐concrete top and rolling doors. The larger metal surfaces and cast‐in‐floor rolling tracks are patinated steel, while the hardware and wheels are cast bronze. Photo: © Paul Warchol. Image courtesy of Olson Kundig. Reproduced with permission. 168 8.3 Responsive interior curtain for Soft House, 2008. Source: Soft House, Kennedy and Violich Architecture. Image courtesy of Kennedy and Violich Architecture. 170 9.1 Mary’s Minneapolis apartment: open plan and eclectic. Source: Mary Tyler Moore Show: Season 1 (1970). Produced by MTM Enterprises, original network CBS, and distributed by 20th Television. Frame grab by Ben Highmore. 178 10.1 (a) Italy’s pavilion at Milan EXPO (2015). (b) China’s temporary pavilion at Milan EXPO. (c) China’s permanent pavilion at Shanghai EXPO (2010). Photos: Graeme Evans. 198 10.2 The Hive, UK Pavilion, Milan EXPO 2015. Photo: Graeme Evans. 199 10.3 CGI of Olympic Park as visioned for 2030. Source: Evans (2015). Photo: Graeme Evans. Reproduced with permission. 201 10.4 (a) Shanghai EXPO mascot and (b) logo. (c) Milan EXPO mascot. Photos: Graeme Evans. 205 10.5 Olympic rings at (a) St Pancras station and (b) Serpentine Bridge, and (c) Agitos at Tower Bridge, London. Photos: Graeme Evans. Source: Evans, Dong and Edizel (2013). Reproduced with permission. 210 11.1 Wendy Jacob, Squeeze Chair (Grouped), 2007. Source: © Wendy Jacob. Image courtesy of Wendy Jacob. 228 11.2 Jasleen Kaur, Fathers Shoes, 2009. Source: Image courtesy of the artist. 232 11.3 How to Guides – Bike Bloc. Illustration by Marwan Kaabour, Barnbrook, 2014. Source: Image courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum. 233 12.1 Desk and objects, or looking down the rabbit hole of ontology. Photo: Jonathan Bean. 242 13.1 Kelmscott Manor depicted in the frontispiece to the 1893 Kelmscott Press edition of William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1893). Source: https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kelmscott_Manor_News_ from_Nowhere.jpg. Public Domain. 266

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13.2 Landfill operation is conducted by the city of New York on the marshlands of Jamaica Bay. Pollution hazards and ecological damage have called out strong opposition. Photograph by Arthur Tress (1940–) as part of DOCUMERICA: The Environmental Protection Agency’s Program to Photographically Document Subjects of Environmental Concern. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA record: 1100153). Public domain. 268 13.3 American designer and activist Victor Papanek (front, left) and Swedish chemist and environmentalist Hans Palmstierna (center, seated) in a group discussion with Scandinavian design students during The Industrial, Environment and Product Design Seminar on the island of Suomenlinna outside Helsinki in July 1968. Lecturing at the seminar were also fellow notaries of US countercultural design, Richard Buckminster Fuller and Christopher Alexander. Photo: Kristian Runeberg. Reproduced with the permission of The Finnish Museum of Photography. 275 14.1 Design by Victor Stiebel (1907–1976) for a belted, velvet evening dress worn off the shoulder with gloves and heels. Source: Mary Evans Picture Library/Adrian Woodhouse (Picture No. 10196998/ADW). Reproduced with permission. 286 14.2 Two Punk Rocker teenagers in leather jackets, with spiky hair, drinking cans of beer in Cornmarket Street, Oxford. Source: Mary Evans Picture Library/David Kirby (Picture no. 10149596/KI4). Reproduced with permission. 292 15.1 “Dignity in the entrance hall,” Plate XIX in Derek Patmore, Modern Furnishing and Decoration, London: The Studio, 1934. 301 15.2 Gillian E. Naylor, “Decade of Development,” Design magazine, no. 120 (December 1958), p. 40. Design Council Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives. Reproduced with permission. 311 15.3 – Evelyn Waugh, Plate III Professor Otto Silenus [man with charts and books under arm, standing among ruins in front of ditch digging machine] illustration for Decline and Fall, p. 155. 1928. 1 drawing (ink), 38.3 × 27.9 cm. Captioned “I do not think it is possible for domestic architecture to be beautiful, but I am doing my best.” Evelyn Waugh Art Collection, Box. 1.25, Accession Number: 67.76.3.32. Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. Reproduced with permission. 317



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16.1 Jay Bossé, nipple pin. Embroidery thread and beads on cotton with pin, 2017. Photo: John Potvin. 329 16.2 John Philip Sage. “What is a queer object for you?” orientation card, 2016. Image courtesy of John Philip Sage. 332 16.3 Bathroom signs, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden. Photo: John Potvin. 339 16.4 Tork, conventional toilet paper roll. Photo: John Potvin. 345 17.1 The “haunted mirror” sequence from the film Dead of Night (1945). Directed by Robert Hamer. Produced by Ealing Studios. Frame grab by Jonathan Faiers. 358 17.2 Interior of Blofeld’s lair designed by Ken Adam for the film Diamonds Are Forever (1971). Source: Danjaq/EON/UA/ Kobal/REX/Shutterstock. 361 17.3 Studio Job. “Bavaria” mirror 2008. Photo: Robert Knot. Reproduced with permission from Studio Job. 369 18.1 Maker Faire attendance infographic, 2016. Image courtesy of Maker Faire. 382 18.2 A series of “Tuber” lamps created by the FutureFactories software. © Lionel T. Dean. Reproduced with permission from the artist. 385 18.3 The Automake interface in use and resulting bracelet. © Justin Marshall. Reproduced with permission from the artist. 386 19.1 Florence Knoll with Alexander Girard coffee table (c. 1945). © Knoll, Inc. Image courtesy of Knoll, Inc. 397 19.2 Zaha Hadid Architects. View of interior layers. Photo: © View Pictures/UIG via Getty Images. Reproduced with permission. 407 21.1 10 signs of greenwash. Source: Futerra (2008) The Greenwash Guide, p. 5. © Futerra Sustainability Communications. Reproduced with permission. 442 22.1 Ulm School of Design (1953–1968), architect Max Bill. Source: Hans G. Conrad/René Spitz (Rechteinhaber), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:1955_Foto‐HansGConrad_HfGUlm_Architekt‐ MaxBill.jpg. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution‐Share Alike 3.0 Unported. 461 22.2 1955 Citroën car. Source: https://pxhere.com/en/ photo/632055. Public Domain (CC0‐1.0). 465

About the Editor

Anne Massey is a Visiting Professor at Richmond, the American International University in London and specializes in design research, particularly the design of the interior. She worked in her father’s architectural practice, Harry Massey Associates, during the 1970s and 1980s and subsequently worked at a range of universities as Professor of Design and Culture, including the University of the Arts London. She studied for a BA (Hons) History of Modern Art and Design at Newcastle Polytechnic (now the University of Northumbria) and then a PhD on “The Independent Group: Towards a Definition.” She was the founding editor of the academic journal Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture, now published by Taylor and Francis. Her books include Designing Liners: Interior Design Afloat (Routledge 2006); Interior Design Since 1900 (Thames and Hudson 2008), and Chair (Reaktion 2011). She co‐edited Hotel Lobbies and Lounges (Routledge 2013); Biography, Identity and the Modern Interior (Ashgate 2013); Pop Art and Design (Bloomsbury 2017); and Design, History and Time (Bloomsbury 2019). Massey has also contributed to a range of academic journals, most recently the journal Architecture and Culture. The Independent Group and the history of the Institute of Contemporary Arts remains a major research interest and she regularly broadcasts, curates, and publishes on the subject. This includes The Independent Group: Modernism and Mass Culture in Britain, 1945–1959 (Manchester University Press 1996) and Out of the Ivory Tower: The Independent Group and Popular Culture (Manchester University Press 2013). She is currently writing the biography of Dorothy Morland, the first and only female Director of the ICA from 1952 to 1968 for Liverpool University Press.

Notes on Contributors

Rina Arya is Professor of Visual Culture and Theory at the University of Huddersfield. She is interested in the visual and material culture of religion. Author of Francis Bacon: Painting in a Godless World (2012) and Abjection and Representation (2014), she is currently working on a study of cultural appropriation in a Hindu context. Paul Atkinson is Professor of Design and Design History at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. He has published widely on the design history of the do‐it‐yourself movement, the changing nature of the relationship between amateur and professional design, and the future impact of ­emerging technologies on the nature of design through practice‐based research into postindustrial manufacturing. He has authored two books on the design history of computers (Computer, Reaktion 2010, and Delete: A Design History of Computer Vapourware, Bloomsbury 2013), and is working on a design history of the electric guitar for Reaktion. Jonathan Bean is Assistant Professor of Architecture, Sustainable Built Environments, and Marketing at the University of Arizona. His research on taste and consumption spans the fields of consumer research, human–­ computer interaction, architecture, and design. He is the author of the Consuming Tech column for ACM Interactions magazine and is completing a multi‐year immersive study of market transformation in the US building market. He has received grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, and others. His work on IKEA hacking was featured on an episode of the 99% Invisible podcast. Christopher Breward is Director of Collection and Research at the National Galleries of Scotland. He was previously Head of Research at the Victoria &

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Albert Museum London and Principal of Edinburgh College of Art at the University of Edinburgh, where he retains a Visiting Professorship in Cultural History. He has published and curated widely on the histories of fashion, masculinity, and urban cultures. Graeme Evans is Professor of Culture and Creative Economy at the University of the Arts London and has held professorships in Design Cultures at Middlesex and Brunel Universities and the Chair in Culture & Urban Development at Maastricht University. He convenes the Regional Studies Association Mega Events Research Network (https://megaevents. org) and his forthcoming book Mega Events: Placemaking, Regeneration and City‐Region Development will be published by Routledge in 2019. He has published widely on the design, planning, and impacts from Olympics, EXPOs, and cultural festivals, and advises cities and governments on event and culture‐led regeneration. Jonathan Faiers is Professor of Fashion Thinking, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, UK. In 2014 he launched Luxury: History, Culture, Consumption (Taylor & Francis) the first peer‐reviewed, academic journal to investigate this globally contested term and is a founding member of the Winchester Luxury Research Group. His current research includes a ­monograph on the socio-cultural history of Fur (Yale University Press 2020). Kjetil Fallan is Professor of Design History at the University of Oslo, and currently Principal Investigator for the research project Back to the Sustainable Future: Visions of Sustainability in the History of Design. He is the author of Designing Modern Norway: A History of Design Discourse (Routledge 2017) and Design History: Understanding Theory and Method (Berg Publishers 2010), editor of Scandinavian Design: Alternative Histories (Berg Publishers 2012), and co‐editor, with Grace Lees‐Maffei, of Designing Worlds: National Design Histories in an Age of Globalization (Berghahn Books 2016) and Made in Italy: Rethinking a Century of Italian Design (Bloomsbury Academic 2014). Alexa Griffith Winton is a design historian and Assistant Professor at Ryerson School of Interior Design in Toronto. Her work engages the visual and material culture of the last century, with a focus on the history and theory of interiors. Her research also addresses craft in the industrial and computer ages, and the role of technology in modern domestic design. Elizabeth Guffey heads the MA course in Art History at Purchase College, State University of New York, and specializes in art and design history. She is author of several books, including Designing Disability: Symbols, Spaces and Society (Bloomsbury 2017), Posters: A Global History (Reaktion 2014), and Retro: The Culture of Revival (Reaktion 2006). She has authored numerous articles and is also the founding editor of the journal Design and Culture.



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Vicky Gunn is Head of Learning and Teaching and Professor of Arts and Humanities in Higher Education at Glasgow School of Art (GSA). As well as leading learning and teaching development at GSA, she has a research profile in humanities, art, and design disciplinary higher education with two specialist areas of focus: uncommon design in higher education policy and historical visual practices as methods of social production for contemporary social justice. Natalie Haskell is a PhD candidate and sessional lecturer at Griffith University, Australia. Her research focuses on the opportunities provided by digital fabrication technologies integrated across design disciplines, and the impact on design practice in the creation of customized and localized products and solutions. Recent publications that Natalie has authored/co‐authored include 3D Printing Sociocultural Sustainability (Springer 2016), “Digital utopia: the role of materiality and digital competency” (2016), and “Pattern and the digital narrative: the impact of digital innovation on pattern and placemaking” (2017). Ben Highmore is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex. He is currently working on the relationships among taste, retailing, urbanism, art and design, and domestic life as part of a major research fellowship for the Leverhulme Trust. His most recent books are Culture: Key Ideas in Media and Cultural Studies (Routledge 2016) and The Great Indoors: At Home in the Modern British House (Profile Books 2014). Yuko Kikuchi is a Reader at TrAIN (Research Center for Transnational Art Identity and Nation) and CCW College at University of the Arts London. Her key works include Mingei Theory and Japanese Modernisation: Cultural Nationalism and “Oriental Orientalism” (2004), Refracted Modernity: Visual Culture and Identity in Colonial Taiwan (2007), and two special issues: “Transnational modern design histories in East Asia,” The Journal of Design History 27 (4) (2014), and “Negotiating histories: traditions in modern and contemporary Asia‐Pacific art,” World Art 5 (1) (2015). Currently, she is editing a Critical Reader of East Asian Design, and writing a monograph on Russel Wright and the Cold War design in Asia, for which she was awarded the Terra Foundation Senior Fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum Grace Lees‐Maffei is Professor of Design History in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Hertfordshire, where she leads the TVAD Research Group in its work on relationships between text, narrative, and image and directs the Professional Doctorate in Heritage. Grace’s publications include Reading Graphic Design in Cultural Context (Bloomsbury Academic 2018), Designing Worlds: National Design Histories in an Age of Globalization (Berghahn Books 2016), Design at Home: Domestic Advice Books in Britain and the USA since 1945 (Routledge 2013), Iconic Designs: 50 Stories about 50 Things (Bloomsbury Academic 2013), Made in Italy: Rethinking a Century of Italian Design (Bloomsbury Academic 2013), Writing Design: Words and Objects (Berg 2012), and The Design History Reader (Berg 2010).

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Gregory Marinic, PhD, is an architectural theorist, scholar, educator, and practitioner whose research and practice are focused on the intersection of architecture, interiority, obsolescence, adaptive reuse, and geography. His New York‐based multidisciplinary design practice, Arquipelago, has received awards from the Seoul Metropolitan Government, American Institute of Architects, and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture; Arquipelago has also exhibited in the AIA Center for Architecture in New York, the Estonian Architecture Museum in Tallinn, the Seoul Dongdaemun Design Plaza, the TSMD Architecture Center in Ankara, and the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. His critical essays have been published in AD Journal, the Journal of Architectural Education, Design Issues, the Journal of Interior Design, AIA Forward Journal, the International Journal of Architectural Research, and the Int|AR Journal of Interventions and Adaptive Reuse. Dr. Marinic is an Associate Professor at the University of Kentucky College of Design and Director of Graduate Studies in the School of Interiors. He previously served as founding director of the Interior Architecture program at the University of Houston College of Architecture and Design. Paul Micklethwaite is course leader of MA Sustainable Design at Kingston School of Art, London. He is interested in the impact of the sustainability agenda on our theories and practices of design, and modes of design practice which are social in their ends and means. He is co‐author of the influential course reader Design for Sustainable Change: How Design and Designers Can Drive the Sustainability Agenda (AVA Academia 2011). John Potvin is Professor of Art History at Concordia University, Montreal. He is the author of Material and Visual Cultures Beyond Male Bonding (2008), Giorgio Armani: Empire of the Senses (2013), and, more recently, Bachelors of a Different Sort: Queer Aesthetics, Material Culture and the Modern Interior in Britain (2014), winner of the Historians of British Art Book Prize. In spring 2016 he was awarded a four‐year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant to explore “Sexuality, Masculinity and Shame in Interior Design: From Professionalization to Queer Theory, 1869–2015.” Malcolm Quinn is Professor of Cultural and Political History, UAL, and Honorary Senior Research Associate, UCL Faculty of Laws, Bentham Project. Since the publication of The Swastika, Constructing the Symbol (Routledge 1994) his research has engaged with questions of design, aesthetics, and state power. He has written about public taste and state‐funded art and design education for the journals History of European Ideas, International Journal of Art and Design Education, Journal of Visual Arts Practice, and Revue d’études Benthamiennes. He is the General Editor of The Persistence of Taste: Art, Museums and Everyday Life After Bourdieu (Routledge 2018).



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Victoria L. Rovine is Professor of Art History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her first book, Bogolan: Shaping Culture through Cloth in Contemporary Mali (Indiana University Press 2008), examined the recent transformations of a richly symbolic West African textile. Her second book, African Fashion, Global Style: Histories, Innovations, and Ideas You Can Wear (Indiana University Press 2015), explores the innovations of African fashion designers in an array of styles and markets, and on the imagined Africa constructed by Western fashion designers. Her current research examines the cultural politics of textiles at the nexus of France and French West Africa in the late colonial period. Damon Taylor is a design theorist and practitioner who writes on the relationship between the made environment and the politics of action. He is currently Senior Lecturer in Design at the University of Brighton, where he teaches product design, design and craft history and theory, (un)sustainable design, socially useful design, and design systemics. Mark Taylor is Professor of Architecture at Swinburne University, Australia. His primary research focus is the history and theory of the modern architectural interior with an emphasis on cultural and social issues. Mark has authored and edited several books including Interior Design and Architecture: Critical and Primary Sources (Bloomsbury 2013) and co‐edited Designs on Home: The Modern French Interior and Mass Media (Bloomsbury 2015) and Flow: Interiors, Landscapes and Architecture in the Era of Liquid Modernity (Bloomsbury 2018). Sarah Teasley is Reader in Design History and Theory and Head of Programme for History of Design at the Royal College of Art. She specializes in the history of design, technology, and society in modern and contemporary Japan, with particular expertise in furniture and industrial design, design education, manufacturing communities, industrial policy, and knowledge networks. An attention to materials and artifacts and human interactions with them underlies her research, as does a commitment to interdisciplinary work between history, STS, and design research. Publications include Global Design History (Routledge, 2011) and “Design and society in modern Japan,” a special issue of the Review of Japanese Culture and Society (2017). Lois Weinthal is Chair of the School of Interior Design at Ryerson University, Toronto. Her research and practice investigates the relationships among architecture, interiors, clothing, and objects, resulting in works that take on an experimental nature. She is the editor of Toward a New Interior: An Anthology of Interior Design Theory (2011) and co‐editor of After Taste: Expanded Practice in Interior Design (2012), with Kent Kleinman and Joanna Merwood‐Salisbury, both published by Princeton Architectural Press. She is a recipient of grants from the Graham Foundation, Fulbright, and DAAD. She studied architecture at Cranbrook Academy of Art and Rhode Island School of Design.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Jayne Fargnoli, the commissioning editor at Wiley, who worked closely with me on the original proposal for this edited collection. Gratitude also to Dana Arnold, the series editor, for all her help and support throughout the process. Clare Barry was the editorial assistant in the early stages of the book, and my thanks to her for detailed and accurate work. Special thanks are due to the contributing authors, who produced innovative and inciteful essays to bring the field of contemporary design history to life. This has been a major undertaking, spanning more than three years. I trust it will give a flavor of the excitement and variance that characterizes thinking and writing about design. Anne Massey London, July 2018

Series Editor’s Preface

Wiley Blackwell Companions to Art History is a series of edited collections designed to cover the discipline of art history in all its complexities. Each ­volume is edited by specialists who lead a team of essayists, representing the best of leading scholarship, in mapping the state of research within the subfield under review, as well as pointing toward future trends in research. This Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945 aims to consider the ­history and theory of design in relation to contemporary practice. In this way we comprehend design as both something a professional designer produces and how it is recognized by its users and consumers. The essays present a ­challenging account of the boundaries that have come into being between design history and its cognate disciplines, especially art history. Each of the five sections of the volume provides a multilayered, interdisciplinary re‐evaluation of design. The opening three sections address the ­concepts of “Time,” “Place,” and “Space,” while the final two on “Object” and “Audiences” offer a more nuanced examination of the various ways that we encounter design in terms of the objects themselves and as viewers, users, and consumers. Together, these essays combine to provide a new and thought‐provoking revision of our conception and understanding of contemporary design that will be essential reading for students, researchers, and teachers working in design history, theory, and practice, and in related fields. A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945 signals an important ­rapprochement between art history and design history and is a very welcome addition to the series. Dana Arnold, 2018

Introduction Anne Massey

As you read this text, either in book form or by means of a computer screen or hand‐held device, you are interacting with design. The font and layout of these words is designed; the physicality of the book or the screen has been designed for ease of interaction; the chair you sit on or the bed you lie on or the means of transport you are sitting on have all been designed by someone for ­someone – in this case, for you. Design is a big subject and comprises spaces, objects, and technologies from a recent urban development to the microchip, with interiors, fashion, craft, graphics, and the digital lying in between. The purpose of this volume is to provide a critical overview of a broad range of design disciplines, to stimulate interdisciplinary debate and consider undis­ covered convergences and synergies. A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945 is part of the Wiley Blackwell Companions to Art History series, and was initially inspired by Amelia Jones’s edited collection A Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945 (Jones 2006) and mirrors its approach. Like Jones, I studied the history of modern art and design within an art school con­ text at Newcastle Polytechnic (now the University of Northumbria) and we even participated in practice as part of the degree course, one of the first in the world to have “design history” in its title. I then went on to study for a PhD on the Independent Group at the same place, and this breadth of approach, which covers architecture, art, design, film, and popular culture in tandem with contemporary practice, has stayed with me over the past 30 plus years (Massey 2013). As Jones explains: “This book accepts the challenge of exploring the

A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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complexities both of contemporary art as a now ‘historical’ phenomenon (as the years between ‘now’ and 1945 expand in number) and of contemporary art as potentially the cutting edge of what people calling themselves artists (or understood by others as such) are making and doing in this increasingly complex and globalized economy of cultural practices” (Jones 2006, p. 3). This collection aims to consider the history of design since 1945 in relation to the design of now across and between design’s disciplinary boundaries. The added dimension for this book is the multifarious nature of design, which can be defined as something a professional designer produces but, in addition, what society at large may understand to be design, that is, an amateur practice or a co‐design for example. The punk rocker garb discussed and illustrated in Chapter 14 is an example of street style, of design by and for the wearer. Critical thinking about the complex area of design has emerged since 1945 under a series of banners, most predominantly design history, design methods, design studies, and, more recently, design thinking. These latter approaches try to pin down and logically explain this complex subject, even producing her­ metically sealed models for the professional practice of the design process. This particular tendency of design theory emerged under the grouping of design methods. As Penny Sparke explained: “One of the earliest manifestations of design scholarship – which was loosely described as ‘design methods’ – emerged in the 1960s as part of a general desire to systematize hitherto un‐systematized processes. Growing out of the anthropomorphic and ergonomic work of the wartime and immediate post‐war years, and linked to the growing interest in cybernetics, attempts were made to minimize both the artistic and commercial definitions of design that had hitherto been emphasized by many design pro­ fessionals, influenced by earlier developments in the USA, and to see it, rather, as a discipline rooted in a rigorous and rational ‘scientific’ process” (Sparke and Fisher 2016, p. 3). As an Independent Group stalwart, Reyner Banham argued at the time, when discussing the development of software and invisible tech­ nology and the redundancy of scientific approaches to design, that “The sig­ nificant and memorable products of the present time nearly all contain elements of surprise, of variability, of exploitable imperfection” (Banham 1969, p. 11). And it is these surprises, variabilities, and imperfections which the book focuses on rather than assuming a more didactic and absolutist approach. Banham and his Independent Group colleagues understood the importance of ephemerality in the design process and for design criticism. He described the role of the design critic as: He [sic] must project the future dreams and desires of people as one who speaks from within their ranks. It is only thus that he can participate in the extraordinary adventure of mass‐production, which counters the old aristocratic defeatist 19th‐century slogan, “Few but roses,” and its implied corollary, “Multitude are weeds,” with a new slogan that cuts across all academic c­ ategories: “Many, because orchids.” (Banham 1981, p. 93)

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Although we now would seriously question ephemerality from the point of view of sustainability, one of contemporary design’s biggest challenges, the need to understand design beyond didactic theory, is vital. An important crucible for understanding design in the 1980s was the journal BLOCK. Writing in the Introduction to the “Design History” section of The Block Reader in Visual Culture the editors echoed Banham’s horticultural anal­ ogy when discussing the early days of this significant cultural journal: “There was a thrill in refocusing the ‘art historical’ eye to take in that undergrowth of visual culture. Design history was an opportunity to explore the productive frisson of botanising the apparently mundane object – to investigate the minu­ tiae which, from the lofty vantages of art history, appeared as an unauthored blur” (Bird et  al. 1996, p. 132). This approach has reverberated through a critical understanding of design right into the twenty‐first century. The frisson of studying popular taste in an academic environment pervades, with research­ ers unproblematically exploring “kitsch” and denigrating and disrespecting mass taste (Massey 2000, pp. 1–19). The chapters in this volume take a gener­ ous and empathetic view of design and of popular taste, offering a thoughtful and sensitive approach to the panoply of design. Design theory has been enriched over recent years by new work in the fields of fashion, graphics, and interiors. While Penny Sparke has provided an excel­ lent overview of general design journals (Sparke and Fisher 2016, pp. 3–4), it is also important to take new journals in the subdisciplines of design into account, notably Fashion Theory: the Journal of Dress, Body & Culture launched in 1997; Communication Design: Interdisciplinary and Graphic Design Research in 2009; and Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture in 2010. This develop­ ment has enhanced the richness of reflecting and writing about design. An amalgamation of these different approaches, which gives an overview of the excitement and energy surrounding the discussion of writing and thinking about design at present, constitutes this volume. Grouped around five key themes, the collection brings together leading authors in the field, and pro­ vides an overview of current, critical writing on the subject. The five themes are “Time”; “Place”; “Space”; “Object”; and “Audiences.” The book therefore progresses from the general to the particular, charting the different dimensions within which contemporary design can be understood. The first theme of “Time” is crucial to any understanding of design now. In the digital age our perceptions of time have transcended the rigid formulations of analog time, and entered an era when time is layered, the past extends into the present, and the future into the past. The section begins by thinking about how we historicize the present, with the chapter by Sarah Teasley which details the contribution that contemporary design history can make. She takes as a case study her own experience of working in the field of graphic design in Japan in the 1990s. This is followed by a chapter by Elizabeth Guffey, which exam­ ines current views of the past in terms of “nostalgia.” This chapter examines the concept of “new nostalgia” in the contemporary world, and explores the

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relationship between contemporary design history and the past. We then turn our attention to thinking about the future, a key area of work for contempo­ rary designers and theorists. Can we predict the future? In a subtle and com­ plex chapter, Damon Taylor maps out the different approaches to future gazing and establishes the seeming impossibility of such a task. The next section, “Place,” pinpoints an important navigational point for design, that is, where it is produced and consumed in the postcolonial present. Yuko Kikuchi argues for the importance of East Asian design history in her chapter “Transnationalism for Design History: Knowledge Production and Decolonization through East Asian Design History.” She argues for a de‐centering of design ­history and the production of knowledge. Victoria Rovine then examines the contemporary significance and meaning of African fashion design for African ­fashion designers, and explores the ways in which they work with traditional emblems and traditions. The section finishes with Gregory Marinic’s conside­ ration of “Urban Sights: From Outdoor Streets to Interior Spaces,” which takes us from the USA to Dubai and considers the shopping mall in relation to Fredric Jameson’s notion of interior hyperspaces. The following section, “Space,” considers design within the context of spa­ tial cultures. The section begins with Rina Arya’s investigation of “Virtual Space,” which considers the ubiquity of digital culture and contemporary per­ ceptions of space and place. The perceived dichotomy between the real and the virtual is problematized. The focus then shifts to “Interior Atmosphere” in the chapter by Lois Weinthal, who explores the poetic dimensions of the ephem­ eral and transitory in the design process. Ben Highmore turns our attention to the creation of the postwar domestic interior, using the twin forces of moder­ nity and tradition. He focuses on technology in the home and how this can be marshaled to link back to the past and forward to the future. The section con­ cludes with Graeme Evans’s consideration of the design of contemporary mega‐events. Looking at the design and planning of the huge sites for hosting international events, particularly the Olympic games, he considers the local and the global in the creation of these branded spaces. The next section moves to a more finely grained examination of the “Object” of contemporary design in their various formats. Alexa Winton provides a use­ ful overview of the field of object‐oriented ontology using key examples and invites us to reconsider the significance of stuff in the study of contemporary design. Jonathan Bean explores the Consumed Object from the perspective of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT). He argues that there is scope for collabora­ tion between the fields of CCT and design history to further develop our understanding of the consumption of design. A different facet of the consumer and contemporary design is explored by Kjetil Fallan. He sees contemporary design history as an important discipline for the education of designers but reaching out further in terms of society and culture in general. Fashion is often overlooked in the theorization of design practice and its history, often operat­ ing within its own realm. Christopher Breward takes “The Fashionable Object” as his subject and examines shifting meanings of fashion in relation to style and

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taste. Grace Lees‐Maffei then investigates “The Written Object: Design Journalism, Consumption, and Literature since 1945.” Although design is conventionally thought of as a visual or haptic activity, the written word has always been, and continues to be, important throughout the design process. Lees‐Maffei argues that words are present from the client brief through to the design blog. The section concludes with a chapter that examines the neglected area of design and sexuality. John Potvin argues that the area of sexuality offers new and exciting avenues of enquiry, and turns our attention to the politics of gender neutrality in contemporary design. The last section, “Audiences for Design,” takes us from objects to people. Jonathan Faiers takes “Luxury and Design: Another Time, Another Place” as his subject, detailing how luxury is consumed as an ahistorical entity through the device of film and television. Paul Atkinson turns his attention to the world of amateur design and the ways in which non‐professional design interacts with design production in the digital age. This challenges the prevailing norm, where contemporary design history is regarded as the province of the professional designer only. Still on the subject of professional design, Mark Taylor and Natalie Haskell trace the trajectory of the history of the interior design profession in rela­ tion to the development of interior design education and research. This is followed by Vicky Gunn’s chapter on “Design Education in Higher Education,” which situates the training of designers within the art and design context, highlighting the dominance of an unsuitable fine art model. Paul Micklethwaite then takes the radical stance of considering “Design Against Consumerism” and the ways in which the contemporary practice of design can mitigate against the destruction of the planet. Arguing against a consumer‐led model of design, he questions the viability of a sustainable consumption approach. The final chapter provides a rare overview of design in relation to social class. Malcolm Quinn argues that bourgeois discernment and taste created a cultural idealism that reinforced a liberal democracy, an idealism that can unravel when this shared taste is challenged.

References Banham, R. (1969). Softer hardware. Ark 44 (Summer): 2–12. Banham, R. (1981[1960]). A throw‐away aesthetic. In: Design by Choice (ed. P. Sparke), 90–93. London: Academy Editions. Bird, J., Curtis, B., Mash, M. et  al. (eds.) (1996). The Block Reader in Visual Culture. London: Routledge. Jones, A. (2006). A Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945. Malden: Blackwell. Massey, A. (2000). Hollywood Beyond the Screen: Design and Material Culture. Oxford: Berg. Massey, A. (2013). Out of the Ivory Tower: The Independent Group and Popular Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Sparke, P. and Fisher, F. (eds.) (2016). The Routledge Companion to Design Studies. Abingdon: Routledge.

Part I

Time

1

Contemporary Design History Sarah Teasley

In 1995, I spent the summer designing and building web pages in Kanazawa, a regional city in Japan. Writing and dreaming in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), I worked alongside engineers at the region’s first Internet service provider, a mid‐size conglomerate, to produce promotional webpages for hotels and tourist attractions. I was not a trained designer: I had taught myself basic photography and graphic design out of interest, and thanks to a childhood spent with computers could train myself to code in HTML and to use software such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. My efforts to render Kanazawa’s famously succulent prawns even more enticing on tourist websites tell a story about social change: I had begun a summer internship in the conglomerate’s central administrative division. As a woman, I was assigned a turquoise and white uniform and directed to stuff envelopes alongside the other young women in the administrative track, which ran alongside the career track for male university graduates. But my line manager swiftly moved me to the IT division, in a more specialized role, once my amateur computing and design skills became known, and I was offered a full‐time role in the company following university graduation. It is unclear whether a Japanese woman would have been offered the same opportunity, so difficult to say whether my reassignment represented a re‐evaluation of women’s roles within the company, but at the very least indicates that the firm was open to foreign hires. My male colleagues’ employment itself demonstrated change as well: some had postgraduate degrees, which complicated their position and

A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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salary  in  an age‐based system predicated on joining companies immediately after university graduation. These attributes made us misfits. But they also represented a corporate strategy that valued internationalization and specialist ­technical knowledge, within a national corporate culture of preferring malleable  – and Japanese – male generalists (Matanle 2003; Ogasawara 1998). My web design role also tells a story of economic and technological change: by the summer of 1995, Japan was several years into the post‐economic bubble economy that would soon become known as “the lost decade” (Fletcher and von Staden 2014). Around me, acquaintances’ firms were suffering, even closing, and the term risutora (restructuring, or corporate layoffs) had entered quotidian use. But from my superficial vantage point, the firm that provided the internship seemed less affected, perhaps because it had diversified its portfolio from energy and chemicals, the firm’s earliest divisions, to include building systems and computer hardware and software back in the 1960s. The firm’s location in Kanazawa also buffered it from the Great Hanshin Earthquake, which heavily damaged the Kobe–Osaka area in January 1995, and from the Aum Shinryo‐kyo sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in March that same year. As a respected and well‐connected firm already offering comprehensive systems installation and maintenance, my employer was well positioned to profit from the World Wide Web’s arrival in Japan. My role as graphic designer, web developer, and copywriter had nothing to do with a corporate interest in branching into online advertising or graphic design; rather, the Web’s arrival represented an opportunity to provide a new level of regional infrastructure. The availability of software such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator and the ease with which one could learn to use them, given time, a manual, and increasingly user‐friendly interfaces, meant that an amateur with a computer, a color scanner – essential for translating analog photographs into digital images – and access to examples of similar designs could create and publish her own graphic products, outside the existing industry. As this account of desk‐top publishing (DTP) in Kanazawa indicates, the Web’s arrival in Japan in the 1990s was one of a number of historical developments that positioned design in new arenas. These changes brought new actors into areas previously occupied and shaped by self‐consciously professional designers. Websites, web design, and the Internet behaved as an open space – technology that had not yet “stabilized,” to use the science and technology studies (STS) phrasing – that could be occupied by a conglomerate with a burgeoning IT division and performed by a non‐professional designer. In twentieth century Japan, as in many other Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries, graphic and industrial designers had organized for social and professional recognition of the designer as a skilled, irreplaceable member of the production team (Fischer and Hiesinger 1995; Insatsu Hakubutsukan 2008). Now, new technologies, uses, and users were destabilizing the industry, and designers who had fought for recognition of



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their professional status feared replacement by amateurs with DTP skills and a general degrading of graphic aesthetic sensibility and technique as a result. New practices existed alongside older and older new ones, creating a hybrid environment in which a foreign intern could use Photoshop, analog photography, and fax machines together, working alongside a team of suited men in a turquoise and white “office lady” uniform, despite her reassignment to a skilled role. My work that summer had only marginal if any historical impact, but illustrates important shifts and conditions in contemporary Japanese history and the contemporary global history of design. (Or at least it would if anything remained of it; the websites evanesced years ago.) But I had forgotten about the experience, even after beginning to research the history of 1990s Japan through its industrial and graphic design industries. In that project, design journalist and educator Watabe Chiharu and I focused research efforts on professional designers in Tokyo, as visible in products and photographs from the period, published in industry journals, and interviewed in oral histories (Design History of Now 2014). I had not recalled my experiences as a web designer in regional Japan let  alone thought them relevant. I overlooked them because they were at once too intimate and too distant, both in time and – with their amateurishness and location in a regional conglomerate, far from Tokyo’s storied design offices – from canonical or mainstream histories of Japanese design. I also overlooked them simply because the historian usually narrates someone else’s story, not one’s own. Why would I have thought to connect my own experiences either with design history or with Japan’s contemporary history more generally? I begin with this anecdote as it illustrates the difficulties of compiling contemporary history. Not least that contemporary history, what we might call history of the recent past, intersects with the realm of personal experience. It suffers from proximity, or from what we might more aptly call an “in‐between‐ ness of distance” that makes it neither history nor the present. Writing in 1975, historian John Dower noted, “For Western scholars, occupied Japan remains something of an anomaly: too remote (1945–1952) for most economists and political scientists, still uncomfortably close for historians” (Dower 1975, p. 485). Writing in 2018, the 23 years to 1995 provide a similar gap. Writing or even seeing “history that has just happened” presents a challenge because it is no longer fresh in the mind, yet not so long ago for public opinion to regard it as worth chronicling or archiving. The events of 20 or 30 years ago are close enough to make us believe we remember them, but far enough that events are anything but fresh in the mind, making it easy to misremember them. As the anecdote suggests, design historians can suffer from a blind spot when it comes to spotting the “significant quotidian” in recent history. This chapter raises and considers the particular challenges presented by the task of compiling design histories of the recent past – or, equally, history of the recent past through design, or history of recent design pasts. While acknowledging design history’s occlusions, the chapter also posits that design history, as a set of

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approaches, perspectives, and techniques, offers a potentially strong mode for undertaking histories of the contemporary, by design historians and others alike. It suggests that the approaches and perspectives possible in the history of design – attention to lived experience, materiality, and the everyday; an understanding of experience as interface with artifactual environment; and a concern with the making and experience of the artifacts, environments, and experiences that shape our physical and emotional interaction in the world – might provide an effective net for catching and seeing that history. Combined with methods for communicating histories that activate such an understanding of affect as a designer would – or in collaboration with artist and designers – the chapter suggests that design history offers a powerful script for compiling and communicating histories of the recent past, and for placing those histories in relation to decision‐making now. To make its points, the chapter revisits ground familiar to design historians and contemporary historians alike. I claim neither originality nor novelty in the treatment of either topic or set of methods. Rather, the intention is to invite historians working with contemporary questions and material to engage with design historical approaches, and to articulate avenues, tools, and challenges for researchers and students in contemporary design history, studies, research, and practice. To this end, the chapter draws primarily on evidence and literature in design history, with reference to some methodological reflections on contemporary history. The chapter is organized in three sections. The first explores the temporality, scope, and subjects of contemporary design history. The second discusses methods, perspectives, and challenges for undertaking contemporary design history effectively; and the third makes an argument for the potential of contemporary design history, as an aggregation of approaches and perspectives, to make a larger contribution to history practice and public knowledge alike. Assertions and arguments derive in part from findings from the research project, mentioned above, that sought to identify, test, and develop tools and perspectives for contemporary design history (Design History of Now 2014). That project identified methodologies, tools, and challenges through methods including a literature review within and beyond design history, dialogues with historians, curators, designers, and others working in the field, and student and public workshops. To test our emergent methods, we conducted scoping research into graphic and industrial design industry change in 1990s Japan, employing archival sources, oral history, and visual and material analysis. This chapter builds on findings from that project towards a more general theory of contemporary design history practice. Keeping in mind historians’ aversion to general theories, it nevertheless argues that our specific relationship with the present and recent past requires particular ways of working which design history might offer. At the same time, it emphasizes that even design history, with its attention to experience and the everyday, easily falls into the contemporary’s traps. With attention, however, design history can offer something useful for making sense of the present and recent past, and for productively



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questioning how we work with it and within it. Ultimately, the chapter aims to provoke critical, constructive reflection and action towards doing contemporary design history, and towards what contemporary design history can do.

The Time and Subjects of Contemporary Design History Writing in 2011, political historians Jan Palmowski and Kristina Spohr Readman characterized “contemporary history” as possessing the capacity to: engage on two levels with the past … On one level, contemporary historians can explore the cultural, political, social, intellectual and economic history of the most recent past and present – a time which historians are living through and can actively remember. On another, contemporary history can also encompass events and periods that are central to the formation of collective memory in the contemporary period. (Palmowski and Spohr Readman 2011, p. 504)

One obvious definition of contemporary design history, too, is histories of recent and current design practices, products, and cultures.1 Our study of design in 1990s Japan followed graphic and industrial designers’ experiences of the period, as a lens into historical shifts and conditions. We intended the project to counter two aporia: first, a lack of attention to design’s agency within histories of the period, and second, a lack of attention on the 1990s within design history, Japanese or otherwise. Whether as information graphics, hospital interiors, or packaged sweets, design products shaped everyday experience of economic, political, social, and technological change and crisis in the decade, at both the community and individual level. Given such impact, attending to design’s 1990s seemed a significant, potentially useful addition to current historical work on the period. Compiling contemporary design history can also involve recording design practice in the present, and offering critical, connected commentary on present events through practices of collecting, curating, and writing. Referring to historian Geoffrey Barraclough’s influential thoughts on contemporary history (Barraclough 1964), Spohr Readman writes: Leaning on Barraclough, I want to postulate, firstly, that the principal distinguishing feature of “contemporary history” (in the truest sense of the term) is surely that its practitioners will write in medias res about events and developments that are perceived as actual and central to present day life, as perceived by publics and political elites, and the outcome of which might still be uncertain. It is this definition of “instantaneity” that forms the “chronological core of recentness.” (Spohr Readman 2011, p. 526)

In discussions around methodologies for contemporary design history conducted as part of the 2013 research, design historians shared this view, with

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design historian Jane Pavitt describing contemporary design history as “retrieval of the present as well as the past” (Teasley 2014a). Here historical perspective becomes key: not only documenting the artifacts, experiences, and outcomes that constitute events but offering critical contextualization and analysis that fully employs the historian’s toolkit. We might look at Fiona Hackney’s examinations of agency and activism in British amateur craft since 2000 (Hackney 2013), or Jilly Traganou’s articulation of spatial politics in Manhattan’s Wall Street during the Occupy Movement in 2011 (Traganou 2016). Crucially, such work articulates the agency of design and designers – amateur or professional – in shaping contemporary conditions, agendas, and ideological stances. Economic, political, and social analyses of current affairs have acclimatized us to understanding contemporary conditions as the result of policy decisions, global financial market fluctuations, ingrained cultural biases, and the weather; contemporary design history not only writes the recent into design history, but indicates design’s role in shaping history as well. Such design history in‐the‐moment recalls the historian and journalist Timothy Garton Ash’s understanding of contemporary history as “history of the present” (Garton Ash 2000).2 In Garton Ash’s words: You record what people did not know at the time – for instance, that the Wall was about to come down. You dwell on developments that seemed terribly important then but would otherwise be quite forgotten now because they led nowhere. (Garton Ash 2000)

In Garton Ash’s formulation, immediacy means that some historically significant details may be missed and others, later seen as less important, emphasized. But he suggests that writing from “within” the present might help avoid the “optical illusion” of retrospective determinism, or selecting content based on later interpretations of a moment. Will Hackney and Traganou’s interpretations of early twenty‐first century amateur craft and anti‐capitalist protest seem prescient and significant in 20, 50, 100 years’ time? It is likely that they will, but what we can say with certainty, now, is that they provoke readers to think, to see differently, and perhaps to act in the present. Additionally, they provide a record by which future generations can understand our concerns and – importantly – the physical environment and material practices through which we express them. How far back does contemporary design history need to look? Spohr Readman suggests: contemporary historians need not only work from a certain starting point ­forward, exploring temporal causalities, contingency and agency of their object of research. They must also look backwards for explanatory depth  –  to said ­historical hinterland of events and the roots of developments – indeed, as far back as necessary. (Spohr Readman 2011, p. 526)



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Spohr Readman’s advice seems obvious yet, as design historian Linda Sandino has noted, “There’s not enough history in contemporary design history” (Teasley 2014b).3 Whether by editorial decision or for lack of attention, representations of recent and current design practice – including user or consumer behavior around new products – often focus on novelty and innovation, and downplay or omit connections to longer trajectories. Here we should remember historian David Edgerton’s reminder that new technologies become historically significant not when they are patented or first announced but when they are adopted on a mass scale and fundamentally shift common social practices, environmental conditions, or economic systems (Edgerton 2007). A new aesthetic tendency, technology, or eye‐catching product might represent a future potential direction, but we must attend equally if not more to the everyday uses and experience of that product if we are to represent its history accurately. Such an approach has been central to design history since the 1980s; when shifting attention to contemporary topics design historians can remember and apply these concerns. As part of this, we must remember that, as in our own lives, new practices or technologies do not immediately replace others, and to look for the agendas that shape our sources. Studying 1990s graphic design practice in Japan, Watabe and I saw that, while industry journals emphasized digital tools’ potential to radically transform design products and designers’ work experiences, many graphic designers and art directors preferred to continue working as they had previously and had the industry clout to dictate office practice, even if their own designs adopted a “digital” a esthetic (Watabe 2014a). Had we prioritized novelty and change, we would have missed this fundamental aspect of the period. Awareness of key arguments around sociotechnical change as complex and contingent on technology and human desires and capacities alike (Bijker 1995; Parr 1999), alongside attention to Edgerton’s adage, allowed us to counter the contemporary’s push towards the new. What are the timescales for communicating contemporary design history? One answer is “immediately.” The Victoria and Albert Museum’s “Rapid Response Collecting” initiative not only collects designed artifacts that speak to contemporary issues but displays them in a devoted gallery space (Victoria and Albert Museum 2018). The Design Museum’s Beazley Designs of the Year, an annual exhibition and competition, presents significant designed artifacts from the previous year with an emphasis on objects, systems, or spaces that convey conditions or concerns core to that year, or that have contributed to shaping them (The Design Museum 2018). Both museums disseminate these initiatives widely, raising the possibility that artifacts’ identification and analysis as historically significant or representative might impact existing ­experience, use, and memory of them, in real time. This raises questions about awareness, responsibility, and ethics on the part of the contemporary design historian. Like any act of live documentation, ­contemporary design history cannot operate outside the conditions it analyzes

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(Teasley 2014c). All data collection and presentation disturbs conditions in some way: evoking memories in oral history subjects or by adding to user ­statistics for public archives. Publicizing an artifact or designer in writing or by collection or exhibition within a museum context can affect market value. And presenting historical arguments can shape public opinion and produce contention, even violence. Contemporary design history brings even further potential for systems disturbance. In 2014, the Victoria and Albert Museum’s exhibition “Disobedient Objects” presented historic and contemporary objects created by grassroots social movements internationally for use in political protest. The exhibition offered free “how‐to guides” for fabricating some of the objects in the exhibition, presented as PDFs online and as tearaway sheets in the physical exhibition (Victoria and Albert Museum 2016). By November 2014, four months after the exhibition’s opening, protesters in the USA had used the exhibition’s how‐to guides to fabricate their own tear‐gas masks (Duarte 2014; Flood 2014). Direct intervention into protests was not an explicit aim of the exhibition, but curators Catherine Flood and Gavin Grindon recognized the live nature of presenting activist artifacts in a highly public, highly publicized media space (Flood and Grindon 2014, p. 19). Whether addressing a subject as explicitly political as “Disobedient Objects” or not, contemporary design history’s chroniclers must recognize and embrace this role, which means addressing questions around ethical practice, agency, and social responsibility (Jones et al. 2013). A second definition of contemporary design history, already suggested in previous paragraphs, is simply contemporary history through a design lens, or histories of the contemporary through design artifacts, practices, industries, and cultures, in which artifacts might be objects, policies, or interactions, material or immaterial (Fry et  al. 2015; Walker 1989, p. 33). The 1990s Japan project indicates precisely how. Owing to their inseparability from technological change, economic systems, everyday experience, and the material environment, the graphic and product design industries and their products provide rich insight into the period’s larger structural issues and conditions. Japan in the 1990s was marked by particular crises  –  social, economic, political, and environmental – that have shaped collective memory and scholarship on the period subsequently (Gerteis and George 2013; Yoda and Harootunian 2006). Our research confirmed many of these narratives, for example around the impact of the economic crash of 1992 on corporate and consumer spending, prices, and the experience of work in the period. It also nuanced and complicated these narratives by attending to how designers at different stages in their careers experienced the period (Watabe 2014a), and explored the extent to which decisions and conditions in design practice and products, as mediating elements of everyday life, affected others’ experiences and trajectories through the period. Contemporary design history’s subjects also require discussion. The 1990s project followed established design industries, but design history can range far



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beyond those boundaries, into money, international law, economic policy, computer code, and emerging scientific methods and mechanisms as artifacts and processes, to name only a few areas. The expansion of design history’s subjects corresponds to the broadening conceptualization of “design” within design history, studies, and research, from a set of professional industries and their products, often with culturally agreed high aesthetic value, to a more open‐ended stance that emphasizes design as an active set of processes, practices, or a mindset around improving environments and experiences (Julier 2014; Manzini 2015; Margolin 2002; Simon 1996). Contemporary design history can follow practices and products within this expanded definition, as the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Rapid Response Collecting initiative does through acquisitions like a “Pussy Hat” worn to the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, DC, collected as artifact testimony and record (Jones 2017). By highlighting the designed, constructed nature of artifacts and environments, contemporary design history also enables us to raise questions about the constructed nature of collective memory, and to nuance, enrich, and occasionally challenge grand narratives. Not all contemporary design history – like not all design history – does these things, but the combination of attention to the contemporary, of a perspective that foregrounds design, and of history’s apparatus enables it. The next section explores what a perspective that foregrounds design and employs history’s apparatus can be. The point is that methods are important too: not only studying design industries, products, and cultures, but the way that a contemporary design history approach allows us to study them.

Methods, Perspectives, and Challenges for Contemporary Design History Methods for contemporary design history expand on those of design history: both histories of design – in the expanded sense outlined above – and a particular disposition for conducting historical inquiry (Fallan 2010; Walker 1989). Design researcher Lucy Kimbell has described designers as “of the culture which really profoundly attends to human experiences at human scale and pays  attention to the artefacts” (Design Commission 2013, p. 21). Design history can bring similar attention to the process of “doing” history. If ­ “doing” history means in part to articulate and understand change over time, design history can accomplish this by attending to human and non‐human interactions within our environment, at both the immediate and larger scales. Put very simply, if a classic historical question is “who does what to whom?,” design history can ask “who and what does what to whom and what?” This mode of design history draws on approaches in actor‐network theory, archeology, and anthropology (Ingold 2007; Kimbell 2012; Latour 1992; Tilley 2004), particularly the emphasis on material agency and on sensory lived

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experience of our interactions with material and immaterial worlds. It shares perspectives with the social history of technology, the approach that sought to nuance grand, often technologically determinist, narratives around historical change by recording how users actually engaged with then‐new technologies such as the motor car and washing machine (Kline and Pinch 1996; Parr 1999). It also parallels more recent academic developments like “envirotech,” whose proponents bring together environmental history and STS perspectives (Jørgensen et al. 2013; Pritchard 2011), and the recent convergence of design history with environmental history (Fallan and Jørgensen 2017). Artifact analysis lies at the core of this approach, as it does for design history across periods. “Contemporary design history has objects. If it’s just history, it loses the object,” stated historian and curator Glenn Adamson in the 2013 discussions (Teasley 2014b). In design history, artifacts – including spaces and immaterial artifacts  –  become evidence alongside more conventional textual sources, quantitative data, visual sources and oral history, providing insight, routes, and provocations towards understanding economic, social, technological, cultural, environmental, and political conditions (Fallan 2010; Harvey 2009). As Spohr Readman notes, historians’ privileging of textual archival sources has traditionally made writing contemporary history difficult: if documents have not yet been archived or the archive is embargoed, then document‐based history cannot be written (Spohr Readman 2011, p. 510).4 Like oral history, visual sources, and cultural representations, artifacts surmount this problem (if only to present different ones). Palmowski and Spohr Readman suggest: Contemporary historians can provide a multilayered evaluation of how ideas, contexts, artefacts and structures affected the decisions of the powerful – and of the social practice of the nameless “many” on whose actions the exercise of power depended. (Palmowski and Spohr Readman 2011, p. 497)

Artifact analysis allows us to articulate the nature and impact of the environmental, economic, political, social, cultural, or technological forces that shaped artifacts and our experience of interactions with them. It also allows us to articulate how artifacts themselves  –  including raw materials  –  shape those forces. Together, these mean that actors must be identified, which – even in simple grammatical terms  –  necessitates assigning agency and seeing history as comprising networks and power flows. If everything is made, then who or what made it? Paying attention to our interactions with artifacts and our environment – for example how the early tourist websites I designed in Kanazawa impacted users’ interactions with the shops and services they advertised – allows us to pinpoint the impact of larger historical decisions and conditions as they play out, rather than when they are made. Garton Ash, arguing for the importance of recording live historical events, commented:



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During some of the dramatic debates between the leaders of Czechoslovakia’s “velvet revolution,” in the Magic Lantern theater in Prague in November 1989, I was the only person present taking notes. I remember thinking, “If I don’t write this down, nobody will. It will be gone for ever, like bathwater down the drain.” So much recent history has disappeared like that, never to be recovered, for want of a recorder. (Garton Ash 2000)

For political history, specific arguments made, directions considered, and turning points reached in debates can disappear if not recorded. But the political history of experience – a social history of the present – can be accessed through artifacts, either direct analysis or their use as prompts in oral history. Here, contemporary design history’s practitioners can draw productively on precedents set in anthropology and material culture studies for studying social identity and environment through in‐time interaction with artifacts (Miller 2015), and from the use of “design probes” in design research (Designing with People n.d.). As the format of what we can consider as an artifact proliferates and dematerializes, we need to acquire tools for identifying, interpreting, and communicating the different sensory and emotional experiences that come from interaction with a website, a policy, or a service. We can draw on digital anthropology and user experience design research methods, but again should not forget the deep historical perspective and attention to nuance and complexity developed already for histories of people and artifacts in earlier periods. Alongside ethnographic or other forms of research into user experience of interactions of contemporary artifacts and environments, we can and should continue to mine archives for qualitative and quantitative data that can illuminate those interactions. What is the contemporary design history equivalent of the court records, immigration logs, and inventories that allow colleagues in Early Modern history to trace interactions with other people and things? Attention to materiality prompts researchers to consider the sensory experience of human–artifact or human–environment relationships and to reflect on the impact of that experience for how we understand larger historical narratives, and indeed how they have unfolded (Ingold 2007; LeCain 2017; Mitchell 2013). Contemporary design history is no different: in addition to thinking outside historical categories of artifactual evidence, we can attend to the material properties and consequent impact of those artifacts and environments, how the materiality of something like a dead web link shapes the experience and memory of an interaction (Teasley 2014a). In the 2013 workshops, design curator Jana Scholze articulated this position by saying, “With something like open source design, what is the object? What is the object with games, with software? Is the inquiry not about the ‘object’ per se? What is the object?” (Teasley 2014c). Similarly, design researcher Guy Julier wondered how c­ ontemporary design histories of social systems would proceed, given the immaterial nature of something like a social service, algorithm, or public policy (Teasley 2014c). We need to learn to perceive different forms of

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artifacts and to acquire skills and language to understand, analyze, and communicate them. Viewing design as process as well as product might also prevent myopia. For the 1990s Japan research, understanding magazine layouts as a palimpsest or set of traces of actions, performed by multiple actors over time, allowed us  to disaggregate “digital” appearance from actual hybrid production. Understanding all conditions as made, whether by natural, human, or hybrid forces, necessarily brings temporality to any study of contemporary design, in  effect historicizing it. Furthermore, contemporary design history has the unusual opportunity to document decision‐making as it happens rather than inferring it from records or artifacts. Taking a cue from colleagues in social ­sciences and design research (Kimbell 2012; Law and Callon 1992), contemporary design history can articulate how decisions are made. This includes decisions that do not obviously appear in final products, a point stressed by writer and curator Monika Parrinder and designer–maker Maiko Tsutsumi (Teasley 2014b). Doing so as part of attending to production, mediation, and consumption, as the temporal elements of design’s “social life” (Appadurai 1986; Lees‐Maffei 2009), might also enhance history‐telling’s ability to ­indicate the produced, mediated nature of history itself. Artifact analysis for contemporary history poses challenges. The number of artifacts available for study mushrooms for current and recent history, and abundance complicates the selection of evidence and time and labor resources required to filter and work with that evidence (Garton Ash 2000; Palmowski and Spohr Readman 2011, p. 495). However, abundance also provides the useful prompt that all histories are only ever partial and fragmentary. In the 1990s Japan project, the profusion of sources and direct access to multiple individual voices made it difficult to escape the conclusion that research results represented an aggregate of individual experiences within specific industry communities, rather than a definitive singular narrative of “design in 1990s Japan.” Focusing even on professional designers, rather than on users of design more widely, and looking only within graphic design, we found clear specificity of experience depending on designers’ age, industry, gender, location, and role at the time (Watabe 2014a).5 Established designers found the 1990s difficult and discouraging due to the economic crash and subsequent stagnation of demand. But many designers who were students or more junior at the time recalled the 1990s as exciting and full of potential, as new, more casual graphic design styles and ways of working emerged. As Watabe phrased it: One thing that really struck me from the interviews and public sessions is how much generational differences and other differences in stance change the way we saw the 1990s, the way we remember the decade and the design events that we mark as important in it. Obviously, the design history of any period will differ according to who’s looking. But whereas there’s some sort of consensus about important events in design history up to the 1980s, it’s a free‐for‐all once you hit the 1990s. (Watabe 2014a)



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Social history emphasizes the rich variance in individual experience of shared conditions, yet some histories of design elide difference in favor of grand macro‐ narratives of change, and takes narratives from political or economic history as accepted fact. An aggregate approach towards events such as the end of Japan’s economic bubble c. 1992, on the other hand, asks about specific experience. For some established design consultancies, for example, the bubble experience did not truly end, in terms of types of briefs and clients and the rate and scale of commissions and income, until 1995. An aggregate approach offers the chance to nuance narratives about the pace, drivers, and rate of change. A fragmentary picture insists on the contingency of things and poses the possibility that much of the data escapes assumptions governing the measurement of variables. It highlights disparities and challenges narrative hegemony, in particular inaccurate assumptions that globalization has erased differences in experience in an industry or practice like design. It recalls design historian Yuko Kikuchi’s critique, in the 2013 discussions, that “Local specificity is hidden by the idea of a ‘common language’ – and we forget that histories are different, when we’re speaking of now” (Teasley 2014b). Kikuchi’s point, like that of the movement to decolonize design (Schultz et al. 2018), was that power imbalances operate within contemporary design history, as anywhere else, and that its practitioners should consider their own power and its potential effects when engaging with others or defining the field (something acutely relevant for this chapter, which makes a subjective if evidenced proposal for what contemporary design history might be). Artifacts’ evanescence offers a further challenge for contemporary design history. In the 2013 discussions, craft and design historian Christine Guth called for attention to ephemeral objects that have an impact but are overlooked, whether for being too “popular” for academic scrutiny, aimed at audiences unfamiliar to historians, or simply too evanescent to catch (Teasley 2014a). For our research on design in 1990s Japan, publishers’ archives and design university libraries afforded access to industry publications and other book and periodical designs of the period, but some ephemeral sources such as billboards were available only in visual records like film and photographs, and others such as websites and flyers only in memory. Industrial design products resided in an inconvenient valley between collectible and useful: often still in everyday use but unnoticed as historically significant, whether for presenting to researchers or for preserving rather than discarding, once scruffy or superseded. Charity shops and online auctions become a key source, raising questions about the arbitrary nature of accessible pools of objects that become useful for questioning artifact analysis‐based histories of earlier periods as well. Artifact histories of earlier periods share the challenge of evanescent, overlooked objects (Adamson 2009), but evanescence in the face of abundance for contemporary material feels particularly acute. Museum collection policies for contemporary material, including acquisitions related to topical temporary exhibitions, catch some of this ephemera, as do personal collections. An exhibition at the British Museum in 2001 on

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souvenirs from contemporary Japan, for example, added telephone cards, a now‐obsolete technology and graphic product, to the Museum’s collection. And for the 1990s Japan project, personal archives of ephemera such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) club flyers and supermarket advertising inserts into daily newspapers provided invaluable narratives of aesthetics, actors, technologies, and economies outside those presented by industry journals. Contemporary design history’s practitioners can also develop lenses and filters working with the multiple material natures of contemporary artifacts, for example web use metadata and open access records of users’ experiences with designed artifacts like Amazon product reviews (Teasley 2014a). A further challenge lies in convincing audiences that the familiar and immediate are significant. Here too we can draw on design history’s developed expertise in presenting mundane objects as historically significant. Artifacts’ multivalency presents a third challenge and opportunity for contemporary design history. Historian Giorgio Riello, among others, has pointed out the difficulty of assuring definitive historical conclusions from artifacts, noting “Artefacts are multifarious entities whose nature and heuristic value is often determined by the diverse range of narratives that historians bring with them” (Riello 2009, p. 30). The potential to mislead may differ for contemporary and earlier artifacts; we are more likely to be able to identify an artifact and its context, but may miss salient facets precisely because of familiarity. In our research into design in 1990s Japan, employing oral history and archival sources, including quantitative data, allowed us to cross‐check findings from overly familiar objects, and to recognize key problems posed by them for conventional historical narratives of the period. For contemporary design history as for history of earlier periods (Harvey 2009), artifacts pose useful problems for familiar narratives; at the same time, unfamiliar data allows us to work more critically and objectively with artifacts we think we know. Temporal immediacy and the possibility of oral histories allow stories compiled and told to reflect the multiplicity of subjective experience of a period, but our own subjective memory of a period matters, very clearly, as well. Personal experience offers both particular help and particular hindrance: the help is that we can identify and access plural heterogeneous actors. The hindrance is that we believe we know a story, and must move past our own assumptions and familiarity, as my own inability to recall my web design experience in relation to graphic design in 1990s Japan demonstrates. Both design historians and contemporary historians have considered the advantages and disadvantages of subjectivity and its relation, proximity, for the activities of doing ­history (Fallan and Lees‐Maffei 2015; McBride 2011). Within or nearby contemporary history we cannot see it clearly; we lack the distance prized by historians in the twentieth century as requisite to assess factors in change and continuity. But at the same time, embeddedness within, or at the very least some proximity, can afford access to archives and sources, and perhaps the ability to recognize and understand nuance once apprised to it.



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Checks and balances through cross‐disciplinary work might be a way to do this. They bring other advantages, as well. Palmowski and Spohr Readman argued that contemporary history, to retain effectiveness and salience beyond its late twentieth‐century incarnation, needed to cross‐fertilize: Entering into a dialogue with other scholarly approaches and new methods of analysis will not only provide a fuller account of contemporary history, it will also generate a more complex analysis of power construction and decision‐making … In the twenty‐first century, contemporary history must be as mindful of diverse historical approaches, as it must engage with other disciplines including cultural studies, anthropology, the political sciences, and the physical and health sciences. (Palmowski and Spohr Readman 2011, p. 497)

Design history, as a discipline, has actively engaged in cross‐fertilization with fields as varied as history of art and architecture, cultural studies, social and political history, economic history, feminist history and gender studies, LGBTQ history and queer theory, postcolonial studies, anthropology, business history, and postcolonial studies (Fallan 2010; Margolin 2002; Walker 1989). Design history might fruitfully engage further with these areas and with materially minded disciplines like environmental history, as these other disciplines themselves shift and develop. Design history would benefit from increased engagement with quantitative analysis, including “big data” at the scale that requires machine learning techniques, and with methods developing within the digital humanities. Critical race studies’ presence within design history is sorely lacking, and geopolitical shifts in the twenty‐first century afford the welcome opportunity to fundamentally reconsider the conceptual maps that underpin design historical practice: by adopting postcolonial perspectives on topics in contemporary European design, for example, rather than consigning awareness of postcolonial power structures to studies of former colonies alone. More extensive and more overt collaboration with researchers of all stripes might also produce robust findings. The 1990s Japan project would have benefited from work with an environmental historian, for example, as mapping power and resource flows such as electricity demand and design industry waste volumes would have allowed a more rounded picture of the social lives of design practitioners, products, and tools. Contemporary design history  –  as method and topic alike  –  can cross‐ fertilize further with design research, not least, as 2013 discussion participants noted, by embracing participatory design and co‐design methods for generating data and its interpretation, analysis, and use (Teasley 2014b). As part of the 1990s Japan research, Watabe and I led public workshops in Tokyo around the question, “What should a history of 1990s design include?” We worked with visual and physical probes to stimulate recollection, critical assessment, and discussion around this open‐ended question. We aimed to encourage and ­capture multiple perspectives, and to empower participants to feel themselves actors in the history, regardless of age or professional status at the time.

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These workshops ended with data collection and the participants’ own personal takeaways, but one strand of the research could easily have run as co‐ creation with participants, transforming social design proponent Ezio Manzini’s concept of “design‐ing” – as an active, inclusive activity performed by all – into “design history‐ing” (Manzini 2015). In addition to adapting methods from other fields, contemporary design history can draw on difficulties for interdisciplinary collaboration, for instance between journalism and contemporary history as fields that document, analyze, and communicate current events. Garton Ash describes the similarities: the virtues of good journalism and good history are very similar: exhaustive, scrupulous research; a sophisticated, critical approach to the sources; a strong sense of time and place; imaginative sympathy with all sides; logical argument; clear and vivid prose. (Garton Ash 2000)

At the same time, he notes that journalists write to short deadlines so can tend towards superficiality, while academics take time but sit outside the conditions they describe, and descriptions of events can seem unreal to actual participants (Garton Ash 2000). Garton Ash’s characterization correlates with our experience in the 1990s Japan project. Watabe wrote of our collaboration: It’s hard to say that journalists and academic historians make ideal working ­companions. One example: this morning I conducted an interview in London, and I had to write up the article for a deadline tonight. According to a historian I’d need to check all the sources before writing anything up, but that would make me miss my deadline. And besides, one page of the magazine can only fit so many words. If the wall of academia opposes things I’ve always taken for granted, how much can a media approach contribute to history? A better question is: where can we find halfway points and correspondences/agreements? … the project itself will run for the next year, so this is a major issue we need to clear. (Watabe 2014b)

It may be that we never cleared this issue. While we found it easy to comply with both fields’ standards when compiling evidence, when analyzing material and disseminating findings this was often difficult. How, for example, to offer both journalism’s emphasis on clarity and history’s preference for acknowledging nuance and complexity? Rather than one unified voice, we often opted for multiple voices co‐existing on the material, a tactic that allowed it to reside in multiple cultures and languages of practice. The inability to reconcile standard practices proved a benefit: together, our various presentations of research findings further demonstrate the subjective, aggregate nature of historical experience and its representation, and made a point about the open ownership of contemporary design’s histories and of contemporary history more broadly.



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At the same time, contemporary design history’s practitioners can share its methods with colleagues in other fields, as a contribution towards effective, ethical history. In sum, these include (but are certainly not limited to) artifact analysis alongside other types of historical source, curating alongside writing as  practice, sound empirical argumentation combined with theoretical ­agility and critique, self‐reflexivity, an attention to narrative, and the question “who and what does what to whom and what?”

The Potential of Contemporary Design History In order not to be crowded out by competing voices as they speak to power, contemporary historians must become more mindful of how they engage in public debate – in “high” and “low” politics. In short, the need for contemporary historians to interact with political power and with different publics has never been greater, but the conditions and the presuppositions for doing so have changed completely over the last half‐century, if not the last ten years. (Palmowski and Spohr Readman 2011, p. 500)

In the public sphere, contemporary history has provided preservation of sources – documentation – as well as critical engagement with public memory: bringing historians’ critical perspectives to create public narratives and trying to compile more accurate ones, for populations living with memories of those events. Contemporary design history might provide another perspective or method for participating in public decisions around shared futures, both as a form of history (Guldi and Armitage 2015) and as part of the project to employ “design thinking” or “design” within government, business, and communities (Bason 2016). Contextualization and comparison offer two ways for doing this. Parallels drawn between Japan’s “lost decade” and economic and demographic shifts in the UK and other economies render a study of Japan’s 1990s through design relevant beyond Japan as well (Pilling 2014). While remembered as a painful time for many designers working at the time, understanding how individual designers and the industries more broadly reacted to change and crisis provides some explanation for conditions within Japan’s design industries now. Additionally, it might provide useful comparisons for designers operating within conditions that – given climate change, an aging population, economic inequality, regional geopolitical tensions, and unresolved environmental, social,  and economic issues resulting from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake – remain equally, if not more, challenging today. Contemporary design history can make a powerful contribution to public memory through record‐making, in a practice that not only records historical conditions and their evidence but frames them within salient critique. The Victoria and Albert Museum’s Rapid Response Collecting initiative performs this function in part by framing historical objects within “design.” This act

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endows often mass‐produced, cheap, or anonymous objects with cultural capital while at the same time drawing on their approachability, a double act that intensifies attention and appeal. Similarly, Clive Dilnot has evocatively argued that visually engaging, intentional, but almost ephemeral slices of historical pasts inserted into contemporary urban fabric within memory sites such as Berlin might provoke critical engagement with troubled pasts and their legacy at a moment when they disappear from living memory (Dilnot 2015). As both of the above examples indicate, contemporary design history’s power derives in part from the media at its command. Palmowski and Spohr Readman characterize a key strand in postwar European contemporary history as “the construction of public memory and national self‐understanding” (Palmowski and Spohr Readman 2011, p. 490). They cite historian Hans Rothfel’s conviction that immediacy allowed historians to create empathy, and to use this empathy to educate audiences and impact decision‐making. Most readily but not exclusively through exhibitions, contemporary design history can communicate in ways that do this, telling stories through the nature of what we research that activate empathy and in doing so indicate how design plays a role in construction of public memory, including narratives of past and present. Such an understanding of contemporary design history’s agency – whether positive, neutral, or negative –combines the historian’s sense of moral responsibility with the designer’s belief in design’s potential to create change, within a more general critical activist stance provoked by a sense of urgency around social, economic, and political inequality and instability and the pace of environmental change. Palmowski and Spohr Readman write: Arguably, the growth in popular demand for representations and evaluations of recent historical events makes it all the more necessary for contemporary historians to be heard. Precisely because governments and politicians can derive (and on occasion actively seek) historical legitimacy for their actions from other, non‐professional sources much more easily, there is a continuing need for historians, with their ability to conceptualize and contextualize the present against the historical background, to engage with political power. (Palmowski and Spohr Readman 2011, p. 499)

At the same time, we must attend to the limits and contingency of such a critical stance. All history‐making is political, and Christine Guth noted in 2013 that inequality extends to what can and cannot be said, depending on the context in which we practice: “We take for granted the freedom to be critical, even political, in our analyses. But our students may not” (Teasley 2014b). Criticality embodies a certain hubris and may not have the impact we hope, quantitatively or qualitatively. Even within these limits, however, contemporary design history offers something if we agree with the charge of moral responsibility, whether as historians or as individuals. What design history brings, differently, is the compelling



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nature of artifacts, an emphasis on everyday lived experience, and the reimagining of events, environments, and conditions that occurs when we see history as the accumulation of interactions between people and people, people and things, and things and things. Whether addressing the history of graphic design in 1990s Japan through interviews with prominent designers, co‐design workshops, or personal recollections of writing HTML in a turquoise uniform with a floppy pussy bow, at its best contemporary design history could combine seeing as a designer – history as the experience of interfaces – with seeing as a historian – narratives of why and how, inquisitiveness, and fundamental dissatisfaction with received narratives, and a scientific concern to work from sources, whatever form they may take. Attending to the materiality of those encounters in relation to large historical factors, communicating the narratives that emerge from them through compelling, problem‐posing means, and provoking awareness of interactions with the environment as constituting experience and building memory: these are only some of the ways in which design history might contribute, both as history and as design, to contemporary designs.

Acknowledgments Research for this chapter was generously supported by an International Partnership and Mobility Scheme grant from the British Academy, and by the Royal College of Art and Tokyo Zokei University. Thanks are also due to Watabe Chiharu, Justine Boussard, Lauren Fried, Zara Arshad, all interviewees and discussion group participants in London and Tokyo, and colleagues, students, and external guests at workshops on contemporary design history in the V&A/RCA postgraduate program in History of Design, 2013–2017 and to Anne Massey for the encouragement to contribute this chapter.

Notes 1 “Contemporary history” as practiced in Europe developed largely after 1945, with particular care towards understanding the impact of World War II on subsequent nation‐building and populations (Palmowski and Spohr Readman 2011, p. 487). This focus on postwar European political and social history, rather than a more expanded “history of the recent past,” made much published contemporary history less immediately relevant to work in contemporary design history than the common wording might suggest. The genre’s methodological concerns, types of evidence, and attentiveness to the formation of public memory and to history as subjective are, however, extremely relevant for contemporary design history in and of any geography. 2 Garton Ash draws the phrase “history of the present” from American diplomat George Kennan’s review of a previous book of Garton Ash’s (Garton Ash 2000).

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3 All quotations from research project workshop participants are cited in the workshop reports, published as part of the project website. Citations here refer to that text; speakers are noted in in‐text references but the chapter references provide the workshop reports, rather than listing the contribution of each panelist separately. 4 Employing only archival documents also avoided the danger of overly subjective interpretation due to proximity to historical events; somewhat tautologically, concerns around the contemporary contributed to privileging the archive, and working only with archives disallows most contemporary history. 5 Spohr Readman offers a related critique of “generational” contemporary history, noting that what is “within the lifetime of” one author will not be for another, indeed for many readers (Spohr Readman 2011, p. 523).

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Edgerton, D. (2007). The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fallan, K. (2010). Design History: Understanding Theory and Method. London: Berg Publishers. Fallan, K. and Jørgensen, F.A. (2017). Environmental histories of design: towards a new research agenda. Journal of Design History 30 (2): 103–121. Fallan, K. and Lees‐Maffei, G. (2015). It’s personal: subjectivity in design history. Design and Culture 7 (1): 5–27. Fischer, F. and Hiesinger, K.B. (eds.) (1995). Japanese Design: A Survey Since 1950. New York: Abrams. Fletcher, W.M. and von Staden, P. (eds.) (2014). Japan’s “Lost Decade”: Causes, Legacies and Issues of Transformative Change. London: Routledge. Flood, C. (2014). How to guide: a makeshift tear‐gas mask. The Design Dimension, BBC Radio 4, 20 November 2014. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ b04ps6py (accessed 7 April 2018). Flood, C. and Grindon, G. (2014). Introduction. In: Disobedient Objects (eds. G. Grindon and C. Flood), 6–25. London: V&A Publishing. Fry, T., Dilnot, C., and Stewart, S.C. (2015). Design and the Question of History. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Garton Ash, T. (2000). Introduction. History of the Present: Essays, Sketches, and Dispatches from Europe in the 1990s. http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/a/ ash‐present.html (accessed 3 March 2018). Gerteis, C. and George, T.S. (eds.) (2013). Japan Since 1945: From Postwar to Post‐Bubble. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Guldi, J. and Armitage, D. (2015). The History Manifesto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hackney, F. (2013). Quiet activism and the new amateur: the power of home and hobby crafts. Design and Culture 5 (2): 169–193. Harvey, K. (ed.) (2009). History and Material Culture. London: Routledge. Ingold, T. (2007). Materials against materiality. Archaeological Dialogues 14 (1): 1–16. Insatsu Hakubutsukan (ed.) (2008). 1950‐nendai Nihon no gurafikku dezain: dezainā tanjō. Tokyo: Kokusho Kankokai. Jones, H., Ostberg, K., and Randeraad, N. (eds.) (2013). Contemporary History on Trial: Europe Since 1989 and the Role of the Expert Historian. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Jones, J. (2017). “Pussyhat” acquired for rapid response collection. V&A Blog, 8 March 2017. https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/network/pussyhat‐acquired‐for‐ rapid‐response‐collection (accessed 7 April 2018). Jørgensen, D., Jørgensen, F.A., and Pritchard, S. (2013). New Natures: Joining Environmental History with Science and Technology Studies. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Julier, G. (2014). The Culture of Design, 3e. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

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Kimbell, L. (2012). Rethinking design thinking: part II. Design and Culture 4 (2): 129–148. Kline, R.R. and Pinch, T.J. (1996). Users as agents of technological change: the social construction of the automobile in the rural United States. Technology and Culture 37 (4): 763–795. Latour, B. (1992). Where are the missing masses? The sociology of a few mundane artifacts. In: Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (eds. W.E. Bijker and J. Law), 225–258. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Law, J. and Callon, M. (1992). The life and death of an aircraft: a network analysis of technical change. In: Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (ed. W.J. Bijker and J. Law), 21–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. LeCain, T.J. (2017). The Matter of History: How Things Create the Past. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lees‐Maffei, G. (2009). The production‐consumption‐mediation paradigm. Journal of Design History 22 (4): 351–376. Manzini, E. 2015. Design, When Everyone Designs: An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation, (trans. R. Coad). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Margolin, V. (2002). The Politics of the Artificial: Essays on Design and Design Studies. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Matanle, P. (2003). Restructuring Japanese Business in a Global Era. New York: Routledge Curzon. McBride, I. (2011). The Shadow of the gunman: Irish historians and the IRA. Journal of Contemporary History 46 (3): 686–710. Miller, D. (2015). The Comfort of Things. Cambridge: Polity. Mitchell, T. (2013). Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. London: Verso. Ogasawara, Y. (1998). Office Ladies and Salaried Men: Power, Gender, and Work in Japanese Companies. Berkeley: University of California Press. Palmowski, J. and Readman, K.S. (2011). Speaking truth to power: contemporary history in the twenty‐first century. Journal of Contemporary History 46 (3): 485–505. Parr, J. (1999). Domestic Goods: The Material, the Moral, and the Economic in the Postwar Years. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Pilling, D. (2014). Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival. London: Allen Lane. Pritchard, S.B. (2011). Confluence: The Nature of Technology and the Remaking of the Rhône. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Riello, G. (2009). Things that shape history: material culture and historical narratives. In: History and Material Culture (ed. K. Harvey), 24–47. London: Routledge. Schultz, T., Abdulla, D., Ansari, A. et  al. (eds.) (2018). Editors’ introduction. Design and Culture 10 (6): 1. Simon, H.A. (1996). The Sciences of the Artificial, 3e. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.



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Spohr Readman, K. (2011). Contemporary history in Europe: from mastering national pasts to the future of writing the world. Journal of Contemporary History 46 (3): 506–530. Teasley, S. (2014a). The dangers and delights of contemporary design history, part 1. Design History of Now: Addressing the Contemporary in Research and Practice, 15 December 2014. http://historyofnow.rca.ac.uk/london‐professional‐ consultations‐key‐finds (accessed 7 March 2018). Teasley, S. (2014b). The dangers and delights of contemporary design history, part 2. Design History of Now: Addressing the Contemporary in Research and Practice, 15 December 2014. http://historyofnow.rca.ac.uk/the‐dangers‐and‐delights‐ of‐contemporary‐design‐history‐part‐2 (accessed 7 March 2018). Teasley, S. (2014c). The dangers and delights of contemporary design history, part 3. Design History of Now: Addressing the Contemporary in Research and Practice, 15 December 2014. http://historyofnow.rca.ac.uk/the‐dangers‐and‐delights‐ of‐contemporary‐design‐history‐part‐3 (accessed 7 March 2018). The Design Museum (2018). Beazley designs of the year. https://designmuseum. org/exhibitions/beazley‐designs‐of‐the‐year (accessed 25 April 2018). Tilley, C.Y. (2004). The Materiality of Stone: Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology. Oxford: Berg. Traganou, J. (2016). Wall Street bounded and unbinding: the spatial as a multifocal lens in design studies. In: The Routledge Companion to Design Studies (eds. P. Sparke and F. Fisher), 29–39. Basingstoke: Taylor & Francis Ltd. Victoria and Albert Museum (2016). Disobedient objects: how‐to guides. www. vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/disobedient‐objects/how‐to‐guides (accessed 7 April 2018). Victoria and Albert Museum (2018). Rapid response collecting. https://www. vam.ac.uk/collections/rapid‐response‐collecting (accessed 25 April 2018). Walker, J.A. (1989). Design History and the History of Design. London: Pluto Press. Watabe, C. (2014a). Nothing interesting happened in the 1990s? It depends who you were. Design History of Now: Addressing the Contemporary in Research and Practice, 10 December 2014. http://historyofnow.rca.ac.uk/nothing‐interesting‐ happened‐in‐the‐1990s‐it‐depends‐who‐you‐were (accessed 7 March 2018). Watabe, C. (2014b). Project seminar at the RCA, 1: How can journalists and academic historians work together? Design History of Now: Addressing the ­ Contemporary in Research and Practice, 10 December 2014. http:// historyofnow.rca.ac.uk/project‐seminar‐at‐the‐rca‐1‐how‐can‐journalists‐and‐ academic‐historians‐work‐together (accessed 7 March 2018). Yoda, T. and Harootunian, H.D. (2006). Japan after Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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Nostalgia Elizabeth Guffey

Almost inevitably, cultural forms and expressions take something from the past, but nostalgia plays an increasingly important – though often overlooked – role in design of the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries. Nostalgia, memory, and this recent turn to the past challenge ideas of modernism and progressivism. In contemporary design especially, the embrace of nostalgia means taking a closer look at historical forms and a willingness to take popular culture seriously. From retro car design to vintage jeans, “antique” toasters to collectible Star Wars toys, consumer culture is filled with a profusion of nostalgic tendencies today. But our ever‐expanding embrace of nostalgia in design indicates more than a passing fad; nostalgic design suggests an important shift in the popular relationship with the past. Today, advertising agencies, branding firms, and guides speak of the “power of nostalgia” (Havlena and Holak 1991, p. 327), but the conflation of design and styles from the past is nothing new. The sentimental yearning for a former time or place drove nineteenth century revivalism. By revisiting the styles and appearance of previous eras, architects and designers aimed to escape the Industrial Revolution as well as the troubles that accompanied rapid urban growth. At the same time, new methodical approaches to understanding and ordering the past allowed history to grow as a professional discipline. Other areas of inquiry, for example archeology, art history, and geology, were established as new fields. This new historicism, however, fostered more than a scholarly consciousness of the past. It was also a key driver behind architectural and design innovation. From the Gothic Revival spires of the Houses of Parliament to the hoop skirts and A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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eighteenth century hairstyles of the Rococo Revival, the styles of the past echoed through the nineteenth century. But these revivals also embodied a form of nostalgia that was serious and considered. Ideas of faith, nationalism, and politics were conjured in historically correct detail. Some British architects and designers agreed with A.W.N. Pugin, who believed that structures constructed in the Gothic style could express his personal nostalgia for an era in which piety and devotion reigned. Others in France saw in the neo‐Baroque a nostalgic nod backwards, toward the age of absolutism. In the USA, on the other hand, the Colonial Revival evoked for Americans nostalgia for a time that seemed more heroic and patriotic. Nostalgia in design was a carefully considered affair. While nineteenth century revivalism was rooted in nostalgia, architects and designers in the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries have nudged the sensibility in new directions. This chapter examines the ways in which styles and approaches to the past inform contemporary design practice. Advertising campaigns resurrect old black and white photographs of family picnics, products are styled using mid‐century palettes, and company logos are based on lettering originally found on wood type posters. These and other designs today build on ideas of vintage and retro, moving nostalgia in new directions: they express our changing connection with the past. In fact, nostalgia in art and design is suffused with an ambivalent view of modernity and often challenges the belief that history is an entirely top‐down affair. Nostalgia in design today challenges older, more scholarly approaches toward history. These attitudes toward the past are not without criticism. Newer, less official forms of nostalgia are often criticized as inherently misleading or even false. Identifying the public’s deep attraction to the past, critic Natalia Ilyin warns that recent forms of “nostalgia twists truth out of its socket” by romanticizing and simplifying bygone eras (Ilyin 1995, p. 25). But nostalgia in design practice today reveals a deeper engagement with the truth; in fact, it expresses not only how we see the past, but also who we are now, and how we see our own future.

The Problem with Nostalgia in the Modern Era Often used to describe backward‐looking longing, the word nostalgia has a long and troubled history. At the same time, although a nostalgic current runs through twenty‐first century design, it remains relatively little discussed. Although much of today’s nostalgic impulses pass under more popular terms such as “retro” and “vintage,” understanding the history of nostalgia itself is also important. In fact, much of what passes as nostalgia today might seem to undercut the very state of modernity itself. Little wonder that, as scholar Svetlana Boym observes, nostalgia is often seen as an inappropriate impulse, wrong feeling, or even a “bad word” (Boym 2001, p. xiv). Nostalgia’s poor reputation may, in part, be traced to its very origins. Several scholars have written extensively on the subject (Boym 2001; Illbruck 2012;

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Zwingmann 1959) but all observe that nostalgia was first noted, discussed, and classified in the seventeenth century. Here, however, it was identified as a medical disease, explicitly linked with homesickness. Writing in 1688, Johannes Hofer published “A Medical Dissertation on Nostalgia or Homesickness,” arguing that the condition had both physical and emotional roots. Hofer linked the term to the Greek words Nosos (a return to one’s native land) and Algos (as a form of suffering). But he suggested that both, brought together in the form of nostalgia, could bring on a fearful kind of psychopathology (Hofer 1688). For the next century, nostalgia was understood as a menace that might strike unsuspecting migrants and travelers far from home. The Basel‐based doctor and scholar Theodor Zwinger insisted that Swiss soldiers fighting as mercenaries, for instance, might become feverish during battle or openly desert their post (Zwinger 1710). Some soldiers reportedly lost their will to fight and walked away from the battlefield when they heard the sound of Swiss cowbells ringing. By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, nostalgia was widely accepted as a disease closely linked to separation. It was experienced as an abrupt or violent deprivation (Roth 1991, p. 7). Only in the late nineteenth century did doctors begin questioning this form of nostalgia. The word began disappearing from medical journals only when physicians like the French psychiatrist Charles Lasègue insisted that nostalgia was anything but a disease; anyone with proper training, Lasègue argued in 1875, might be able to distinguish between mere homesickness and more serious “troubles intellectuels” (Lasègue 1875, p. 760). Casual diagnoses of nostalgia, other physicians argued, were not only wrong‐headed but even a “danger to science” (Roth 1991, p. 21). The disease of nostalgia was gradually put to rest as a kind of “medical fantasy” (Roth 1991). And in so doing, the medical establishment transferred “nostalgia” from a disease of the brain to psychiatric or psychosomatic illness (Batcho 1998). Nostalgia in the mid‐ to late nineteenth century ceased to be defined as a physiological condition and was increasingly understood to be a complex emotional state; as such, it slowly transformed into a kind of sentimentality and filtered into popular aesthetics. In a time of political, industrial, and economic upheaval, nostalgia was still understood in terms of individual displacement, but it could also suggest a broader sense of communal loss. After the US Civil War, Confederate soldiers longed for the Old South, for example, while supporters of France’s Napoleon III were often nostalgic for a world that vanished with the Battle of Waterloo and defeat of Napoleon I. The nostalgia evoked by such images, whether private or collective, bears one point in common: it is always characterized by a certain seriousness. While such sentimental yearning continued to shape nostalgia through the early twentieth century, emerging ideas of modernity often overshadowed this backward‐looking sensibility. The very idea of progress – as well as new possibilities for travel and new understanding of time and space – was beginning to profoundly reshape the modern world. Out of such change, newer ideas toward

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time’s passage began to emerge. What the historian and theorist Leo Marx calls “the progressive world view” developed. As this attitude derived “from a trust in the virtually limitless expansion of the new knowledge …” so too did the idea that change would inevitably make life better and better (Marx 1994, p. 239). This form of progressive optimism was echoed in modernist art and design. When the Italian Futurist Giacomo Balla penned his shrewd 1914 “Futurist Men’s Clothing: A Manifesto,” he rejected the past wholesale. Positioning technology as a new means of revolutionizing culture, he wanted “to free humanity from slow romantic nostalgia and the weight of life.” (Rainey et al. 2009, p. 194). In prewar Russia as well, Futurist writers rejected the previous century’s poetry and novels, aiming instead in their writings to imitate street sounds and often dropping grammatical niceties. Even after the Revolution, writers like Osip Brik, in his “We Are the Futurists,” attacked what they saw as “a useless delighting in the past, from which you will inescapably return more jaded, diminished, trampled” (Lawton and Eagle 2005, p. 252). In fact, after World War I, this sense of progressivism was translated into a Modernist art and design movement. Ideas of rationality, standardization, and emotionless objectivity pushed designers and artists alike to break with the past. Using new materials and embracing functionalist design, they began to look forward rather than backward. When De Stijl movement founder Piet Mondrian announced his new approach toward non‐representational painting, many of his writings were addressed to “the man of the future” (Mondrian 1986, p. 152). The architect and founder of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius, went so far as to announce that the new school would be forward looking, ultimately becoming a “cathedral of the future” (Conrads 1970, p. 49). As ideas of modernity began to dominate twentieth century art and design circles, nostalgia seemed woefully out of step with the times. The Depression, the rise of Fascism, and World War II would deflate this buoyant futurism only gradually. By the late 1950s, the painter Willem de Kooning insisted, “I have no nostalgia …” Instead, when reflecting on the past, de Kooning insisted, “I may get into a state of anxiety” (Caws 2001, p. 267). The art critic Clement Greenberg was equally wary of nostalgia in the visual arts, claiming that there was “something too literary about it – too many gestures and too much forcing of color, texture, and symbols” (O’Brian 1986, p. 208). And yet, nostalgia played a significant  –  if unheralded  –  role in twentieth century design. In the interwar years, nostalgia for the American colonial past was on display at the 1926 Sesquicentennial Exhibition and flourished as John D. Rockefeller Jr. poured funds into a sleepy backwater town in Virginia, creating the heritage site Colonial Williamsburg. In the postwar period, famed suburban developments like Levittown may have been equipped with modern conveniences, but were dressed in nostalgic Cape Cod and Colonial facades. In Hitler’s Germany nostalgia for a more authentic time equated German values with folk crafts and traditions; trestle tables and a traditional wardrobe of dirndl dresses and lederhosen seemed to express a heimatlich or homey quality.

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In fact, there has long been tension between the forward‐looking futurism and backward‐looking nostalgia. But, combined with larger social, political, and economic changes in the late 1960s and early 1970s, newer forms of nostalgia began to align with fundamental economic and technological shifts. Paradoxically, by the 1960s and the 1970s rapid and intense technological progress occurred. From the introduction of microcomputers to the supersonic jet, applied science burgeoned. Yet many observers began to ask what kind of progress this kind of technology might actually bring. The environmental disaster of Love Canal and nuclear threat of Three Mile Island, for example, revealed the frightening threat of applied science gone wrong. When Alvin Toffler’s popular Future Shock (Toffler 1971) suggested that people would soon be driven mad by technological change, his prediction may have seemed extreme. But he accurately detected a widespread discontent. Public disillusionment with “the tale of the future” (Clarke 1961) began to grow. In the past 40 years, nostalgia has gained more and more credibility in design circles. Nevertheless, it has developed a character quite different from nineteenth century historicism and twentieth century populism. As the cultural critic Sam Jacob notes, we now “have a thousand words for nostalgia” (Jacob 2013, p. 151). Specifically, in design circles today, two types of nostalgia have emerged as especially potent‐‐vintage and retro.

From Second Hand to Vintage In the summer of 1955, Life magazine declared that the American fashion business “was behaving as if it had gone slightly crazy from the summer sun.” Noting a sudden fad for used raccoon coats, fashionable types across the country were seeking out second‐hand “vintage” raccoon coats, guaranteed to be in a “state of magnificent disrepair.” That same summer, the influential department store Lord & Taylor invested in the same “raccoon swoon,” only to discover that “within three hours the initial supply of 300 coats had been scooped up. With that a nationwide craze was launched” (Anon 1957, p. 83). “Stores across the country went scurrying to used clothing dealers, advertised their wares … and sold as many of the old coats as they could find” (Anon 1957). Customers were flocking to these stores in search of “vintage” designs. The run on raccoon coats was but one example of how the term “vintage” gained new life as an aesthetic designation in daily life and design by the mid‐ twentieth century. These “vintage” coonskin coats tapped a nostalgia for an earlier historical moment  –  namely the roaring twenties. Certainly, the fad lacks the seriousness of purpose that shaped older resurrections of the past such as the Gothic Revival. But “vintage” design also marks a departure from time‐honored practices of use and reuse. Vintage resurrects and repurposes everyday things from the modern past, finding new value in them today (Figure 2.1).

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Figure 2.1  Interior of vintage clothing store, Truro, Cornwall, UK. Source: © Nik Taylor/Alamy Stock Photo.

And yet, even as it engages nostalgia for the past, vintage ignores most of human history. Greek antiquity, for example, or the classical past is rarely associated with vintage objects. The Chinese Tang and Ming eras scarcely register as vintage époques. Instead, vintage draws from the modern past of the West, reintroducing to a new audience older but still recently made items. Vintage furniture, for example, includes chrome and Formica tables and chairs that would look at home in a 1950s jukebox joint. In graphic design, the Bonehead style perfected by Charles Anderson, who incorporates old logos and motifs from Depression era clip art into his design practice today, repurposes early to mid‐twentieth century designs to create a vintage aesthetic for new products and brands. But the term vintage deals with more than nostalgia for the recent past; it also skirts issues of class and exclusivity by providing a curious parallel to the more prestigious term “antique.” Unlike so much of the furniture, jewelry, and luxury goods that gradually assume antique status as they age, vintage usually describes designs of the past – for example, clothing, toys, kitchen items, and a range of less costly consumer goods – from everyday life. For several decades, for instance, “vintage clothing” shops have flourished on the resale of Edwardian lawn tea dresses and used American Levi’s jeans. Airstream aluminum camper trailers have been designated as vintage, as have postcards and comic books.

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Nineteenth century barns are being dismantled and their weathered beams sold as “vintage wood.” At its heart, however, vintage concretizes a kind of nostalgia for everyday objects from earlier, but still modern, eras. Furthermore, true vintage is not conceived and produced as such, but rather things are reclaimed and designated as vintage at a later stage of their physical lives. The transformation of everyday things into vintage may seem a magical process. Far from being outmoded, the very age and obsolescence of older designs are – when re‐evaluated as vintage–a mark of distinction. Sociologist Michael Thompson has explored aspects of this process. In his 1979 treatise Rubbish Theory, Thompson suggests that man‐made objects are often designed for a specific function and carry a certain value when first new. Characteristically, however, these both decline over time. But economic worth does not always correspond to the actual life cycle of objects. That is, however worn or outdated a design may become, it still continues to exist. Outmoded or technologically superseded, many objects over time move from newness into a phase of uncertainty, in which their usefulness or style is increasingly obsolete (Figure 2.2). As their newness fades, Thompson argues, such designs gradually become worth less and less. While this happens, older and disused objects often enter transitional zones like basements, attics, and other storage areas. From here, most outmoded designs are disposed of, becoming rubbish. But some will regain value, albeit in a new manner. As they age, some objects will be seen in a new way. They begin to be appreciated as relics or artifacts. Vintage objects reside in  the latter state. This is the process, Thompson observes, which sees “old

Figure 2.2  Sales display of vintage television sets. Source: © Bill Burke/Stockimo/ Alamy Stock Photo.

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bangers transformed into vintage motor‐cars” (Thompson 1979, p. 9). They are not only old, but they have survived long enough to become collectable. For all its transformative power, vintage is itself a relatively new term; before the twentieth century, there was little nostalgia for older designs from the recent past. Today, much that we consider vintage existed in an earlier era and passed under a different term – often under the catch‐all phrase “second hand.” In more traditional economies, man‐made goods were scarce, and many durable items maintained their value over time. For millennia, cast‐off or leftover furniture, clothing, and other goods were often used and reused; whether recycled by the original owner or reassigned to someone else, most man‐made things were singular and scarce. There was little room for nostalgic sentimentality in these processes. Before the industrial revolution, which introduced the possibility of inexpensive, man‐made production and ideas of obsolescence, entire professions were built around the sale and resale of used goods. Peddlers and dealers at second‐ hand or junk shops managed large resale markets not only for furniture, books, and other consumer objects, but also for practical items like worn rope, discarded chains, parts of machinery, and other types of useful goods (Anon 1893, p. 690). Nostalgia as we know it today figured little in the sale and resale of these things. For these “junk” men or women, selling and reselling older clothing and scraps or cast‐offs was a trade in itself. But to the original owners of things, most objects were kept and maintained only as long as they were useful. There was little sentimentality in such ownership. At the same time, many man‐made things – both used and new – served the lower classes as what historian Paul Johnson calls a “substitute savings bank” (Johnson 1983, p. 157). Resale shops and pawnbrokers dealt in second‐hand goods of value, allowing the unsentimental owners of objects of winter coats, pots and pans, and other everyday things a chance to quickly liquidate their belongings in exchange for hard cash or bartered exchanges. While sentiment and nostalgia played little or no role in the use and reuse of man‐made things, the second‐hand buying of everyday goods could carry stigma. From London to Shanghai, through the late nineteenth century emporia of used goods were a common sight in cheaper working class neighborhoods; trade in second‐hand goods was often a financial anchor in many of these districts. At the same time, law enforcement frequently begrudged their existence, claiming that such stores were “receptacles of stolen property” (Shanghai International Settlement 1887, p. 30). In nineteenth century London, Dickens painted a bleak picture of the second‐hand and junk shops that filled the neighborhood where Fagin and his troop of child pickpockets lived. Dickens could barely disguise his contempt for the place, and the used, dirty, and discarded things sold there. It was a district of “filthy shops” filled with “old iron and bones, and heaps of mildew fragments of woolen‐stuff and linen, [with] rust and rot in the grimy cellars” (Dickens 1866, p. 194). Reeking of criminality and poverty, second‐hand shops were often disdained by wealthier consumers who found little to be nostalgic about.

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The transition from “second hand” or “junk” into “vintage” consumption began in the late nineteenth century – just as nostalgia itself began to shift in meaning. The rise of modern medicine, of course, rapidly swept away older beliefs, including the supposition that homesickness might cause illness or even death. But the rise of modern manufacturing also disrupted the age‐old trade in waste (Strasser 2013, p. 106); as factories produced consumer goods more and more cheaply, peddlers and junk dealers saw their age‐old trade begin to disappear. Not only were second‐hand goods associated with filth, poverty, and criminality, but also consumers found that pots and pans, dresses and shirts, and a variety of goods simply became so inexpensive that there was no need to save rags, bits of furniture, and old tin for barter or resale. And yet, as the century wore on, a number of used but still usable goods were gradually rechristened under the curious term “vintage.” Stolen from viniculture, vintage alludes to the output of a vineyard in a particular year. Stored and deliberately aged, only to be drunk years after the crushed grapes were originally bottled, a wine’s distinctive character is carefully cultivated; differentiation by vineyards, districts, and season the process of fine wine making allows simple juice to grow better – not worse–with age. The idea of maturation, essential to the conversion of grape juice into alcohol, is essential to our understanding of vintage today. Introduced as a respectful term, vintage achieved a second meaning in the age of mass production. Reapplied to older, man‐made goods, it holds none of the negative associations once attached to the terms junk or second hand. Instead, vintage suggests a kind of careful aging, and implies a form of sorting, collecting, and connoisseurship. And, applied to the cast‐offs of the industrial age, vintage increasingly came in the mid‐ to late twentieth century to represent a uniquely postwar tendency for nostalgia. Vintage today describes a popular thirst for used or second‐hand items that nostalgically recall earlier, yet still modern, periods in the recent past. Better than the fusty and snobbish term “antique,” vintage slowly came to describe older or dated, but relatively ordinary, consumer items like cars and clothes. By the mid‐twentieth century, just as ideas of planned obsolescence and styling achieved widespread acceptance, vintage manifested itself as a newer form of object‐based nostalgia. That is, interest in older, vintage goods began to grow just as marketing and production strategists began urging the public to increase personal consumption and buy ever‐newer products. Aiming for constant economic growth, manufacturers learned that ever‐changing styling would make newer, consumable objects like cars and clothing sell more. Many industrialists also began to re‐examine the ethics of durability, and encouraged designers, engineers, and advertising specialists to embrace planned obsolescence (Packard 1960). In some industries, like automobile manufacturing, professionals planned for product death dates all the while expecting to introduce newer and newer styles of cars annually. The relatively recent notion of vintage developed in a climate in which newness for its own sake was valued more and more.

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Just as manufacturers were encouraging consumers to dispose of older goods in order to buy the latest product lines, some consumers began to look afresh at older cast‐offs. Such attention began to coalesce around more than used raccoon coats. Just as Detroit’s automobile manufacturers began to embrace planned obsolescence in the early 1950s, for example, collectors and connoisseurs alike began to gather together, joining groups like the Antique Automobile Club of America and attending events such as the annual “Anglo‐American Vintage Car Rally.” At the same time, historical societies and other groups began mounting re‐enactments staged with “vintage” dress. On the other hand, Hollywood and Broadway producers were beginning to embrace nostalgic revivals set in the Victorian and Edwardian periods. In 1955, for example, a new production of My Fair Lady openly promoted a new fascination for the “vintage look” of its sets and costumes (Anon 1956, p. 90). The fad for vintage spread to consumable products. In a curious publicity stunt, in 1955 the Lewyt Corporation offered to swap a new 1955 vacuum cleaner for “interesting ancient cleaning gadgets.” What began as a consumer ploy to boost sales quickly caught the attention of Life magazine, which lauded the company’s efforts, nostalgically highlighting their efforts by featuring an entire article on the “vintage” cleaners the project uncovered (Anon 1955, pp. 161–162). The implication was clear: newer vacuum cleaners were cheaper than the older – and rarer – ones. As factory products became cheaper and cheaper, everyday objects still of relatively recent manufacture were no longer the province of the poor. But the rise of “vintage” is more than a shift in names; it also communicates a growing consumer taste for knowledgeable nostalgia. Just as collectible roadsters and raccoon coats found new life in the 1950s, the emerging term “vintage” managed to wrap this nostalgia into a form of remembrance. To some observers, any form of recall was little more than escapism. Noting the new enthusiasm for jazz of the 1920s and 1930s, for example, one observer called such nostalgia “a momentary escape from the stress of reality” (Anon 1967, p. 75). But others equated vintage with something deeper. By the mid‐1960s, The New York Times noted the exponential growth in shops dealing in “the vintage finery business.” But, they also stressed, the clientele is “not so much beggars who are in rags and tags these days,” but rather “the most fashion‐conscious youths of an affluent generation” (Taylor 1967, p. 30). These buyers flocked to boutiques like Vintage Chic, a small store in New York’s Greenwich Village that opened in 1965. Owned by Harriet Love, who later also published a guidebook on buying, collecting, and wearing “antique clothing in high style” (Love 1982), costumers were attracted less by older clothing’s thriftiness, but instead by its distinction. A rare breed of consumers, she stressed, wanted “something unusual and one of a kind  –  and love the adventure of finding something special” (Kahn 1983). For these buyers, vintage represented a chance to side‐step mainstream consumption of the new. Scholar Raphael Samuel made a study of the paradoxical relation between nostalgia and popular culture in his 1994 publication Theaters of Memory:

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Past  and Present in Contemporary Culture. In phenomena like vintage, he observed, consumption treats “the out‐of‐date and the anachronistic … as though they were the latest thing” (Samuel 1994, p. 85). Recognizing the emergence of a new market for nostalgia, new stores dealing in vintage cater to a younger, educated, and less conforming demographic. But the term is used broadly today. Vintage has been applied to reupholstered chairs and restored pillow covers as much as albums of dated rock groups. Consumers eagerly buy the entire run of older, dated magazines. At the same time, vintage toys, figures, and pictures featuring African Americans have found a special niche market. And, where price sensitivity and frugality once shaped second‐hand shopping, the hunt for vintage pieces has caused such items to escalate in value. The Internet has only increased this phenomenon. As Belk observes, consumers are often willing to pay considerably more than bargain prices for the older vintage objects that they desire (Belk 1995, p. 41). Even as vintage implies a radical rereading and revaluing of objects, by the late twentieth century it came to describe not only older, used things, but also new objects styled in an old‐fashioned manner. The rise of styles that look old‐ fashioned has shaped a growing fad for “new vintage” designs. Fed up with oversized and ostentatious mansions, wealthy buyers hire builders to adapt “vintage” house plans from older eras; the latter are adapted to include such modern must‐have features as walk‐in closets and open kitchens with center islands (Hrabi 2014, p. D1). Paint, varnish, and other finishing techniques, on the other hand, are intentionally deployed to make newer products, for example electric guitars, look old. Fender’s Stratocasters and Telecasters, for instance, have a “road‐worn” look, featuring “authentic” knocks and indents as well as sandpapered rubbings that give their surface a second‐hand look (Poole 2013). Pre‐worn, faded, or distressed clothing, for example, can give newly made products a kind of false history. The oxymoron “new vintage” has been applied to entire collections of French couture clothing in recent years. In 2014, for instance, the luxury brand Yves Saint Laurent introduced a line of “new vintage” clothing drawn from older designs and based on remnant fabrics from past collections. Such practices tap the nostalgia while sidestepping treasure hunting of vintage.

Retro: The Deviant Revival Today, vintage and retro design are often grouped together, as if the terms are interchangeable. Nevertheless, a subtle but distinct difference distinguishes the two. Where vintage is soaked in traditions of wine making and long‐established nuances of taste, retro nostalgia comprehends and includes a newer sense of irony. Vintage takes its tone from connoisseurship, and remains relatively deferential. Retro is different. A term that was coined in the early 1970s, retro represents a popular hunger for the revival of previous, yet still modern,

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époques. At the same time, however, it looks backward in a half‐ironic, half‐ longing kind of way. Retro represents a distinctly twenty‐first century form of unsentimental nostalgia. Of course, much like vintage, the word retro is often used loosely. Occasionally, it functions as a fashionable alternate for “old‐fashioned” or “passé.” And sometimes, the term is also a descriptor, serving as a synonym for the exuberant popular culture of the years after World War II. Used to describe TV’s Howdy Doody show and Brylcreem pompadours, leather jackets, and cat‐ eyed glasses, “retro” is sometimes used as a kind of catch‐all word and is used to describe mid‐century Americana. In this capacity, retro is most often applied to collectibles. As a category of ornament, for example, retro jewelry describes dramatically glamorous wristwatches, pins, and necklaces made in the 1940s and 1950s. But furniture, for example Formica and chrome dinette sets, as well as mid‐century flashing jukeboxes, all pass today as retro. On the other hand, some commentators deploy the term more broadly. To critic Simon Reynolds, retro describes a more recent phenomenon found primarily in the world of popular music (Reynolds 2011). Reynolds deploys retro to criticize what he sees as a broader, unproductive trend in twenty‐first century music. The lionization of rock history, he argues, as well as the exhaustive citation and careful recreation of late twentieth century popular hits, has translated music today the genre into a kind of lifeless caricature of itself. Our fascination with retro, expressed through golden oldie shows, album reissues, band reunions, and music documentaries, he argues, is draining away our ability to be new and modern. But retro nostalgia is so ubiquitous today that it is hard to confine to a particular category or genre of popular culture. Cookbooks like Retro Pies include instructions for “Yesteryear Pie Dough” while the term “talking retro” refers to spoken expressions and phrases no longer current. At the same time, post‐ feminist women who opt out of the workforce, staying home with children, are called retro wives. And retro quotes taken from old magazine ads and posters (“Don’t kill your wife with work! Let electricity do it!”) are collected as jokes. Nevertheless, retro originated as anything but an uncritical form of nostalgia. As most widely understood today, retro entered common usage only recently  –  in the 1970s. Certainly, the term ultimately derives from Latin’s retrospicere, meaning to look back or review. But retro’s casual, slangy connotations are much more recent. The shortened word was first used to describe the efforts of a small group of writers, film‐makers, and fashion designers based in Paris in the early 1970s. The “mode retro” referred to a concerted effort to examine French resistance and collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. For French youth who were too young to remember the war years, the term signaled a re‐examination of their parents’ past. Movies like Louis Malle’s Lacombe Lucien (1974) explored casual collaboration with the Nazis, presenting a farm boy who is easily transformed into a turncoat. While the film presents its subject in ambivalent terms, Malle’s direction reproduces the look and

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feel of France’s war years in deeply resonant terms. The stylish recreation of Vichy France, including the padded shoulders of women’s coats and the slouchy elegance of men’s double‐breasted suits, was quickly dubbed “mode retro” in film circles. And its dark glamour was quickly echoed in the couture fashions of up‐and‐coming designers such as Yves Saint Laurent. Ultimately, this examination of France’s war record began as a cultural challenge to Charles de Gaulle and his regime’s simplistic interpretation of recent history. In France, the mode retro quickly transformed subtle political critique into an a­ mbivalent – if stylish – evocation of an entire era. But, by the time the term “retro” slowly entered into English, it was transformed. In the late 1970s, the term not only drifted into common English usage, but it also laid claim to the recent past. By 1977, The Washington Post declared that “the religion of the new” may be “losing its adherents,” with “retro art” taking its place. “Where artists used to prophesy, today they tend to quote. Retro Art is everywhere, in the antique flash of Star Wars, in the songs of Linda Ronstadt … Americans, it sometimes seems, have all become historians” (Richard 1977, p. 119). Even more specifically, art critic Lucy Lippard began using the word in 1980, in this case applying it to artwork whose politics she believed to be old‐line and socially regressive. Proclaiming the advent of “retrochic,” Lippard pointed an accusatory finger at artists who deployed “sexist, heterosexist, classist and racist violence” in their work (Lippard 1984, p. 165). Here, she complained, retro was little more than a rebellious gesture or effort to shock. She equated, for example, an art exhibition titled “Nigger Drawings” with a wrathful if rebellious form of nostalgia meant to shock and offend (Lippard 1984, p.  165). Lippard may have used the term to describe any kind of youthful transgression. But retro’s meaning was already expanding, encompassing a form of rebellion that slowly began to be waged against modernism itself. In fact, retro’s nostalgic glance back to older but still modern periods expanded significantly in the 1980s. Certainly, retro dodges the positivist ­progressivism that inflected the “modern” era. But, even more fundamentally, it pushed beyond older ideas of “modernity” and toward an unknown future. Shifting from prediction to quotation might seem a regressive move. Furthermore, retro was emerging as a highly self‐conscious form of nostalgia. As it emerged in common parlance, retro was quickly equated with a stylish form of plunder. As The Washington Post observed, it cast recent history in a new light. The retro past “has not been superseded. Instead, it’s being mined” (Richard 1977, p. 119). But it also managed to quote from the recent past while never taking it too seriously. Just as retro began to emerge as a new sensibility, the French theorist Jean Baudrillard provided a more speculative exploration of the term in his Simulacra and Simulation (1981). Baudrillard devoted an entire chapter, “History: A Retro Scenario,” to the “death pangs of the real and of the rational” in ­contemporary culture (Baudrillard 1981, p. 43). Baudrillard cited evocative period films for examples of this phenomenon; Roman Polanski’s Chinatown

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(1974) and Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975) present, he argued, examples of an emerging retro sensibility. Films like this, Baudrillard posits, try to reconstruct the past in a too‐perfect way. Amid the powdered wigs and shiny chrome of 30 automobiles, Baudrillard finds fault: each film is “a little too good, more in tune … without the psychological, moral, and sentimental blotches of the films of that era” (Baudrillard 1981, p. 45). As Baudrillard would have it, the “real” was under assault. Retro recreations of the past, Baudrillard argued, were vacuous. As Baudrillard saw it, “history has retreated, leaving behind an indifferent nebula, traversed by currents, but emptied of references” (Baudrillard 1981, p. 43). Similarly, the styles of the past – often with little or no interpretation  –  could be carefully recapitulated. Much like Reynolds, Baudrillard associates retro with a sort of hollow creativity; both see retro as a precarious, unsettling, and ultimately nihilist form of nostalgia. In more recent years, Baudrillard’s critique of this mannered form of nostalgia has been folded into postmodern theory. In “Nostalgia for the Present” in his Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) theorist Fredric Jameson introduces a series of retro‐like themes, identifying them with a kind over overshadowing or “eclipse” of historicity. Investigating the role nostalgia plays in our remembrance of the past, Jameson argues that there exists a difference between the realities of the 1950s and their representation as the “fifties” (Jameson 1991). There is, Jameson insists, a deep divide between our memories of Eisenhower‐era America, and the way that period was understood in its own time. In this reprocessing he sees “an omnipresent and indiscriminate appetite for dead styles and fashions” (Jameson 1991, p. 286). But he also condemns the historical pastiche more commonly associated with retro. In the end, Jameson warns, we learn nothing in these pointless resurrections of the past; they are little more than hollow aesthetic gestures. While it may be a form of cultural recycling, retro also reinterprets nostalgia as a form of Camp. The latter term was defined by Susan Sontag in a 1964 Partisan Review essay “Notes on ‘Camp.’” As Sontag sees it, “The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious” (Sontag 2007, p. 288). In the 1964 essay, Sontag develops a canon of Camp that ranged from flamboyant Jayne Mansfield, Gina Lollobrigida, Jane Russell, and Virginia Mayo to Art Nouveau lamps and old Flash Gordon cartoons. For Sontag, Camp aesthetics avoid questions of ethics and content; instead they highlight a “sensibility of failed seriousness, of the theatricalization of experience” (Sontag 2007, p. 287). Ultimately, retro draws from Camp’s stance of absurdity, undercutting older and more serious forms of revivalism. For Sontag, Camp is a “creative sensibility.” The flattening of conventional boundaries separating what Sontag calls “traditional high culture” and “low,” she argues, is playful. In fact, while older revivals were shaped by earnest scholarly inquiries into the historical past, retro nostalgia is usually casual and almost always subversive. As this ironic sensibility developed in the 1970s and 1980s, it was rarely aligned with stately or majestic examples of the past. Examples of retro, including for

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instance boomboxes styled to look like cheap transistor radios from the 1950s, cheap diners decorated with Populuxe chrome fittings, and black leather ­jackets  styled to recall Marlon Brando’s heyday, fixed on some of the most overlooked and unlikely corners of popular culture. But their recycling was also highly ironic. As one style writer noted at the time, just “wearing ‘50s‐style clothes in the 1980s” expressed “a certain cynicism” on the part of the wearer (Horn 1985, p. 165). Another contemporary observer noted two forms of 1950s nostalgia. “Treated reverently,” he suggests, “‘50s style can suggest ­second thoughts about the youth revolt of the ‘60s.” But it could mean something more. If it is “treated irreverently, the same design elements are an announcement that the insurrection is alive and well. You don’t have to like Ike  in order to appreciate the lightness, the friendly irony, of ‘50s design” (Perl 1992, p. 28). But retro gradually emerged as more than a resurrection of any particular period; by the late 1970s and early 1980s, retro cast a hesitant glance backwards to older but still modern periods. This moment was especially clear in graphic design, when a series of book and record cover designers whimsically mixed Deco‐like typefaces with clip art motifs and De Stijl inspired compositions with historic photographs. Paula Scher’s well‐known advertisement for Swatch in the early 1980s, for instance, exemplifies a retro sensibility in the way it recalls Herbert Matter’s 1934 Swiss travel poster. Its retro historicism remakes this modernist icon by replacing “Schweiz” with “Swatch” and adding a model’s hand and wrist, complete with multiple Swatch watches. In subsequent years, retro’s partly nostalgic and partly ironic glance backward only spread. By the early twenty‐first century, the obsession was reflected in mainstream automotive designs as well. Chrysler’s PT Cruiser, for example, was designed to reference the company’s cars developed in the 1930s, while BMW’s Mini Cooper looked back to the Alec Issigonis‐designed Morris Mini Minor of the 1960s. By the late 1990s, moreover, retro nostalgia had forced a revival of modernism itself. By 1998, Volkswagen’s New Beetle leveraged nostalgia for the Love Bug of the same period (Figure 2.3). Perhaps one of the most curious developments of retro in recent years is its increasing engagement with technological change. But retro has moved beyond fashion, ironically marking the passage of not only history but also obsolescent technologies. Outdated computer monitors are stripped of their wires and re‐ equipped; they now enclose custom tanks that hold live tropical fish. Rotary phone handsets are gutted, refitted with cellular innards, including miniature antennae and lithium batteries. These are then carried around and used as mobile phones. Of course, devices like the so‐called “Port‐O‐Rotary” are intended to amuse. As its advertising states: “The looks from family, friends, and even bartenders as the Portable Rotary Phone rings for the first time have given us endless amounts of entertainment” (SparkFun Electronics 2005, p.  5). But such mash‐ups apply retro’s uniquely ironic form of nostalgia to technology. While often amusing, such retro forms bring the modern past into

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Figure 2.3  Old Volkswagen Beetle display at the Autostadt or Car City in Wolfsburg, Germany. Source: © Iain Masterton/Alamy Stock Photo.

the present by placing updated technologies into older housings. Bringing the information age’s past into the present, this phenomenon includes a host of music players, for instance bluetooth systems fashioned to resemble 1950s jukeboxes or 1980s boom boxes, Depression‐era radio cabinets are rewired to play Webradio, and antique phonographs are refitted with Bluetooth technology. Some, like the Port‐O‐Rotary and Macquarium, repurpose original objects; others like the Retro Phone Handset, which uses 70‐year‐old phone molds to manufacture new lightweight casings, are closely modeled on older forms. But newer objects like the SpeckTone Retro, a tabletop iPod dock and speaker system, simply emulate older designs. SpeckTone echoes two icons – Apple’s iPod and a generation of high‐fidelity audio systems from the late 1950s and early 1960s. Inspired by highly acclaimed designs such as Braun’s SK‐4 “Phono super” record player, the SpeckTone Retro includes elements like a high‐gloss finish, control knobs, and compact, boxy shape. Its speakers also use analog circuitry for a sound quality that emulates its throwback appearance. Updated and reintroduced to today’s consumers, designs like this only heighten retro’s ironic – and incongruous – take on nostalgia. In this way, retro’s sense of irony distinguishes it from more serious forms of nostalgia, including nineteenth century revivalism as well as vintage. The quirky Macquarium fish tanks, of course, wittily echo the fish tank screensavers of the early 1990s. And the SpeckTone Retro may give a stylish nod to postwar

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Figure 2.4  Classic Volkswagen Beetle with its redesigned namesake. Source: © Konstantinos Moraitis/Alamy Stock Photo.

modernist design, but its acoustic quality is tinny and low‐fi. Vintage car shows and clothing stores, on the other hand, are filled with collectors who lovingly look backward. Design clearly weaves nostalgia into the fabric of our everyday lives. Ironic or not, by the early twenty‐first century, nostalgia in design cuts across the graphic and industrial design, architecture, and fashion. Moreover, the phenomenon is not abating. Lumberyards now carry recycled or “vintage wood,” while Star Wars and other memorabilia are collected as “retro toys.” Certainly this nostalgia suggests an ever‐growing fascination with the recent past. But, as the historian Raphael Samuel argued some years ago, such nostalgia should be distinguished from carefully researched scholarship or bookish historicism. Careful ordering and deep research is the domain of professional historians. These qualities are, in fact, antithetical to the casual nostalgia evinced by a lively, self‐motivated and highly variable range of artists, architects, designers, and writers today. And their approach to the past is not shaped through textbooks and classroom learning. Instead, popular culture is mined, either by recycling things from the everyday past or by modeling newer things in styles that quote the recent past (Figure  2.4). Whether this is done knowingly or ironically, a kind of casual nostalgia for the past has gained new energy in recent years. Our sense of the past has not disappeared, but it is constantly being reinvented in contemporary design.

References Anon (1893). Lawyers’ Reports Annotated 21. Rochester: Lawyers’ Co‐operative Publishing Company. Anon (1955). Vintage vacuum cleaners. Life 39 (12): 161–162.

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Anon (1956). Vintage look for fall’s fair ladies. Life 41 (9): 90–93. Anon (1957). Raccoon swoon in new flurry. Life 43 (11): 83. Anon. (1967). The swingers like it. Ottawa Journal (9 September), p. 75. Batcho, K.I. (1998). Personal nostalgia, world view, memory, and emotionality. Perceptual and Motor Skills 87: 411–432. Baudrillard, J. (1981). Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Belk, R. (1995). Collecting in a Consumer Society. London: Routledge. Boym, S. (2001). The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books. Caws, M.A. (ed.) (2001). Manifesto: A Century of Isms. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Clarke, I.F. (1961). The Tale of the Future. London: The Library Association. Conrads, U. (1970). Programs and Manifestoes on 20th Century Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Dickens, C. (1866). Oliver Twist. Boston: DeWolfe, Fiske & Co. Havlena, W. and Holak, S. (1991). ‘The good old days’: observations on nostalgia and its role in consumer behavior. Advances in Consumer Research 18 (1): 323–329. Hofer, J. (C.K. Anspach trans.)(1934). Medical dissertation on nostalgia. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 2: 376–391. (originally published 1688). Horn, R. (1985). Fifties Style: Then and Now. New York: Beech Tree Books. Hrabi, D. (2014). This new old house. Wall Street Journal (25 January), D1. Illbruck, H. (2012). Nostalgia: Origins and Ends of an Unenlightened Disease. Evanston: Northwestern Press. Ilyin, Natalia. 1995. “Warm Fuzzy Modernism.” AIGA Journal of Graphic Design, 14: 25. Jacob, S. (2013). Faster, but slower. Log 29: 145–152. Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke Press. Johnson, P. (1983). Credit and thrift and the British working class, 1870–1939. In: The Working Class in Modern British History, 1870–1939 (ed. J. Winter), 147–170. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kahn, T. (1983). Old rags mean riches for vintage clothier Harriet Love. People (31 October). http://people.com/archive/old‐rags‐mean‐riches‐for‐vintage‐ clothier‐harriet‐love‐vol‐20‐no‐18 (accessed 3 March 2017). Lasègue, C.. (1875). Review of A. Haspel, De la nostalgie. Archives de Medicine, 6th series 25 (I): 760. Lawton, A. and Eagle, H. (eds.) (2005). Words in Revolution: Russian Futurist Manifestoes, 1912–1928. Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing. Lippard, L. (1984). Get the Message? A Decade of Art for Social Change. New York: Dutton. Love, H. (1982). Guide to Vintage Chic. New York: Henry Holt. Marx, L. (1994). The idea of ‘technology’ and postmodern pessimism. In: Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism (eds. M.R. Smith and L. Marx Cambridge), 11–28. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Mondrian, P. (1986). The New Art—The New Life: The Collected Writings of Piet Mondrian. Boston: G.K. Hall. O’Brian, J. (ed.) (1986). Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Packard, V. (1960). The Waste Makers. New York: Pocket Books. Perl, J. (1992). Book review of Martin Eidelberg, Design 1933–1965: What Modern Was. The New Republic CCVI (14): 28. Poole, S. (2013). Why are we so obsessed with the pursuit of authenticity? The New Statesman (7 March) http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/culture/2013/03/ why‐are‐we‐so‐obsessed‐pursuit‐authenticity (accessed 2 March 2017). Rainey, L., Poggi, C., and Wittman, L. (eds.) (2009). Futurism: An Anthology. New Haven: Yale University Press. Reynolds, S. (2011). Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Richard, P. (1977). The retro art renaissance: to see is to remember. Washington Post (16 October) 1977, p. 199. Roth, M.S. (1991). Dying of the past: medical studies of nostalgia in nineteenth century France. History and Memory 3 (1): 5–29. Samuel, R. (1994). Theatres of Memory: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture I. London: Verso. Shanghai International Settlement (1887). Report and Budget. Shanghai: International Settlement, Municipal Council. Sontag, S. (2007). Against Interpretation. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. SparkFun Electronics (2005). Portable Rotary Phone–User Manual, v1.1, p. 5. http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=287 (accessed 26 May 2013). Strasser, S. (2013). Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash. New York: Henry Holt and Co. Taylor, A (1967). Searching the ragman’s pack and finding fashion. New York Times (23 Jan), p. 30. Thompson, M. (1979). Rubbish Theory: The Creation and Destruction of Value. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Toffler, A. (1971). Future Shock. London: Pan. Zwinger, T. (1710). Fasciculus Dissertationum Medicarum Selecctarum. Basel: Johann Ludovici Koenig. Zwingmann, C. (1959). “Heimweh” or “nostalgic reaction”: A conceptual analysis and interpretation of a medico‐psychological phenomenon. PhD Thesis. Stanford University.

3

Design Futures Damon Taylor

It is nothing new to be concerned about the future. Throughout human ­history people have attempted to learn what tomorrow might hold. Where once a crystal ball or tarot cards would have been employed, now the algorithm and computer modeling take their place. The Enlightenment, which began in the late eighteenth century, was founded in a developing belief in rationalism. The scientific method, and the laws of nature it appeared to uncover, suggested a reality that could be mastered, one where the technology made available by science would produce ever more fabulous rewards. The Industrial Revolution, which scientific rationalism made possible, thus fostered an insistent faith in the power of progress. As Elizabeth Guffey notes, this new current in the affairs of humanity was buoyed on a “singular confidence,” that “humankind could make continuous change for the gradual betterment of all” (Guffey 2014, p. 251). Alongside the Industrial Revolution developed design (Heskett 1980; Margolin 1998). Design, if it means anything at all, describes an activity that attempts to control circumstances through the act of imaginatively inhabiting the future. In the words of Victor Margolin, “as creators of models, prototypes, and propositions, designers occupy a dialectical space between the world that is and the world that could be. Informed by the past and the present, their activity is oriented towards the future” (Margolin 2007, p. 4). Given that design is intrinsically concerned with the future, it may seem odd then that a branch of design thinking and practice should lay claim to it as a domain. Design futures is a form of futures thinking, what used to be called

A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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futurology (Masini 1993; Toffler 1999). It involves the attempt to discern the possibilities of tomorrow in the culture of today. As a practice and field of knowledge it represents an effort to develop methods of design and approaches to making and use that will be appropriate to this world that is as yet to come. Nigel Cross famously called design “an inter‐disciplinary discipline” (Cross 1999, p. 8), and the field considered proper to design has expanded from the formulation of products to the development of not just services and systems, but what Jorge Frascara (2002) has called the contexts themselves in which design operates. In this way the development of the discourse of design futures represents a forward‐looking activity that claims as its area of activity not just the making of material objects, but an increasing constituency of tangible and intangible things. User‐centered design, co‐design, and social design are all within the remit of design futures, but the very term has acted to structure how it is conceived of. There is a linearity and a goal‐centeredness to the concept of progress, and design has been tied to this. Throughout the twentieth century science and conceptions of progress have come to be intrinsically linked, and the future, not least through the practices of design, has come to be seen as a technological domain. As part of the thinking that underlies conceptions of rationalist progress, there is a tendency to see science as being a value‐free exploration of the world that then creates singular (and apparently inevitable) technological solutions. This chapter will examine three complementary yet often contradictory strands of design futures thinking that have developed in the discourse that has come to be termed design futures. Those who inhabit these camps can broadly be described as techno‐utopians, who see the future of humanity as being defined by technological progress; those who argue for a form of speculative practice, who see a role for design that can “ask questions” and act as a form of critique; and those who argue for varying forms of social design, a field of theory and action that suggests that the proper role of design is not just the reshaping of things, but how we live. In order to do this the intention is first to briefly examine the different ways that design is “futured,” how it is perceived to be oriented towards any putative future. This will involve the discussion of how design as a practice is involved with a process of “pragmatic projection,” as this is contrasted with the way that “vision” can work. Such ideas will then be tied to the problem of how much can be known of what will be, and how this may structure how design is thought about. So, through a discussion of technotopia the essentially theological nature of the developing belief in technology is examined. This is then followed by reflections upon earthrise, arguably the point at which people realized that we are living in an “environment,” which led to the rise of sustainability as a form of meta‐parameter in design. The age of disruption represents the point in the discussion whereby culture, and therefore design, becomes an apparently digital question. The ecstasy of speculation is a meditation upon the practice of using a supercharged “what if …?” as a tool in the



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designer’s kit, and finally we find ourselves in a place where it is possible to ask if some form of social project concerned with making and use can deliver design as if people mattered.

Futuring To establish a prospective future is to define a territory. In the article, The Future as a Design Problem, Reeves et al. (2016) argue that it is only possible to practice design if there is some stable sense of the nature of the future. To such ends they suggest that there are two basic approaches that are adopted. The first of these they call “pragmatic projection,” whereby the nature of the present conditions of possibility are considered and extrapolated from. The second they describe as “vision,” whereby an individual or organization describes an ideal state that should be worked towards. This distinction echoes a statement by Victor Margolin (2007), who has suggested that the models of the future that design practice depend upon can be categorized as being either predictive or prescriptive in nature. So a distinction is being made between design that works on what could be created, and that which suggests what should be made. This then establishes different conditions in which design can happen, and this is perhaps well exemplified by the difference between the iPad and the washing machine. Washing machines have been broadly stable in their general form and mechanics since the 1940s, when the most popular types, top loading (USA, South America, Australia, and Japan) and front loading (Europe, Middle East, and Asia) came to be established as the dominant designs (Roy 2015). Radical innovation in the washing machine is rare, thus any design work has tended to be of the form where the realities of how things are now are acknowledged, and this is worked from in the process of design development. So, in the washing machine world, there is a tendency to pragmatic projection, a modeling of what can be done in the circumstances. This is not to say there is never more radical innovation in this field, but it does demonstrate how design in this area tends to be based on present conditions. With the iPad, throughout its development and at the time of its launch few commentators could see what a tablet computer could really be for. There was no successful dominant design type for the tablet computer at this time (Atkinson 2008). Instead the development of this product was the result of Steve Jobs’s dictum that “people don’t know what they want until you show it to them” (in Hu 2014). This was therefore a vision of what could be. Reeves et al. (2016) do note that neither is a mutually exclusive position and that in most organizations and practices there will be different times when each has primacy or influence. What is interesting is the relationship between these two positions. Futures researchers often refer to the notion of “possible,” “plausible,” “probable,” and “preferable” futures (Hancock and Bezold 1994;

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Voros 2001). This is to suggest that there is the broader “zone” of possibility, what might plausibly happen, and within this there are the smaller subsets of the probable and the preferable. There is much debate about the nature of the relationship between the possible and the preferable (Tonkinwise 2014). What is clear, however, is that what may be “pragmatic” to work upon, where it appears possible to go from here, is as much ideological as it is based on technological possibility. To establish what is plausible at any given time, it might seem obvious that all that is needed is to gather the evidence and establish the conditions of possibility. However, as Margolin (2007) notes, it can be that in the very practice of collecting such “evidence” a form of persuasion is taking place, whereby a methodology that involves “gathering data and organizing it into patterns” has the effect of making such future possibilities “more plausible.” It is this idea of “plausibility” that is fundamental. It is an idea that both pragmatic and idealistic projection share, in that they depend upon the believability of what is presented, and that depends upon what people think is actually feasible in any given time. This is then not an objective measuring of what “is”; it will depend upon what it is possible to imagine in such conditions. With the pragmatic it is easy to see how the prevailing conditions of the present can shape thinking about the future. Given the apparent solidity of the washing machine and its form, it can be difficult to see beyond how it is now. Vision may seem more amenable to imaginings beyond present conditions (this almost seems to be its definition). However, for all its futurity, it is still a version of a future that depends upon the parameters of the present. If it were truly outside our purview, then it would not just be difficult to understand, it would be entirely impossible to conceive of. This is because our life experiences are always embedded in an “inarticulable” shared life‐world that because of its very everyday nature is impossible to see (Hicks and Rosenberg 2003, p. 12). This is what the philosopher Martin Heidegger calls a “clearing,” which is made of a certain “understanding of being” through which a certain model of the world appears as self‐evident and intelligible. This can be thought of as a form of “historically transmitted ‘horizon’ that we have inherited, which we largely take for granted, and which we do not completely control” (Hicks and Rosenberg 2003, p. 12). As Friedrich Nietzsche puts it, we are caught in the net of our epoch and constrained by the “timely” cultural horizon of our age (Nietzsche 1997, p. 5). In presenting a grand vision of the future this directs present actions “in such a way as to make it come to pass as something of a self‐fulfilling prophecy” (Reeves et al. 2016, p. 11). We need to be able fix our concept of the future to some degree if we are to live; we have to believe some things will happen if we are to function in the world. In philosophical terms we might call this “teloscentricity,” from the Greek telos, meaning goal or purpose. Arguably then our ability to imagine a future shapes the present, because of the future we believe we are heading towards. As Brian Appleyard notes “Most scientists



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have long rejected teleology in nature because it implies a material ­impossibility  –  that the future can affect the past.” However, as he notes, ­“teleology is all around us.” So much of how we live is determined by a ­proximate future we assume is probable. As he notes, “Without this form of teleology, the world becomes incomprehensible” (Appleyard 2012, p. 125). In neuroscience this is described as “prospection”  –  the ability to “pre‐ experience” by the process of mental simulation (Gilbert and Wilson 2007). That is to say, when I hang my coat on the hook I project into the proximate future, and assume that the hook will hold the garment. To do this I must be able to believe that there is at least some degree of certainty that the hook will operate as I expect, or I cannot function. The problem is that, having the capacity to do this, there can be a tendency to develop such heuristics into more elaborate models of the future, and it is not at all clear that this is either effective or innocent. As the (Chicago school) economist Frank Knight observed, “It is a world of change in which we live, and a world of uncertainty. We live only by knowing something about the future” (Knight 1921, p. III·VII.5). Yet he noted that “the problems of life, or of conduct at least, arise from the fact that we know so little” (Knight 1921, p. III·VII.5). This does not seem to stop us from imagining the future, and using this to account for the now.

Technotopia In 2006 the computer scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil wrote a book called The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. In it he argues that very soon the pace of technological advancement will be such that human beings will be able to leave the “substrate” of the body behind as we upload our consciousness to (as yet non‐existent) supercomputers. In 2017 the technology entrepreneur and founder of electric car manufacturer Tesla Inc., Elon Musk, announced that the future of the human race is as a “spacefaring and multiplanetary species” (Futurism 2017). If these pronouncements seem like the product of science fiction, it is because they are. Not because either is entirely implausible (the fact that both are possible futures extrapolated from where we are now is what makes them compelling), but rather that both men have grown up and formed their idea of what “the future” is going to be like in a milieu whereby this projected state is assumed to be the product of technological change. This has led to a form of determinism, whereby there is a pervasive belief that it is technology that is the key factor in establishing what the future can and will be (Appleyard 2012; O’Connell 2017). This is then manifest in design. In the introduction to his book Design Futures, Bradley Quinn (2011, p. 6) exemplifies this by explaining how contemporary design practices are “permeated with a plethora of new technologies” and he goes on to list nanotechnology, robotics, and smart materials as examples of factors that will help to shape the design of tomorrow. Though he

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also acknowledges that craft and art practices will have some bearing, it is clear from the approach of the book that it is the former phenomena that he sees as characterizing the nature of the future. The emphasis is on the technologies, the materials, the matter of design. These then are examples of the tendency that has developed over the last two centuries, which sees the future as being defined by its apparatus. Throughout modernity it has appeared that the possibilities of social relations, how we live and relate to each other, have been established by the mechanisms we employ. In the early twentieth century the Italian Futurist movement imagined a future revitalized by the dynamism of the machine. Frustration with the constricting nature of Italy’s past manifested as a fetishization of machinery as symbolizing the future itself. In Russia, in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution, artists such as Kazimir Malevich and Wassily Kandinsky attempted to use fine art to express the kinetic drama of machinery and life in the modern city. In both Italy and Russia at this time technology represented the future and the new art sought to capture the potential of the machine and the new ways of being it appeared to herald. Yet, though it drew upon the dynamism of Italian futurism, the Russian variety, for all its idealism, was of a more everyday type. In terms of design, for the Russians this new future was not to be apprehended only in its abstract form but on a more practical and concrete level. For those of the Productivist tendency, such as Aleksandr Rodchenko, Vladimir Tatlin, and Ilya Popova, the future quite literally needed to be built. This task centered on the development of Novi Byt: the new everyday life. In this way a truly new, revolutionary form of life was to be constructed. As the contemporary critic Boris Arvatov stated: “Understanding the developing tendencies of material byt (everyday life) means being able to direct them, to transform them systematically, i.e., to turn byt from a conservative force into a progressive one” (Arvatov 1997 p. 121). This was then to be achieved through the redesigning of the tools of daily living – the stoves, clothes, buildings, and cities that allow for people to live their lives. Perhaps surprisingly from the perspective of the twenty‐first century, the model for the Soviets at this time was the state they perceived to be at the height of technological development: the USA. In the early twentieth century this young nation was an exemplar of how the magic of technology could create a new mode of quotidian existence. For European Futurists, America, particularly the upward thrust of New York, symbolized the application of technology to build the new world. It quite simply seemed to be the index of what tomorrow could be (Votolato 1998, p. 35). In America the development of the “machine age” represented a quite material break with the past. Emerging from World War I it seemed that the promise of technology for reshaping how people could live was unbounded. Mechanization was not only changing manufacturing, but the new household appliances available to the mass of consumers was significantly altering how people cooked, ate, dressed themselves,



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communicated, and socialized (Schwartz Cowan 1985). If in Russia they yearned for a new everyday life, in America it was arriving in a very tangible sense, and the sheer pace of this shift began to suggest that technology could have endless power to propel society into an as‐yet unimagined future. The age of the machine was to be full of promise. Science fiction magazines, such as Amazing Stories and Science Wonder Stories, seemed to provide a window into an abundant future “filled with flying cars and meals in pill form” (Guffey 2014, p. 252). So, almost as if to bring the future into being through new forms, mainstream culture began to take on the geometric forms of Art Deco. Thus in the 1930s in America the public would have been able to go to a fabulously modern picture house to enjoy watching Buck Rogers fly in space ships, reassuring them that, although everyday life at this time was defined by economic depression, the future would be one of sleek machines and endless technological possibility. This strange tension between economic reality and the dream of the future found its highest expression in the technological grandstanding of the 1939–1940 New York World’s Fair. Established by a committee of businessmen who wished to distract the public from the miseries of the Depression and the looming threat of war from the old world of Europe, the show was given the dramatically futurist theme “Building the World of Tomorrow.” In displays such as Norman Bel Geddes’s “Futurama” the public was shown the technology that would allow for the new life to come. In the aftermath of World War II in the UK an attempt was made to harness this form of optimism to demonstrate to the British public that a future was possible. Thus in the Festival of Britain, intended to be a “tonic to the nation” (Banham and Hillier 1976) the nature of this societal pick‐me‐up was to be a hyped‐up faith in the new world of modernity. In formal terms this could be seen in the scientific usages on display. The show bristled with the sticks and knobs of atomic symbolism; everywhere fabrics shone with artificial colors and crystalline forms. The machine age had become the atomic age, and soon the white heat of technology would be transforming society. In the twentieth century, technological development came to stand for progress, and America seemed to be where the new came from. Particularly in the period after World War II, buoyed up by the successes of American “big science,” futurists with a scientific outlook such as engineers, and economists, sociologists, and systems analysts contributed to a futurist boom. This was the age of the technocrat, and these wizards of the scientific realm believed that they could now see what the future held. Think tanks such as the Rand Corporation presented predictions and delivered them to public policy‐makers. As David Staley notes in his History of the Future, it was the participation of scientists and social scientists “that distinguished post‐war futurism from earlier utopian science fiction” (Staley 2002, p. 77). Yet it was still the technological transformation of the everyday. In recent years, with the rise of the Internet and the apparently unstoppable march of technological “progress,” so it seems

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that our movement into technotopia is inevitable. This, however, has not been an unproblematic rise of the machines. Such devices need resources, and for some time now this has been a problem.

Earthrise On 25 May 1961, President Kennedy pledged to the American people that within a decade a man would walk on the moon. Though the Space Age can really be said to have begun in earnest in the 1950s, it is clear that Kennedy was reacting to Russia’s first successful manned space flight a month earlier, when Yuri Gagarin had orbited the Earth aboard the Vostok 1. Throughout the 1960s space represented, as Captain James T. Kirk of the Star Ship Enterprise famously noted, “the final frontier.” It was one that the USA and the Soviets sought to dominate in practical terms for reasons of national prestige, while designers, artists, and film‐makers populated it in the creative imagination. If the colonization of space came to stand for the future, in this new world a novel material culture symbolized how everyday life was to be enacted. Plastic came to define the style of the Space Age (Topham 2003). It soon started to be seen as preferable to natural materials. In furniture and interiors, designers such as Eero Aarnio and Joe Colombo created smooth, brightly colored, undulating environments, while fashion designers such as Paco Rabanne and Pierre Cardin created clothes for a life that did not yet exist in the “world of tomorrow” (Topham 2003, p. 78). Though this fantasy of the Space Age did much to forge a certain vision of the future, the reality of humanity visiting space presented a different perspective. In 1968 the American Apollo 8 mission was the first manned craft to complete a lunar orbit. In the process of doing so the men on board were subject to an experience that no human had ever had before. As the planet became visible from behind the moon, the astronauts saw and photographed “earthrise.” The resulting pictures have been called “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken” (Rowell in NASA 2012), as they appeared to show the Earth hanging alone and vulnerable in space, a fragile and finite thing (Roloston 2015). This stimulated a reaction that was predicated on a dawning realization that the future may not be as bright as the optimistic visions that the Space Age had seemed to promise. Throughout the 1960s there had been a growing sense that material advancement based on scientific discovery might not be entirely unproblematic. In 1962 Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring alerted America to the possibility that the large‐scale use of pesticides could be destroying its bird population. Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968) and Garrett Hardin’s The Tragedy of the Commons (1968) examined the way in which the natural world was being affected by technological development and demographic change, as resources were being depleted and societies altered (Adams 2001).



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In the book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, published a year after the Apollo 8 mission, the designer and futurist Richard Buckminster Fuller suggested that the Earth be understood as a spaceship, a closed system in which the resources were finite. Two years later Victor Papanek published Design for the Real World (1971), in which he argued for a more ethical approach to design based on principles of ecology. In Design, Nature and Revolution: Towards a Critical Ecology Tomás Maldonado (1972) approached this theme with a more radical bent. He emphasized the way in which the “human environment” was a subsystem of the bigger systemic functioning of the planet. His message was that this human subsystem is unique in that it has the capacity to destabilize and ultimately destroy the other processes of the planet. What was revolutionary in the book was Maldonado’s recognition that, although designers were essentially complicit in the development of this situation, he argued that they could become agents of social change (Margolin 2007). His point was not that design could solve the problems he identified, but that a more human approach to design could begin to contribute to an alteration in what such practices are for. However, such dissenting voices were in the minority at this time. One thing that makes critiques such as those of Maldonado and Papanek worthy of mention is their difference to the dominant discourse around design, industry, and the use of technology. Throughout the 1970s the main concern of the design profession was establishing the status of design itself (Woodham 1997), while the primary objective of industry was the optimization of designed goods in terms of efficiency (Madge 1997; Margolin 1998; Taylor 2017; Woodham 1997). More influential than the ideas of design radicals at this time was the development of information technology and the science of cybernetics, (which is concerned with the automatic control of technology and systems). In 1972, in response to the growing sense, discussed above, that progress was perhaps producing unexpected results, the Club of Rome published the report Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972). Conducted by a team of systems analysts under Jay Wright Forrester, and based on computer models of the relationships between human population, resources, and pollution, this publication suggested that unless things changed quite markedly then the present course would be unsustainable and would almost certainly result in environmental collapse some time towards the end of the second decade of the twenty‐first century. This coincided with the shock of the oil crisis, in which the fragility of the global economy and its systemic and interconnected nature became apparent. Through such readings of environmental and demographic change, so it seemed that humanity was waking up to the realization that progress may not be entirely self‐sustaining. Consequently an international response began to develop. Chaired by the Norwegian Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) was

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convened by the United Nations in 1983. In 1987 this organization published the report Our Common Future (usually referred to as the Brundtland Report), which created the most well‐known, and certainly the most widely used, definition of sustainability: “Development that meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland 1987, p. 45). As a response to this the design world (as much as one can be said to exist) has been quick to adopt the rhetoric of “green” and “eco‐design” approaches. It has been very slow to affect the practices of manufacturing and consumption, however. Since it started to become clear that technologically based progress cannot be maintained in its present form, so a response has developed that proposes that we can either rediscover the “balance of nature,” or that through material invention we can mitigate the problems and go on as we are. Sustainability in itself is a statement about the future, and it is one that a commentator such as Tony Fry would argue is radically reactionary (Fry 2010). This is because the concept of sustainability suggests that the present status quo can be sustained, that is, nothing fundamentally has to change. The tendency in the development of sustainability as a dominant paradigm has been to direct the energies of designers towards the development of sustainable design solutions, that is to say, ways of doing things that allow for the dominant technological model to persist as its worst excesses are mitigated. This has failed (Margolin 2007; Taylor 2017). The development of the paradigm of sustainability has given the lie to the idea that technological progress will, left to its own devices, unproblematically raise up humanity and provide a utopian future. Design has been complicit in the destruction and destabilization that now threatens such hopeful visions. It may be, however, that it can also be part of the solution (if there can be said to be one). As Fry notes, design is an increasingly important factor in “our future having a future,” as he argues that we cannot rely on “nature” to sustain us since “we are too many, we have done too much ecological damage, and we have become too dependent upon the artificial worlds that we have designed, fabricated and occupied” (Fry 2009, p. 3). Since we can no longer rely on nature to come to our aid, Fry’s suggestion is that we will need to find active ways to mitigate the damage that has been done, through design and innovation.

The Age of Disruption In his book The Innovator’s Dilemma, first published in 1997, Clayton Christensen distinguished between two ways that technology can affect the development of a business. In his schema there can be said to be “sustaining technologies,” which make marginal improvements to an organization’s practices and provide for incremental change. Then there are what he termed



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“disruptive technologies,” which are much more volatile challenges to the status quo that require companies to radically revise their approach. Often initially deemed to be of little interest by the big players in an established market, these agents can then totally destabilize accepted ways of doing things and effectively rewrite the rules. Christensen cites as examples the mobile phone, which at first seemed a niche product but soon changed the whole communications landscape, and the digital camera, which destroyed the market for traditional camera film and altered entirely our relationship to anything we may wish to call a “photograph.” As the economic journalist Tim Hindle observes, a central problem with factoring futures thinking into disruptive technologies is that they tend to come from unlikely directions. It is unusual for them to emerge from large established concerns, for which they do not initially seem to represent a viable investment. As he notes “large companies are designed to be comfortable with sustaining technologies. They know their markets and want to capitalise on the value of that knowledge. They don’t want to be distracted by risky ‘maybes’” (Hindle 2009). This then presents a problem for those who would wish to predict or plan for the future, since what they can expect is that there will be destabilization from an unexpected quarter. The computers used by the team that put together Limits to Growth in the early 1970s were the size of rooms. By the 1990s computers could sit on a person’s lap. The personal computer really became viable in the 1980s with the introduction of the IBM machine in 1981 and the Apple Macintosh in 1984 (Atkinson 2010). The availability of the “Mac,” with its user‐centered interface, certainly had an effect on the design profession. The introduction of Computer Aided Design packages and particularly graphics software altered the way in which designers worked, while also bringing the practice of design closer to the untrained and the amateur. It was the development of the Internet and the introduction of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, however, that really changed the nature of how design could be practiced and what it could be for. Increasingly the technology we live with, the design with which we interact, comes to us not as discrete products but as systems of objects. The rise of the product service system, whereby the consumer is sold a combination of goods and services in an effort to satisfy their needs, has seen an increasing integration of the processes of everyday life. The rise of the “smart home,” where our domestic devices and the satisfaction of our quotidian needs are automated and regulated by artificial intelligences, and the coming of the Internet of Things, in which these devices will be more and more in communication, will mean that our lives are more designed as processes, even as we see this less and less. Ubiquitous computing (which is often referred to as “ubicomp” and is also sometimes called “ambient intelligence”) is a vision of computing in which it will be “always there, always on.” This was first developed by the computer scientist Mark Weiser, at PARC Xerox in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In the article that really kicked off the development of ubicomp, “The Computer for

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the 21st Century,” Weiser argues that the most profound technologies, the ones that effect the most dramatic change, are those that actually “disappear,” whereby they “weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it” (Weiser 1991, p. 78). Paul Dourish and Genevieve Bell note that this article was part progress report and part manifesto (Dourish and Bell 2011). It was thus both pragmatic projection and idealistic vision at the same time. It presented a version of how things could be, but it was one that was very rooted in the life‐world of its author. The scenario presented, through the character “Sal,” is very much one of a West coast tech developer. Similarly, as Reeves et  al. (2016) note, since this research was produced for Xerox, so the scene provided is one full of smart documents and seamless tab transfer, since at this time the firm was repositioning itself from being a copier company to being a document manager. The wider program associated with ubicomp has led to the creation of a broad, interconnected field of research and development. This has helped to establish a raft of technologies that come together in the idea of an automated and servicised everyday life: the computational devices within the fabric of smart homes that rely on embedded sensors; context‐aware computing that detects and interprets a user’s “context” through sensor data; mobile and wearable computing; and wireless networking and systematized provision (Reeves et  al. 2016, p. 8). This is then leading to the development of the interconnected world that is becoming the Internet of Things. This is part of a process whereby technology has come to be so embedded in our lives in a way that, even as it comes to dominate how we live, makes it seem curiously invisible, just an inevitable part of being. This is problematic: it means that it is difficult to explicitly consider the ethics of such changes, since through their ubiquity they are so hard to see.

The Ecstasy of Speculation At the turn of the millennium Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby were conducting experiments that coalesced into a practice they termed “critical design” (Dunne and Raby 2001, p. 58). With its roots in Italian Radical Design of the 1970s and 1980s, and the playful conceptualism of Dutch approaches of the 1990s, Dunne and Raby argued that design can be placed into one of two very broad categories: affirmative or critical. Affirmative design, they suggest, is that which “reinforces how things are now, it conforms to cultural, social, technical and economic expectation.” Critical design, in their terms, can be characterized as an approach that is capable of asking what they describe as “carefully crafted questions,” which make the viewer think (Dunne and Raby 2001, p. 58). The idea led from Dunne’s earlier suggestion that designers can create objects that operate “between rationality and reality,” which can be said to “function as test pieces that, through their marginalisation, make visible the



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barriers limiting poetic experience and everyday life” (Dunne 1999, p. 56). Thus in their Placebo series, for example, they created a number of devices that were putatively meant to shield users from electromagnetic radiation, or otherwise alert them to the presence and effect of the “Hertzian space” of electrified life. Shown in galleries or depicted in photographs, that these “products” did not actually work was not the point. In Dunne and Raby’s terms such actions were meant to be about how design can act rhetorically. Thus the suggestion is that this is “design for debate.” More recently Dunne and Raby have described this approach as “design for how things could be or might be” or a form of Social Fiction in the manner of Science Fiction– that it can exist as the imagination of a culture based upon “what ifs.” This Speculative Everything (Dunne and Raby 2013) is then meant to describe the way in which this can be seen as a way of “dreaming” design into being through acts of imaginative scenario building. Matt Malpass has argued that this “speculative design” exists somewhere between “emerging scientific discourse and material culture,” whereby the proposals produced focus on the “domestication of up‐and‐coming ideas in the sciences and applied technology.” He then explains that such an approach is “concerned with the projection of sociotechnical trends, developing scenarios of product roles in new use contexts” (Malpass 2013, p. 338). He proposes that such practices when adapted to design act to question “scientific and social theories by reflecting on the implications of design decisions made today and how they may proceed into the future.” This is then meant to encourage the “user” to reconsider how the present dictates the future (Malpass 2013, p. 340). Similarly, Julian Bleecker, of the San Francisco‐based agency Near Future Laboratory, suggests that, in the same way that science fiction does, this form of design can be said to “create imaginative conversations about possible future worlds.” In this way it can be said to speculate about a prospective tomorrow, “extrapolating from today” (Bleecker 2009, p. 8). For him such designs “represent a corner of some speculative world where things are different from how we might imagine the ‘future’ to be” (Bleecker 2009, p. 7). Though speculative approaches make a claim to be open‐ended and investigative in nature, they have in their lineage some quite specifically teloscentric practice. At its root speculative design is based in scenario planning. This is an approach to the future that originally developed out of military war‐gaming and was adapted for business purposes by researchers at Royal Dutch Shell from the 1970s. In discussing this method Staley observes that the creator of a scenario asks the “what if” question, and then “scans” the environment searching for “driving forces,” which are the “key factors that will determine the outcome.” Thus rather than being a predictive method, this is a way of examining possibilities. “If prediction is a definitive statement of what the future will be, then scenarios are heuristic statements that explore the plausibilities of what might be” (Staley 2002, p. 78). According to Peter Schwartz, who worked at Royal Dutch Shell and adapted the method for business with his book The Art

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of the Long View (Schwartz 1997), in the scenario process the participants “invent and then consider, in depth, several varied stories of equally plausible futures.” The purpose behind this is thus to allow for “surprises and unexpected leaps of understanding.” In this way the “scenario” is therefore meant to be “a tool for ordering one’s perceptions about alternative future environments in which one’s decisions might be played out” (Schwartz 1997, p. 4). While the work of Dunne and Raby is primarily experienced in museum and gallery settings, the work produced under the aegis of Bill Gaver and Andy Boucher at the Interaction Research Studio is rather intended to be “deployed.” In this conception of the practice the artifact is installed in a setting in which it is intended to be “used,” or at the very least encountered (Michael 2016). As such the practitioners conduct regular ethnographic fieldwork in order to gather material on users’ experiences with the prototype. Mike Michael argues that, although critical design is meant to “ask questions,” so speculative design, in his conception of it in the hands of Gaver and Boucher, can be understood to be concerned with exploring “practical encounters” with objects. The Local Barometer is a piece made up of six small, brightly colored devices, each with a screen showing the image and text of local classified advertisements derived from the listings site, Loot. These are then connected to an anemometer, which measures wind speed and direction. Thus these measurements set the parameters for the selection of the data supplied from the source. The idea, according to Michael, was to explore how people understand their neighborhoods. The subject, R., lived with the device for about a month, and members of the team visited him throughout this time for a total of roughly 30 hours. Michael recounts that R. was initially annoyed by the adverts. This then changed as he started to notice some that were of interest to him, such as those selling vintage guitars. Thus in his heightened relation to the technology, to the device that had no set telos or goal, the subject noticed an altered relationship to his environment (Michael 2016, p. 109). What remains a little opaque is what the “researchers” were supposed to do with this, yet this is perhaps to be somewhat too teloscentric for this type of experiment. The way speculative design is presented, the impression is that it is ideologically quite a neutral process, in which different and competing possibilities can be considered. However, as Stuart Reeves notes, such “envisionings” are less straightforward than we treat them (Reeves 2013, p. 28). In the framing of possibilities and the shaping of scenarios certain versions of the future appear to become more plausible than others. These are not just fictions, they are useful fictions; they serve a purpose. This is perhaps why there is always the stress that these are “designs for debate,” because this actually helps to legitimize the instrumentality of such an approach. As Cameron Tonkinwise observes: “an obsession with the future, as compellingly desirable despite being risk‐laden, tends to downplay the diversity of the present” (Tonkinwise 2014). There is a certain implicit and implied neutrality to speculative design. One of the central principles of the practice appears to be



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that particular qualities of the present are not transgressed, yet it seems to be a narrow model of the present that is drawn upon in speculative design practice. That is to say, there is a sense in the work of designers who are active in the speculative realm that, for the scenario to remain plausible, it is essential that it should not be pushed too far. There must be enough recognizable everyday life for it to be regarded as reasonable and possible by the “user”; it has to stay enough in the “real world” for it to be plausible; it must push beyond this enough so as to be interesting, but in doing so the dominance of particular forms of the present are reinforced.

Design as if People Mattered In 1890 William Morris published News From Nowhere, his “history” novel of the future. Produced as part of the Kelmscott Press project, this book imagined a utopian England based on Morris’s socialist principles and a rejection of technology, of the machine, as the determinant of what could be. As Elizabeth Miller argues, in this work the emphasis placed on durability and the importance of materials and processes can be said to constitute a “profoundly radical philosophy of things,” one which existed as a counterpart to his socialist philosophies of labor and social relations. In this way Miller suggests that Morris was laying out the groundwork for a model of the future that depended on what might now be called “sustainable socialism” (Miller 2011, p. 8). This was an approach that emphasized relations between people, rather than seeing technology as the essential mediating factor. In the intervening years there has been a definite ascendency of the opposite view – that it is through the design of ever better devices that “progress” should be achieved. In the dreams of technologists it is the apparatus that has the agency. However, technology is always a social phenomenon. Take 3D printing, for example. Whereas mass production depended upon the economies of scale, from the perspective of cost it is not an issue as to whether each 3D printed product is the same or different, since in additive manufacturing there is no need for standardized molds or jigs (Schoffer 2016). Thus the technology allows for small‐scale, localized production. The relational shift in 3D printing could be a genuine alteration in the conditions of production. What might be described as the third Industrial Revolution might come with the replacement of mass production by tools that allow for the customization of products (Rifkin 2012). However, it is not in the simple introduction of the technology that change happens. It is in the relationship between making and use that the future occurs. The challenge for design is to cope with a world where the interaction of objects and systems is becoming the domain of practice. The development of product service systems means that increasingly individuals and populations can be understood as inhabiting and existing through the networks or systems

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(both human and non‐human) in which they act and interact (Latour 2007). Thus a question that the sociologist Celia Lury raises is to what extent such ensembles have the capacity to be self‐organizing, and what forms of reflexivity are produced in such a situation (in Julier 2009, p. 97). In this respect Lury refers to Knorr Cetina’s concept of the “unfinished object” that is completed through use. Therefore, to understand design as relational is to conceptualize, in Lury’s terms, [T]he relationship of the unfinished object to an environment or ecology in which the individual human user is not the only or even necessarily the most important element of the environment. The “user” might thus be understood variously: as some kind of collective, mass, assemblage or ecology (including other objects and the natural environment). And of course the notion of unfinished‐ness directly introduces the notion of temporality – thinking the future of the object as something to be considered as implicated in the present of the object. (in Julier 2009, p. 98)

In recent years there has been a shift from design being understood as simply being concerned with the giving of form to objects or the refinement of their function to being about an understanding of the user (Almquist and Lupton 2010; Norman 2002; Redström 2006). There has also been a concomitant move to see design as a more or less political activity (Fry 2010; Kossoff 2011). Since the 1970s the Dutch designer and commentator Jan van Toorn has argued for what he calls “critical practice” (Poyner 2008). This is a socially engaged way of working that sees social change as the goal. In a similar vein Thomas Markussen suggests that a radical aesthetics is possible, one that unsettles the “self‐evidence” upon which systems of power and control depend (Markussen 2013, p. 45). Yet it is not just at the level of aesthetics that design is political. If design is about making the future, this need not simply be about styling it. In Design When Everybody Designs, Ezio Manzini suggests that there is “expert design” (practiced by those trained in the field) and “diffuse design” (which is done by everyone). He argues that the former can act to support the latter. From digital platforms for medical care in Canada to community agriculture in China and co‐housing in Milan, Italy, he argues that professional design can act to facilitate such practices, to make them more probable and possible. Localism, creative communities, and active networks of engaged participants seem to point the way forward to a change in how design is conceived of and practiced (Manzini 2007, 2015; Simonsen and Robertson 2012). Co‐housing is a good example of the way in which design principles can meet with ethics in the development of a new approach to design, and thus a new way of thinking about how the future may come about. This is a simple and yet radical reconceptualization of material and thus social relations. Originating in Denmark in the mid‐1970s, and swiftly becoming established in Scandinavia, Germany and the USA, co‐housing is an approach to the design of housing that is, in the



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words of Paul Chatterton, one of its pioneers in the UK, intended to be a “living laboratory of how the world could be different” (Chatterton 2014, p. 22). At Lilac Grove in Leeds in the UK (the name stands for Low Impact Living Affordable Community), 35 adults and 10 children are housed in 20 individual, private housing units around a courtyard and garden. There are then shared facilities such as a laundry, bike sheds, a workshop, and allotments. There is also a central common house where residents can meet, “cook and eat together twice a week, hold parties, collect their mail, host local groups and collectively govern their little community” (Sherwood 2014). In this way design creates the possibilities of social relations, of how people live in a very direct way. The design principles, the practical ethics, are embodied in the practice.

Conclusion The problem is, of course, that the future is essentially unpredictable. Yet because we need to know “something” of the future to live, we have developed ways of persuading ourselves that we know more of this “something” than we do. When design futures, it stakes a claim. Through the discussion of pragmatic projection and vision, and the situating of these ideas within the concept of Nietzsche’s “timely” cultural horizon, the intention has been to show how our belief in the nature of the present shapes our visions of the future, just as such teloscentricities shape our understanding of the now. Sustainability, or rather the absolute unsustainability of our approaches to designing, making, and using, is now essentially a meta‐parameter, the pressure that must be taken for granted. Underlying technological determinism is the tacit assumption that all of this – capitalist modernity – will keep on going, that it is the only way the world can be. This is then paradoxically allied to the fact that the science of climate change, pollution and the collapse of biodiversity can actually be said to have destabilized our sense of there being a future, as it seems clear that Tony Fry (2009) is right when he suggests that it is only through the act of design that we have anywhere to go. This is perhaps why speculative design can appear so unconvincing: not because it does not engage with the scenarios of Armageddon, quite the contrary, it is because it so often embraces the appalling and the dysfunctional with no effort to really critique it. If speculative design is “design for debate,” the problem is that, outside of the narrow confines of those who practice it, there is nobody debating it, and the possibilities of actual use are acutely circumscribed. Since the design remains at the level of speculation there can be no “user” as such; it is a form of practice that posits no actual consequences for action beyond “debate.” The intention of such work, according to the likes of Dunne and Raby, is to “make people think.” However, in the end, as the philosopher Jacques Rancière asks, is it enough for critical practice, whether this be in art or design, to raise awareness or make people consider what is happening? (Rancière 2006). As he notes, the

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central issue is seldom that people have not noticed the problems of the world, it is that they cannot conceive of how to act in such a situation. Though the perspective that design must be concerned with the social – that it must be an ethical practice (and that both words in this conjunction are important) – is not without its complications and contradictions, it does contain and depend upon the idea that we can build a common future together. Too much of design is attempting to be individualized disruptive interventions that capture market share, rather than being about the development of a shared vision of the good life. If there is a project that is worthy of designing a future, it must then be this collective action, not because it is determined or the inevitable outcome of some inexorable process, but because we choose to do so, and because it is the right thing to do.

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Part II

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Transnationalism for Design History Knowledge Production and Decolonization Through East Asian Design History Yuko Kikuchi

Introduction: Mapping Design Worlds Beyond “World” and “Global” for the Configuration of History There has never been a better time to discuss the “transnational” given the state of our contemporary world and recent political events; our world appears to be increasingly divided and inward looking as we find ourselves confronted with walls (both metaphoric and real) that surround closed space. This divided world tends to negate the transnational reality of our contemporary life, which is in fact based on borderless communication, consumption of culture and media, cross‐border migrations of people and things, and indivisible racial mixtures. The contemporary world is increasingly more fluid and porous – driven by globalization  –  and this reality is destabilizing the conventional systems based on the idea of nation‐state (Appadurai 1996). Edward Said reminds us  that culture is inherently transnational. Famously criticizing Samuel Huntington’s idea of “clash of civilization” by proclaiming a “clash of ignorance,” Said metaphorically describes culture as swimming in waters in which the waters are part of the ocean of history and any attempt to plow or divide them with barriers is futile. [We are] all swimming in those waters, Westerners and Muslims and others alike. And since the waters are part of the ocean of history, trying to plow or divide them with barriers is futile. These are tense times, but it is better to think in terms

A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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of powerful and powerless communities, the secular politics of reason and ­ignorance, and universal principles of justice and injustice, than to wander off in  search of vast abstractions that may give momentary satisfaction but little self‐knowledge or informed analysis. “The Clash of Civilizations” thesis is a ­gimmick like “The War of the Worlds,” better for reinforcing defensive self‐pride than for critical understanding of the bewildering interdependence of our time. (Said 2001, p. 14)

Said’s question of culture and his appraisal of transculturation raises relevant questions for art and design history studies. Is the current state of these studies equipped to capture the fluidity and porousness of transcultural design history? Are we capturing contemporaneity? If not how can we do better and how can it make the discipline more fluid, inclusive, scalable, and more interesting to a wider world audience? There have been many discussions on “global,” “world,” and “transnational,” but the actual changes we have been seeing are frustratingly abstract in concept, and slow to emerge in their actual realization (Kikuchi and Lee 2014). It can be argued that design history studies have a substantial time lag in terms of its recognition and acknowledgment of non‐Euroamerican design histories. It is not keeping up with the pace of worldwide design history studies that have developed in the last 70 years, such as the case of Japan, where a number of design historians and design studies associations have been active and a great number of academic works have been produced in Japanese (Kikuchi 2011). This reluctance to recognize such work is all the more surprising when we are continuously reminded that it is not one single world, but rather a multiple centered world of design (Calvera 2005) and the plural worlds of art which should be remapped in a different mode (Belting and Buddensieg 2013). It is true that we also need to fully recognize and endorse some important initiatives taken by institutions and networking forums over the last two decades, a discussion of which I will defer until later. One of the factors which I see as detrimental in that it impedes the imagination of truly contemporary multiple centered worlds of art and design is also the question of history. One group of scholars claim that the Western idea of “history” is dead, suggesting that it is saturated and they find no way forward if the single point of view of history is lost (Fry et al. 2015). However, this is not true of the rest of the world. It may be that a singular linear history of the Western world is dead, but, as Hans Belting reminds us, this is based on amnesia as history studies have never been dead throughout human existence right up until the present day. Rather, history has been rewritten from time to time, and Western history is now facing the moment when it needs reconfiguration. It could be reconfigured as multiple centered histories that take into account “contemporaneity” in combination with history in order to capture the function of art in different societies and everyday human lives (Belting 1987). In postcolonial non‐Western worlds, history continues to be written, debated, and to inspire practice, so it is very much “alive.” For example, the writing of



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postcolonial histories form a cogent set of major regional projects in East Asia. “East Asia,” to which I refer here, is a geographically connected region including mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan, but this regional concept is also a discursive construct which is entangled with unresolved histories of Euroamerican imperialism and Japanese colonialism. “East Asia” (similarly “Far East”) was geographically defined as the eastern part of Asia from the point of view of the Europe‐centered world map, but was also the Western imagination of “Other.” Driven by Euroamerican imperialism, the self‐consciousness of this “Other” as a cultural cohesive place was noted by “pan‐ Asianists” such as Okakura Tenshin, and further complicated by the politics of Japanese colonialism which appropriated this ideology. Therefore, “East Asia” is a dialectically and ideologically constructed modern geocultural space in which the framing of “East Asia” itself becomes an inevitable site for the decolonization and rewriting of history. Through contemporary history‐writing, East Asia has been creating contested views of a common past and a commonly held recollection, in particular in relation to Japan’s colonization and imperialism (Richter 2008). It has also been producing a counter‐narrative of a shared history that is clearly an alternative to the version of national history and thus challenges contemporary neo‐nationalism from a critical perspective. The writing of transgressive histories, such as the forgotten Sakhalin Koreans who were brought by the Japanese to Sakhalin from the Korean Peninsula during the colonial period, is also creating channels that seek a path for reconciliation (Morris‐Suzuki 2008). Similarly, the writing of art and design history is very much alive and seeks a shared history that challenges the traditionally held viewpoints that were largely established by Western writers who not only do not have access to a perspective from within, but also have not sufficiently consulted primary sources written in the vernacular (Kikuchi 2015a, b). The result is a contemporary history that itself is part of a process of decolonization through taking ownership of writing and coming to terms with versions of regional and local postcolonial histories: post‐Europe and post‐USA history for Japan; post‐Japan and post‐USA history for South Korea; post‐Japan, post‐China, and post‐USA history for Taiwan; and post‐British history for Hong Kong. These are histories that accumulate the events within regions of the non‐Western world, but these histories also take on an intrinsic need to engage with the legacies of past Euroamerican and Japanese colonizations that still haunt the contemporary world in a transnational way. Certainly in East Asia, transnationalism has been an undercurrent that has brought history and history‐writings to life. The issue at stake here is how we capture this transnational contemporaneity of multiple histories in art and design. It is also a question of whether the notions of “global” and “world” are helpful in this task. Developing further from previous observations on the use of “global” and “world” (Kikuchi 2014), my position has moved further towards that of the cultural anthropologist Sherry Errington’s critique of James Elkins’ question of “Is art history

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global?” Errington comments that the term “global” does not help in that it “tended to provoke hostility,” while the term “world” fails because of its historical association with “world art” and “world music” (Errington 2011, pp. 431–432). It is not easy to extract these terms from Euroamerican‐centric modernism and their colonial historical baggage, while their justification may even be associated with an evocation of nostalgia. In fact, these terms have far more weight in recalling and reinforcing the centrality of Euroamerica than in suggesting an alternative way forward. There are persistent problems including issues of identity, race, and knowledge production under this die‐hard and uneven power relation. Can we take action to explore a concrete methodology rather than debating meanings of arbitrary catch‐all terms like “global” and “world”? Why should the central concern be compatibility and retention of the  currently known format of history? Why don’t we recognize the stories that  have been collaboratively shaped as art histories, whatever new format might emerge?

Transnationalism as a Critical Methodology Bearing in mind the stagnation in configuration of history in the West and the potential noted in respect of mapping multiple centered design histories, I would like to discuss some models that present transnationalism as a critical methodology. I present here examples of transnationalism taken by three cultural studies scholars – Iwabuchi Kōichi (岩 功一), Chen Kuan‐hsing (陳光 興), and Shih Shu‐mei (史書美), who focus on subjects located in East Asia in the context of East Asia within a world setting. Their works are well known in the fields of cultural studies, literature studies, and East Asian studies, and the key ideas seem highly relevant to critical thinkers in twenty‐first century design history studies who may not be familiar with their works as yet. The transnationalisms which they propose are not only progressive critical methodologies but also an activism driven by ethically informed postcolonial thought. Their approaches collectively beg the question: how does transnationalism help and what does it make us visualize and actualize?

“Trans‐East‐Asia” and “Trans‐Asia as Method” The kinds of transnationalism that Iwabuchi, and the scholars with whom he successfully collaborated in East Asia, identified are based on various case studies of multiculturalism in East Asia that had otherwise not been obvious to people in East Asia. According to Iwabuchi, the “trans‐East‐Asian perspective” has been productive in that it “elucidates the shared‐ness” and the “similarity‐in‐ difference” in the postcolonial issue of multiculturalism in East Asia that is associated with and derived from the specific sociohistorical context in this region (Iwabuchi et  al. 2016, p. 2) Iwabuchi has a special interest in



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transnationality in terms of the astonishing speed of the dissemination of Japanese‐made popular culture (pop music, anime and manga, films, etc.) and the extent of its distribution in East Asia. This speed and scale surpasses the globalization of the US‐made popular culture in East Asia, which challenges the common discussion of US popular culture as the main phenomenon of globalization with a transnational character. However, in this transnational contemporaneity, Iwabuchi as well as others find two forces: on the one hand, a constantly challenging impetus which demands reconfiguration of national imaginations (Soysal 2015) and, on the other hand, a recentering of them (Iwabuchi 2002). Furthermore, Iwabuchi examines in this trans/national dynamic the regionally entangled cultural and historical factors. While multiple instances of cultural sharedness make for fast and easy transnational flows, at the same time Iwabuchi identifies the asymmetrical cultural flows and the power relations between Japan and other East Asian countries. He detects Japan’s die‐hard urge for the Japan‐centric imagination of Asia and recentering of its boundary in which he sees the shadow of the undissolved legacy of Japan’s colonial and imperial past (Iwabuchi 2002, 2016). In this regionally specific trans/national dynamic, he also sees the potential for cross‐border collaboration and dialogue to overcome a postcolonial legacy and the associated antagonism in favor of a twenty‐first century hope for the future. This issue is particularly important for contemporary Japan, where there is no consensus for resolving colonial issues and an increasing neo‐nationalism. Therefore, Iwabuchi further develops the “trans‐East‐Asian perspective” into “trans‐Asia as a methodology” as a progressive and productive methodology. Iwabuchi urges each academic and every citizen in East Asia to adopt this methodology consciously in order to generate a critical viewpoint that looks at local, national, and global levels as well as the past, present, and future. The methodology facilitates the opening up of Asia and the creation of cross‐border dialogues that allow learning of other perspectives and the discovery of creative answers and possibilities for sharing issues that have been pending for some time (Iwabuchi 2016, pp. 328–330)

Decolonization of Knowledge By reviving the Japanese sinologist Takeuchi Yoshimi’s idea after 50 years in postcolonial East Asia, Chen’s aim is the decolonization of knowledge by decentering and provincializing the Euroamerican production of knowledge while not disengaging from it (Chen 2012). He laments the fact that postcolonial cultural studies failed in this task, because it created an impasse in “its obsessive critique of the West, which bounds the field by the object of its own criticism” and is still operating “within the limits of the postcolonial critique by shifting the terrain of analysis to the question of deimperialization in the context of Asia.” Therefore, it recreates production of Western knowledge, but

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does not shift the production of knowledge from Asia with respect to the ­deimperialization of Asia (Chen 2010, pp. 1–2). For example, Chen points out that the dominant postcolonial cultural studies centered on the UK and USA have little critical function on sub‐imperial “imperial desire,” such as Japan’s dual situation of being both the colonizer and the colonized (i.e. by USA), or Taiwan’s economic policy since the 1990s, called the “southward advance” into Southeast Asia, which Chen sees as a recurring neo‐imperialism. It is disappointing to realize that Anglo‐American‐centered postcolonial studies have somewhat limited capacity to self‐critique Anglo‐American imperialism, while having neither the interest nor the scope to critique Japan’s or Taiwan’s neo‐ imperialism. Chen suggests an analytical dialogue within the “third world” in engagement with the Anglo‐American‐centered critique. In order to replace the Anglo‐American‐centered knowledge production he proposes to reference each Asian case and issue within Asia horizontally by “using the idea of Asia as an imaginary anchoring point,” rather than referencing Asia to Anglo‐America vertically (Chen 2010, p. 212) This criticism also resonates with the situation in design history and design studies. For example, the critique of design with respect to the British Empire and its relationship with its colonies enables a self‐critique of the British Empire and adds to and reproduces further Anglo‐ centric knowledge, but fails to produce alternative knowledge centered on the colonized. Unless the key issues and empirical cases from the colonized centers are placed and reconfigured within the study frame, we will be continuously trapped in the vicious circle of returning to the overarching and prevailing dominance of the established orthodoxy that has been maintained, and indeed authorized, by the Anglo‐centric knowledge production machine (i.e. the British and American establishment). “Asia as method” is also presented as transnationalism, and proposes a way forward by liberating Asians themselves from their knowledge entrapment that is conditioned by imperialism, colonialism, and the Cold War. As in other parts of the non‐Euroamerican world, East Asia has been going through intense decolonization and reflexive negotiation of turbulent histories that had been interwoven with Euroamerican imperialism, civil wars, Japanese colonization, the Cold War, and China’s new order. Chen describes how political decolonization has given way to cultural “de‐imperialization,” “de‐colonization,” and “de‐cold war,” but the legacy of knowledge and the mindset from the past problematically remain (Chen 2010, p. 212). There is no easy solution to this, but “Asia as method” is a positive way of forward thinking that facilitates “unlearning and reconstructing” knowledge by inspiring Asians to know how others are dealing with the same problem of entanglement that would lead to the liberation of entrapped knowledge in the context of this “tripartite problem of de‐colonization, de‐imperialization, and de‐cold war,” by shifting the referencing point to Asia and the third world (Chen 2010, p. 212). The important point is to take shared ownership of the production of knowledge among Asians and change the rules of the game that had been set by the former



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imperialist’s rule in the major centers and regulated by imperialist apparatus that is rushing to collect historically and politically significant concerns into a singularity, coated with professionalism and stripped of critical concerns and political positions (Chen 2010, p. 268).

Cautions on Globalization: Syncretism Rather than Hybridity In proposing “Asia as method” as his transnationalism for decolonization of knowledge specific to East Asian conditions, Chen cautioned against the imaginary of global that has a close association with globalization. He reminds us that globalization emerged historically from the imperial and colonial past, thus the slide into an appraisal of neo‐globalism is at risk of re‐emphasizing globalization without deimperialization. He emphasizes that deimperialization in various ways is the priority task before globalization can be endorsed (Chen 2010, p. 2). Chen also goes on to criticize the use of “hybridity,” which was coined by Homi Bhabha, as dehistoricizing and abstracting the real colonial conditions. Although acknowledging Bhabha’s intention as one of seeing “the effects of the hybridization of different cultures in a colonial context” that “points to a strategy of resistance,” his arguments focus on hybridity in an isolating manner as a rather generic “trans‐historical figure” that risks the historicizing at local level and falling into a positivistic trap again (Chen 1998, pp. 23–24). Chen shares his skepticism on “hybridity” with Paul Gilroy as the notion increases the level of abstraction, leading to loss of critical function towards decolonization. Moreover, the notion presupposes purity (Chen 1998, p. 24). Chen’s concern is that hybridity presupposes purity and different degrees of mixing the same ingredients that point to globalization from the center directing to the peripheries. Chen, following Gilroy, prefers to use the anthropological term “syncretism,” which has no romantic association with purity (Chen 1998, p. 24). Transnationalism presupposes syncretic cultures regardless as to whether referring to the centre or the peripheries, and the point of transnationalism is to explore subjectivities rooted in one particular locale (i.e. nation or region) that are all syncretic and the nature and degree of mixture should not be ­measured by the center. The appraisal of “hybridity” will be trapped in the center‐periphery model and the singular interest in globalization from the center; therefore, the power of critical enquiry has never taken root in a minor peripheral.

Minor Transnationalism Similar to the notion of “hybridity” is the notion of “diaspora,” which is also a catch‐all term for globalization’s effect on the peripheral others. They both have strong directional thinking from the center. This is challenged by

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Shih Shu‐mei with her idea of “minor transnationalism” (Lionnet and Shih 2005) and “sinophone” (Shih 2007; Shih et al. 2013). Like Chen, Shih is critical of globalization and the idea of global, as it is “centripetal and centrifugal and assumes a universal core or norms” and it “produces a hierarchy of subjects between the so‐called universal and particular” based on the Eurocentric idea of universalism (Lionnet and Shih 2005, p. 5). The transnational, on the contrary, “can be conceived as a space for exchange and participation where it is still possible for cultures to be produced and performed without necessary mediation by the center” (Lionnet and Shih 2005, p. 5). Shih acknowledges that the transnational phenomenon itself is caused by globalization, but her methodological transnationalism tends to show the transnational reality that is fragmented and scattered without referencing the center. Like Chen, her transnationalism is derived from the unique critical location of Taiwan, which is an island populated by Han settlers from mainland China who formed a majority, in a similar manner to colonial USA in the seventeenth century. These settlers, who intended to become independent from the country from where they came, are akin to francophone Quebec, where standard French is no longer the language of the majority. Thus contemporary Taiwan has become a multilingual society of the Hoklo, Hakka, and various aboriginal language speakers and not just Mandarin speakers. Shih’s criticism attacked the uniformed Chinese identity, imagined centrally by the cultural propaganda of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and its share by the Guomindang (or KMT) regime in Taiwan to the peripheral Taiwan (Shih et al. 2013, p. 30). Shih’s concept of a “minor transnationalism” proposes a transnational perspective through horizontal studies of relationships among minor‐peripheral cultures rather than the normative vertical and hierarchical binary study model between a major‐center and minor‐cultures on its periphery. Shih points out the lack of dimension in normative studies, and the normative mindset on studying minority subjects by saying “we study the center and the margin but rarely examine the relationships among different margins.” (Lionnet and Shih 2005, p. 2) This is an important point that shares Chen’s problematizing of the entrapment of knowledge and the vicious circle that prevents production of knowledge from the margins and peripheries. Lionnet and Shih argue that their approach allows one to look at cultures being “produced and performed without any necessary mediation with the center,” giving insight into “less scripted and more scattered” phenomena that occur across “different and multiple spatialities and temporalities” (Lionnet and Shih 2005, pp. 5–6). Their reference goes to the revolutionary thinker Franz Fanon, whose minor‐to‐minor connection between Martinique and Algeria, both French colonies, produced a deeper level of commensurability and effectiveness in his argument beyond its binary of center‐periphery and beyond the center’s self‐critique. Thus, dialogues between multiple minor



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spaces allow the periphery to develop self‐awareness, and self‐critique. This is a similar idea of transnationalism that Chen Kuan‐hsing proposed in his “Asia as method” and “inter‐Asia” approaches that connect colonial Asia.

Sinophone Shih’s minor‐to‐minor connections developed into her idea of “sinophone,” which is now a field of study called “sinophone studies.” Her starting point is the observation of a vibrant production of what she calls sinophone films, literature, and sinophone visual art, such as the Academy Award‐winning film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, directed by the Taiwanese–American Ang Lee. For non‐Chinese speakers, this is simply a “Chinese” film, but actors in this film have different nationalities, including the USA, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and the PRC. The literature, which is written in “Chinese language,” should be specifically referred to as being written in the Sinitic language family (漢語語系文學), e.g. sinophone Malaysian writers make use of Mandarin incorporating English, Malay, and Tamil, and crossing over into Mandarin, Hokkien, and Cantonese. Sinophone studies entail “the study of Sinitic‐language cultures and communities on the margins of China and Chineseness” (Shih et al. 2013, p. 25) that are “transnational in constitution and formation, but local in practice and articulation” (Shih et al. 2013, p. 7). “The purpose of Sinophone studies is not to construct yet another universal category such as the Chinese diaspora and ‘Cultural China’ with obligatory relationship to China, but rather to examine how the relationship becomes more and more various and problematic and how it becomes but one of the many relationships that define the Sinophone in the multiangulated and multiaxiological contexts of the local, the global, the national, the transnational, and above all, the place of settlement and everyday practice” (Shih 2007, p. 31). Sinophone is a critique of “diaspora,” which is an idea generated from a consideration of the center‐periphery power relation. Chinese diaspora is uncritically understood as “the dispersion of ‘ethnic Chinese’ people around the globe” who stand “as a universalizing category founded on a unified ethnicity, culture, language, and place of origin or homeland” (Shih et al. 2013, p. 26). Shih’s criticism is directed at the Chinese term “huaqiao 華僑” (­meaning overseas Chinese), propagated by the PRC, which is combined with the Western concept of “diaspora” as foreign Other. Unlike the centrally fixed notion of huaqiao and “diaspora,” sinophone is centered on a notion of transience – diaspora “has an end date” and eventually becomes local (Shih 2007, p. 185). Her transnational perspective leads to reconceptualization of vibrant and transient communities of Sinitic‐language cultures. This transnationalism, proposed through discussing and identifying sinophone, also illustrates the importance of looking at their local identity with a transient moment that points to a subjectively imagined and locally translated “Chineseness.”

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Conclusion So what can we learn from the transnationalisms proposed from East Asian perspectives, specifically Iwabuchi’s approach of “trans‐East‐Asia” and “trans‐ Asia as method,” Chen Kuan‐hsing’s proposition of “inter‐Asia” and “Asia as method,” and Shih Shu‐mei’s “minor transnationalism” and “sinophone studies”? Four key points stand out in terms of provoking discussion and potential follow‐up research. First, there is a need for the exchange of shared issues among the colonized and cultural peripheries to find differences between common postcolonial East Asian conditions as exchange deepens understanding of local specificities in critical and subjective terms that are not defined by the colonizers. Second, recounting, referencing, and critiquing within peripheral cultures shifts the focus of research activity from the normative critiquing in respect of the relationship with the center (i.e. the Euroamerican point of view). This is a productive activity in order to decolonize knowledge, and given that this way of thinking has been little practiced, there is ample space for further exploration. Third, the exercise of minor transnationalism that has been described would bring out local histories and their articulation based on local practices onto the center stage, thus forming a counter‐narrative to existing notions of globalization. This brings us on to the final point – transnationalism cautions against the use of terminologies that may have implicit baggage. The notions and terminologies that are associated with the center‐periphery model such as “globalization” have the potential to take us back to the vicious circle of strengthening the old power relation and Euroamerican‐centric knowledge and its reproduction. This caution further reminds us to retain a measure of skepticism and to question catch‐all terminologies by increasing production of peripheral knowledge based on empirical studies. So, how can we make use of these points in design history and design studies? One example of work in progress in this respect has been provided by the International Committee for Design History and Design Studies (ICDHS), which not only has been considering these issues seriously but also has directly tested minor transnationalism by ensuring that the local/regional voices and empirical cases are heard during the last 20 years since its inception, in a way that has been enshrined into its own structure. The ICDHS was formed originally in the Spanish‐speaking trans‐Atlantic cultural network with an initial conference in Barcelona, Spain, in 1999; since then, it has been instrumental in orchestrating a shift towards multiple geographical perspectives within design history and design studies. The way it operates is unique as it is transnational from the outset and intentionally has no nationally based headquarters. The biannual conferences were organized on the basis of local proposals and so traveled from Barcelona to Havana, Istanbul, Guadalajara, Helsinki, Osaka, Brussels, São Paulo, Aveiro, Taipei, returning to Barcelona in 2018, and scheduled for Zagreb in 2020. The ICDHS aims at minding the gaps by redrawing the map of design history and design studies into a more inclusive picture



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beyond the hegemonic Anglo‐American‐centric discipline.1 Local languages and terminologies have also been integrated into locally specific panels that promote locally specific agendas and emerging issues. The serious gaps in the current map have been most clearly identified in the region of the Spanish cultural zone and East Asia. At the 10th anniversary ICDHS in 2016, the roundtable discussions posed these recurring questions under the overarching theme of “trans/national”2 (Figure 4.1). The roundtable panelists provided examples of how transnationalism has been useful in writing new histories, such as the design history of waterways and dealing with environment‐related design issues. Although nation‐based research funding and legal binding are obstacles to transnationalism, it is eye‐opening to learn that transnationalism is at the core of locally centered history‐writing and policy‐making for Taiwan and Hong Kong. Taiwan uses transnationalism as a political strategy to write an alternative Taiwan‐centered Chinese design history that not only differs from a PRC Chinese‐centered history but is Taiwan centric in the sense of multicultural beyond the Han Chinese‐centered model. For example, Taiwan leads research in the design histories of oceanic and maritime culture, including blue and white porcelain that emerged from shipwrecks on the Malaysian coast and that, as such, forms an alternative design history. Similarly, museum collection policies in Hong Kong are transnational and transcultural as the stories behind the objects condition them, given Hong Kong’s role in providing an export gateway point for exchange and trade; as a result, a transcultural design history that is part of Hong Kong is being formed. Further informative examples of transnational histories based on the perspective of cultural exchange include the studies on fake objects that are in fact copies of the copies of the originals. Thus Inaga Shigemi’s “pirates’ view” reconstructs world histories to deal with shipwrecked objects and fake objects such as blue and white porcelain. The shipwrecked objects in the Pacific Ocean that emerged from far beyond national borders were, in fact, copies of copies and fakes made in Arita in Japan and in Jingdezhen in China. They were traded by pirates in large quantities and thus became commodities for consumption. They are part of the design cultures of East and Southeast Asia, which also connect with those of Europe. These transnational design histories have not been written about very much, and this transnational approach inevitably demands collaboration and interdisciplinarity, and ultimately leads to decentering the Euroamerican‐ centric knowledge framework (Inaga 2014a, b, 2016). The transnational model also has strong resonances with recent debates and studies on the location of “craft” in visual cultures. In visual cultures in East Asia, craft predominates to the extent that in Japan it subordinates that which is called “fine art” in western institutions, and is highly respected throughout. This is in complete contrast with the recent “craft debate” (Kikuchi 2015b). The transnational perspective reveals a translated notion of “craft” and an ­associated hierarchy that has been adopted by the center and applied to this periphery; although this challenged local visual culture, it failed to take root.

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Figure 4.1  Cover of the proceedings of the 10th ICDHS conference. Source: Wong et al. (2016). Reproduced with permission from Blucher.



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The exchange of debate on “craft” in inter‐Asia has produced a different ­perspective and a criticism of imported and translated modernism that did ­challenge “craft,” yet it remained resilient largely because of its continuous relevance to local cultures. However this type of issue is not peculiar to East Asia – similar situations can be found in most of the peripheral cultures of the world. Therefore, one could envisage turning the model around so as to apply it to the Anglo‐American debate and provincializing it as an exception in the spirit of Dipesh Chakrabarty (Chakrabarty 2000). Another area in which transnationalism assists in deciphering complexity is in the study of “colonial modernity” in East Asia. “Colonial modernity” has been explored by many for over the last two decades, and Tani Barlow followed the debate that emerged in the 1990s extensively (Barlow 2012). Colonial modernity proposed an understanding of modernities that formed an alternative to Western modernity, which was centered on the modernization theory. The debate encouraged multicultural and multifaceted approaches to understand regional and other stories of modernity in East Asia, and has elucidated the intricately entwined colonial space of modernity, particularly under the non‐ Western and non‐white Japanese colonization that brought a “double colonization” effect whereby the translated Euroamerican cultural colonization of Japan was applied to the rest of East Asia. Thus in both fields, craft studies and colonial modernity, we can demonstrate how a transnational perspective has the effect of decentralizing Anglo‐American study and knowledge production. Last, I would like to briefly mention some of the other important transnationalism that was initiated in other parts of the world, in order to demonstrate that transnationalism proposed from East Asian perspectives is not restricted to East Asia, but is part of a widely shared initiative which has similar tenets in terms of aspiration. The “Global South” movement proposes a “south‐south cooperation” and Southern alliance. This notion evolved in the 1970s, in the spirit of the national liberation movement that originally formed at the Bandung Conference in 1955 to become an academically institutionalized and international movement that has recently seen a revival.3 Recognizing that the notion of “Third World” is no longer viable, “Global South” has been interpreted in many different ways with the developed cultures in the North distinguished from the developing cultures in the South. Yet these notions of North and South fail to articulate a geographical divide (as the terms imply) but rather an overlapping with the central and peripheral cultural divide that points to unequal power relations. As Arif Dirlik discusses, “Global South” includes PRC China, India, Brazil, and South Africa, and it has historical associations with the idea of “Third World.” It aims to reconfigure global relations, through a Southern alliance, in such a way as to recognize “differences in regional and national practices within a common global framework, which is founded not upon homogenizing universalisms that inevitably lead to hegemonism but a simultaneous recognition of commonality and difference” (Dirlik 2007, pp.  18–19). “Global South,” together with “trans‐East‐Asia,” “trans‐Asia as

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method,” “inter‐Asia,” “Asia as method,” “minor transnationalism,” and “sinophone studies,” shares the same aims for redressing uneven power relations, decolonization of knowledge, and decentering/“provincializing” Euroamerica. Like any humanities discipline, design history and design studies have to take on the contemporary challenges and create an appropriate alternative paradigm and framework. In this situation, transnationalism as a critical methodology, as discussed in this chapter, may be able to lead to breakthrough. It certainly facilitates many unrealized projects such as writing unwritten and unrecorded local and regional histories, while building the counter‐narrative of a shared history that is an alternative to national histories, in an engaged manner.

Notes 1 “Mind the Map: Design History Beyond Borders” was one of the key ICDHS conferences, held in Istanbul in 2002. The theme “mind the map” was coined by the convener, Tevfik Balcioglu, and symbolically captured the shared feeling of an unfulfilled agenda that continues to this day (http://www.ub.edu/ icdhs/istanbul/index.html). 2 See the Taipei conference (https://www.facebook.com/ICDHS2016Taipei/) and the main ICDHS website (www.ub.edu/gracmon/icdhs). 3 Over the last decade, we have seen, for example, publication of new journals such as The Global South (Indian University Press) and the Journal of Global South Studies (University Press of Florida) as well as the establishment of the Global South Studies Center Cologne in Germany.

References Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Barlow, T. (2012). Debates over colonial modernity in East Asia and another alternative. Cultural Studies 26 (5): 617–644. Belting, H. (1987). The End of the History of Art? (trans. C. S. Wood). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Belting, H. and Buddensieg, A. (2013). From art world to art worlds. In: The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds (eds. H. Belting, A. Buddensieg, and P. Weibel), 28–31. Karlsruhe, Germany: ZKM/Center for Art and Media. Calvera, A. (2005). Local regional, national, global and feedback: several issues to be faced with constructing regional narratives. Journal of Design History 18 (4): 371–383. Chakrabarty, D. (2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.



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Chen, K.‐h. (ed.) (1998). Trajectories: Inter‐Asia Cultural Studies. London: Routledge. Chen, K.‐h. (2010). Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Durham: Duke University Press. Chen, K.‐h. (2012). Takeuchi Yoshimi’s 1960 ‘Asia as method’ lecture. Inter‐Asia Cultural Studies 13 (2): 320. Dirlik, A. (2007). Global south: predicament and promise. The Global South 1 (1): 12–23. Errington, S. (2011). Afterword. In: Is Art History Global? (ed. J. Elkins), 405–440. New York: Routledge. Fry, T., Dilnot, C., and Steward, S.C. (2015). Design and the Question of History. London: Bloomsbury. Inaga, S. (2014a). Kaiga no Rinkai: Kindai Higashi Ajia Bijutsu Shi no Shikkoku to Meiun (A Historical Survey of East Asian Trans‐National Asian Modernities). Nagoya: Nagoya University Press (in Japanese). Inaga, S. (2014b). A “Pirates’ view” of art history. Review of Japanese Culture and Society XXVI: 65–79. Inaga, S. (2016). Sesshoku Zo ̄keiron: Fureau Tamashii, Tsumugareru Katachi (In Search of the Haptic Plasticity: Souls Touching Each Other, Forms Interwoven). Nagoya: Nagoya University Press (in Japanese). Iwabuchi, K. (2002). Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Iwabuchi, K. (2016). Toransunashonaru Japan: Popura ̄ Bunka ga Ajia o Hiraku (Transnational Japan: Popular Culture opens Asia). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten (in Japanese). Iwabuchi, K., Kim, H.M., and Hsia, H.‐c. (eds.) (2016). Multiculturalism in East Asia: A Transnational Exploration of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Kikuchi, Y. (2011). “Re: focus design—design histories and design studies in East Asia” (part 1: introduction and Japan). Journal of Design History 24 (3): 273–282. Kikuchi, Y. (2015a). Negotiating histories: through tradition and participation in contemporary East Asia. World Art 5 (1): 5–19. Kikuchi, Y. (2015b). The craft debate at the crossroads of global visual culture: re‐centring craft in postmodern and postcolonial histories. World Art 5 (1): 87–115. Kikuchi, Y. (2014). Transnational modern design histories in East Asia: An Introduction. Journal of Design History 27 (4): 323–334. Kikuchi, Y., Wong, W.S., and Lee, Y. (2011–2012). Re: focus design—design histories and design studies in East Asia”, Part 1: Introduction and ­ Japan.  Journal  of Design History 24 (3): 273–282; Part 2: Greater China‐ People’s  Republic of China/Hong Kong/Taiwan. Journal of Design History 24–4: 375–395; Part 3: Korea and Conclusion. Journal of Design History 25–1: 93–106.

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Lionnet, F. and Shih, S.‐m. (eds.) (2005). Minor Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Morris‐Suzuki, T. (2008). Lost memories: historical reconciliation and cross‐ border narratives in Northeast Asia. In: Contested Views of a Common Past: Revisions of History in Contemporary East Asia (ed. S. Richter), 397–416. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag. Richter, S. (ed.) (2008). Contested Views of a Common Past: Revisions of History in Contemporary East Asia. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag. Said, E.W. (2001). The clash of ignorance. The Nation 273 (12): 11–14. Shih, S.‐m. (2007). Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Shih, S.‐m., Tsai, C.‐h., and Bernards, B. (eds.) (2013). Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader. New York: Columbia University Press. Soysal, Y.N. (ed.) (2015). Transnational Trajectories in East Asia: Nation Citizenship, and Region. London: Routledge. Wong, W.S., Kikuchi, Y., and Lin, T.S. (eds.) (2016). Making Trans/National Contemporary Design History. Proceedings of the 10th Conference of the International Committee for Design History and Design Studies, Taipei, Taiwan (26–28 October 2016). Sao Paulo: Blucher. (ISSN: 2318‐6968).

5

African Fashion Design and the Mobilization of Tradition Victoria L. Rovine

African fashion design, like fashion design everywhere, has much to do with tradition, although this element of culture is rarely associated with the constant changes that characterize fashion. Nonetheless, many designers work within or against the often‐invisible field that tradition creates.1 In the realm of dress, tradition is an amorphous yet powerful concept. It is applied to styles and materials that have acquired significance as emblems of the cultures people conceive of as defining elements of their identities. These may be dress practices that have ceased to play a part in quotidian culture, or they may continue to appear as elements of daily dress that are intermingled with other dress styles. The term is far from stable; tradition’s designation shifts, even as the forms it describes are often taken to be timeless. Its changing forms provide fuel for fashion designers, whether as sources of inspiration or as foils against which to innovate. This element of the fashion system has special significance – and it carries particular risks – for African designers. Their connection to tradition may be manifested directly, in clear stylistic allusions, or it may be embedded deep within the design process, invisible without interpretation. Or, as my first case study demonstrates, references to tradition may be absent, though this is true for fewer designers today than in the early years of Africa’s fashion design industry. In short, the analysis that follows will demonstrate that African f­ ashion designers’ deployment of forms associated with longstanding local practice – a hallmark of the traditional – is often complicated, calling for a reconsideration of the meanings and the manifestations of tradition in Africa today.

A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Though vague in its connotations, tradition is a key cultural concept that offers an ideal vantage point from which to explore two broad concepts that play key roles in academic and popular discourse on a wide range of African cultural expressions: tradition and modernity, and their corollaries local and global. Used to classify cultures, peoples, practices, and objects (such as clothing), the labels “traditional” and “modern” have a range of associations. These broad concepts are often balanced against each other, so that classification in one category entails exclusion from the other. Few subjects are more closely identified with tradition and modernity than, respectively, Africa (tradition) and fashion (modernity). Popular Western perceptions of Africa and of fashion often treat the two as mutually exclusive, so that, like tradition and modernity, they cannot share the same space. Fashion, in this conception, cannot be found in Africa, because it is Western in style, it uses Western methods of production and promotion, and it is emblematically contemporary, while Africa is too often treated as frozen in a timeless traditional state. The production of fashion that reflects actual or imagined African identities and histories can reinforce these associations, or it may expose and call them into question. African designers whose work refers to traditional forms are not limited by their incorporation of these references. Instead, despite the concept’s connotations of conservatism, references to tradition may drive innovations and inspire transformations of longstanding forms and materials. Designers may be driven by a desire to preserve dress styles and media that are fading from use in the face of largely Westernized dress cultures; they may have personal attachments to forms and styles they associate with their own heritage, and they may seek to make their work more marketable by incorporating distinctive dress styles. These and other motivations make connections to traditional cultures a productive element of African fashion design. Alternatively, African designers may eschew forms that are associated with tradition in order to avoid entanglement with the mainstream fashion market’s expectations about African style, which are dominated by distorted images of Africa as bounded by tradition, detached from the global networks in which fashion and inspirations circulate.2 These associations lead designers to push back, inventing their own formal languages in order to produce garments that express their position as African without making use of the predetermined emblems of that identity. The sections that follow offer examples of both approaches through the work of successful African fashion designers.

Alaïa, Boateng, and the Navigation of Tradition Before turning to these diverse incarnations of the traditional, this exploration of African fashion design begins with a brief introduction to the first and most prominent fashion name to have emerged from Africa: Azzedine Alaïa. Alaïa’s work and his reputation illustrate a key factor in the study of fashion design

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from Africa, for his work does not bear analysis as African. While the balance of the present chapter addresses the diverse expressions of African identity in the work of designers from Africa, this analytical frame does not elucidate the work of all African designers. Alaïa is from Tunisia and has been based in Paris, France, since 1957, when he was 17. He has occupied the elite ranks of fashion for decades, his stature indicated by the numerous museum exhibitions devoted to his work.3 Scholarly as well as popular discussions of the designer have often drawn attention to the complexity and innovative nature of his tailoring. In a typical assessment of Alaïa’s importance, the survey book Fashion: The Century of the Designer declares: “The real secret lay in his cut, which has been thoroughly analyzed and boundlessly admired by experts” (Seeling 1999, p. 504). Throughout his career, Alaïa’s African heritage has not been an element of the analysis of his work. Given his status as the sole African designer working on the international stage during the 1980s and well into the 1990s, the absence of attention to this aspect of his identity is noteworthy. Yet, fashion scholars and journalists have not sought to find Tunisian or broader African resonances in his garments. Indeed, only as recently as 2016 did the designer first lay claim to African inspiration. An article by fashion journalist Suzy Menkes includes Alaïa’s own attestation to the African imagery in a line of clothing he presented that year: Knits make up around 60 per cent of the collection and this season they were animated by geometric effects in vivid African colors. “But not North Africa – south of the Maghreb,” he said, referring to Sub‐Saharan Africa, rather than the Tunisia in which he grew up. (Menkes 2016)

Since the establishment of his brand in 1981, this 2016 collection was Alaïa’s first association of his designs with African sources of inspiration. Although the continent’s influence, as he noted, was not an element of his own identity, for he is North African, the explicit connection to Africa is exceptional in his oeuvre. While Alaïa did not bring Africa into his designs through most of his career, the continent has long had a presence in the fashion markets in which his work circulated. These allusions to Africa were, and still are, manifested primarily in the work of non‐African designers, including some of fashion’s most famous figures, from Paul Poiret in the early twentieth century to Yves Saint Laurent in the 1960s, and later John Galliano, Jean‐Paul Gaultier, Dolce and Gabbana, and many others in recent decades. These designers have marked Africa’s influence through the use of beads, bold patterns, masks, and painted bodies, and exotic‐sounding names for garments and collections, creating clothing that owes little to actual African precedent but is instead inspired by the history of Western constructions of Africa. Elsewhere, I have described such Africa‐ inspired sartorial expressions as “Africanisms” (Rovine 2015). These Africanisms implicitly distance their sources of inspiration; clothing styles associated with

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African cultures were (and often still are) characterized as traditional rather than contemporary or coeval in Western imagination (Rovine 2015, pp. 17–18). Thus, the “imagined Africa” created through the work of such prominent designers produces a field of representation that African designers must ­contend with, particularly those who aim to market their work in the many tributaries of the global fashion market. They balance the associations that are often attached to Africa in international contexts against the impulse to design from their own experiences and identities as African. A second prominent African designer vividly illustrates this balance. Ozwald Boateng is an Anglo‐Ghanaian men’s fashion designer whose flagship store is located on London’s iconic tailoring hub Savile Row. Boateng is also a reality television star and philanthropist whose achievements have been recognized with the title Officer of the Order of the British Empire. He is a major figure in the world of fashion, and his experience demonstrates that even the most renowned designers from Africa must navigate the implications of African identity in international markets. In a 2002 interview, more than a decade into his storied career, Boateng described a breakthrough in his work: Last season I produced a collection called “Tribal Traditionalism” … For the first time in my life, I felt ready to express my cultural and ancestral spirituality in a collection. I allowed the spirit and colors of Africa to flow through everything that I created. At long last I felt the confidence to do this without feeling stereotyped. (Dadson 2002, p. 32)

With this shift in outlook, the designer was liberated to express his connection to Africa through the styles of his garments. Since 2002, Boateng has made Africa a prominent element of his career, co‐establishing a venture capital firm focused on infrastructure investment in Africa as well as a short‐lived foundation created to provide support for development‐related projects.4 Despite Boateng’s successes in longstanding Western fashion centers as well as in emerging fashion hubs in Asian and African metropolises, he was cautious about bringing his Ghanaian roots into his work. His experience illustrates the implications of African fashion designers’ references to tradition, implications that led Boateng to wait years before drawing from this key element of his identity, and that led other designers to carefully consider their use of styles that evoke tradition. By navigating dress forms and their associations, African fashion design has implications far beyond the realm of dress, for it illuminates the role of tradition as an element of African cultures today. We have a rich array of designers to consider for this exploration of the deployment of tradition in contemporary African fashion. In the past decade, the work of African fashion designers has gained heightened visibility in international markets, becoming numerous and prominent enough to warrant recognition as a category.5 With this newly enhanced profile and the relative novelty of African identity in global fashion markets, designers’ relationship to

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Africa has been the subject of considerable attention; being African and a designer requires negotiation of expectations, particularly in markets beyond the local. Some respond directly to these expectations. In response to his non‐ African market’s misconceptions about African attire, New York‐based Nigerian designer Duro Olowu declared: “Anyone looking for a few masks or leopard spots will be disappointed” (Oliver 2011, p. E8). Expressing a similar refusal to be delimited by categories and identities, Comorian designer Sakina M’Sa does not accept the designation African designer: “This is what infuriates me – when you’re Western, you’re international. I am universal.”6 Like M’Sa, Boateng, and Olowu, many African fashion designers whose work circulates in markets beyond the continent have a complicated relationship with Africa as an element of their professional identities, leading them to be intentional in their use of styles, iconography, and media associated with traditional Africa cultures. Like African fashion designers, scholars have carefully considered the implications of the term and the category “traditional.” Since the 1990s, anthropologists, art historians, and other students of African culture have fruitfully deconstructed and historicized this concept.7 More specifically, academic discourse on African art has in recent decades cast a critical eye on the notion of tradition, a concept that is embedded in the colonial era’s objectification and classification of African and other non‐Western cultures (Probst 2012). So powerful are these associations that, as Steiner notes, the term’s appearances in academic publications are often marked by literal or implied scare quotes, reflecting the “intellectual and symbolic baggage that accompanies terms like ‘traditional’ and ‘conservative.’” Indeed, he continues, scholarship that addresses the traditional “raises today the specter of old school politics and the reactionary discourse with which it is so often characterized” (Steiner 2004, p. 91). Thus, in academic circles, tradition bears connotations of conservatism and stasis; the term appears rarely in current scholarship on African dress, textiles, and related art forms. Yet, this concept is an important one for many African designers, who make use of its power to express their identities and to enhance their work. Though tradition is a problematic category for academics, for African fashion designers it may provide an effective medium for self‐expression. In order to address the mobilization of tradition in the work of African fashion designers, we must address the historical circumstances that have lent this cultural category heightened significance for many of these designers. Dress forms associated with tradition mean differently in cultures where Western dress styles are prominent or predominant, as is the case in much of Africa. The orbit of Western fashion is vast; its influence is reflected not only in dress styles but also in dress cultures, including the use of Western‐style patterns and tailoring, the presentation of garments on runway models, and the sale of clothing through branded marketing. This Western influence is not entirely the product of an imperialist history, for Africans have long adapted dress styles drawn from Western (and other) cultures. In the Early Modern period, centuries before European powers shifted the nature of their interactions with African

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polities from diplomacy to dominance, we can find evidence of creative adaptation of Western elements into local dress practices in Africa.8 Yet Western influence on African attire is overwhelmingly associated with the residue of colonial cultures and policies. As a result, where tailored suits, T‐shirts, blue jeans, high heels, and other Western‐descendent dress styles are the norm, styles associated with local cultures take on greater importance, in some instances shifting from ordinary dress to the realm of tradition. In most settings, the T‐shirts and heels that were originally imported are now thoroughly embedded in local dress practices (Eicher and Sumberg 1995). Dress practices that have a much longer history – in various parts of Africa, these include flowing gowns adorned with embroidery, wrappers, beadwork, and beaded garments – are often marked as distinct, to be worn on special occasions and as deliberate symbols of traditional culture.9 This shift in the significance of sartorial practices in a range of African contexts, encompassing both urban and rural settings across the continent, has largely taken place over the course of the twentieth century. The transformation of dress into an emblem of tradition is illustrated by its deployment by politicians, who have harnessed the symbolic power of clothing that has moved between these categories. As Western‐style dress has displaced the local attire that preceded it, clothing may be held up as “evidence” of cultural destruction, and as a route to a precolonial past. The first approach is exemplified by a political moment in 1940s Kenya. Ali Mazrui describes how Eliud Mathu, the first African member of Kenya’s governing body, used clothing as a powerful political symbol: “Once [he] tore his jacket off at a public meeting in a dramatic gesture of rejecting Western civilization … ‘Take back your civilization – and give me back my land!’” (Mazrui 1970, p. 27). Land and clothing were both symbols of self‐determination; throwing off a suit jacket was a means of throwing off the political and economic systems that had brought such garments to East Africa and divested Kenyans of their land. In a very different context, Zairian president Mobutu Sese Seko used dress as an element of his “authenticité” campaign of the 1970s, through which he aimed to return the nation to a “pure” precolonial culture (which, as we have seen, may itself have been influenced by Western styles) (White 2006). Along with banning the use of Western names and nationalizing the economy, Mobutu prohibited Western clothing. Rather than a return to precolonial dress practices, Mobutu mandated that women wear wrappers and men the vaguely‐but‐ not‐quite‐Western attire he referred to as “abacost” – essentially a leisure suit, its name a contraction of the French “à bas le costume” or “down with the suit” (van Beurden 2015, p. 108). Such political deployments of clothing, in colonial‐era Kenya and postcolonial Zaire, indicate the power of the distinction between dress styles associated with Western influence and those associated with traditional cultures. Mobutu’s regulation of clothing also reveals the contingent nature of these seemingly self‐evident categories, for he wholly invented a traditional dress style. Thus, through autocratic decree Mobutu created a connection between dress style

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and tradition, bypassing the process of cultural consensus by which such associations are normally produced, a vivid illustration of the political force of clothing. The politics of tradition in the realm of dress is evident far beyond the halls of presidential palaces and state legislatures, permeating everyday attire. In Africa, these dynamics may elucidate the impact of colonial history, revealing networks of direct and indirect interactions, undergirded by histories of colonial and postcolonial power asymmetries. One of the most visible manifestations of the complicated intersection of colonial history, traditional attire, and contemporary dress politics can be found in the fabric variously known as wax print, Dutch wax cloth, or African print, in addition to other regionally specific names (Figure 5.1). This cloth is the product of European colonial connections and commercial interests, and yet it is also an emblem of African identity in Africa and beyond. The cloth’s story began far from Africa, in the commerce of the Dutch East India Co. in seventeenth century Southeast Asia, today Indonesia. Through the Dutch trade in Indonesian textiles, European consumers developed a taste for intricately patterned batik fabrics, made by hand using a wax resist technique. The cloth has a distinctive aesthetic: when immersed in dye, the wax‐covered areas often crack, allowing thin rivulets of color to seep through. This creates fine lines in a random pattern, an unintended effect but a key element of the success of batik as a trade good. The popularity of these resist‐dyed fabrics in Europe led industrialists in the Netherlands and the UK to seek a means of mass producing similar textiles using roller prints, an industrial technology developed in the mid‐nineteenth century.

Figure 5.1  Wax prints for sale in Djenné, Mali, 2009. Photo: V. Rovine.

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These fabrics failed to find markets in Europe, but Dutch and British manufacturers soon discovered that their nations’ African colonies provided a ready market. European producers began to design textiles to the tastes of specific African regions – Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Senegal, and so on (Nielsen 1979; Steiner 1985). The fabrics that developed out of this industry are now made in African as well as European and Asian factories, and they have become icons of African style. Despite the immense diversity of their patterns, they are broadly characterized by large motifs, vivid colors, and selvedges printed with the name and location of the textile company. As “commemorative cloth,” these textiles play active roles in political discourse, in the celebration of major events and holidays, and in the documentation of histories (Bishop 2014). They are the basis for fashion in myriad styles, from the widely accessible work of street corner tailors to exclusive high‐fashion houses (Gott et al. 2017). Although African print has moved far from its hand‐painted and resist‐dyed roots, the cloth’s characteristic aesthetic was designed to imitate the key features of batik, including the “crackling” effects of the wax; the accidental became a key stylistic element that designers struggled to reproduce in a mechanized process (Rabine 2002, p. 145). Thus, the cloth’s authentic African‐ness – its identity as an element of longstanding dress practice in many parts of Africa – is located in the reminders of its complicated, multinational past. The Dutch and British colonial empires shaped this trade as batik and batik‐inspired cloth moved from the East Indies to Europe and to Africa, but this textile now projects an African identity wherever it is made and worn. This nearly omnipresent element of African attire exemplifies the importance and the shifting incarnations of tradition, a concept that reflects cultural significance rather than any absolute quality that inheres in textiles or garment styles. Made into clothing in an array of styles, including the work of fashion designers, African print is embedded in cultures across Africa. Fashion design, thus, offers a rich field for analysis of the changing meanings and manifestations of tradition in contemporary African visual culture. These designers reflect and, in some instances, help to produce new incarnations of the traditional, taking a variety of approaches to their incorporation of these culturally significant forms. Some bring references to tradition into their work as a key element, while others absorb these references into their designs rather than retaining their legibility. And still others move between these methods, foregrounding their citations of traditional culture in some designs and embedding them beneath the surface in others.

Tradition as Style Designers whose incorporation of tradition takes the form of direct adaptations of materials, garment styles, and iconography still transform these forms, bringing them into new contexts even as they remain recognizable. Employment of

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these forms may be motivated by a variety of factors, from the very practical (local materials may be more accessible or less expensive than those acquired from afar) to the philosophical (a desire to demonstrate the value of local products and styles). For many African designers, clothing innovations are inspired by a combination of pride and practicality. The work of South African designer Laduma Ngxokolo vividly illustrates these multiple motivations. Ngxokolo created his brand MaXhosa by Laduma in 2010, at the age of 24. The style, medium, and production of his garments emerge out of and evoke the distinctive culture of the Eastern Cape region and its indigenous cultural practices. Ngxokolo’s focus is on knitwear, a medium he studied during the Textile Design and Technology program at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, a city in the predominantly Xhosa Eastern Cape. His designs, initially solely menswear and since 2014 womenswear as well, quickly gained attention across South Africa and beyond. MaXhosa by Laduma has been featured in prominent fashion media and in major runways shows in London, Paris, and other fashion centers. Despite its international profile, MaXhosa by Laduma knitwear is chiefly aimed at local markets, and it is inspired by the designer’s personal history, which is rooted in the culture of the Eastern Cape. Ngxokolo was initially motivated by a desire to create clothing for young Xhosa men who had recently been initiated into manhood. Amakrwala, young male initiates, are sent by their families to be circumcised and instructed by elder men over the course of months. Their transformation is marked by a change in clothing, completely leaving behind the attire of boys to adopt the dress of men. When he was initiated, Ngxokolo was frustrated to find that after undergoing this deeply significant ritual, which drew him into profound aspects of Xhosa culture, his family gave him clothing made elsewhere to mark his new status, such as sweaters produced by Scottish companies. This experience inspired him to create an option for young men and their families, clothing that would “speak to them” using the colors and patterns of local beadwork10 (Figure  5.2). Ngxokolo’s designs draw on a lifetime of experience with Xhosa beadwork. His mother, who taught him beadwork techniques, produced beaded ornaments at home for a local market. Then, as now, Xhosa men and women purchased such ornaments to wear at ceremonies and heritage celebrations. In order to support local communities, and to produce knitwear of the quality he desired, Ngxokolo uses only wool and mohair from the Eastern Cape region. He experimented with producing his designs in Port Elizabeth, using knitting machines purchased with assistance from his university. Yet Ngxokolo found that he had to produce the garments in Cape Town in order to meet his orders – MaXhosa by Laduma sweaters, sold from boutiques in South Africa’s major cities, sell more quickly than they can be stocked. Ngxokolo continues to work toward a completely Eastern Cape‐based production. Thus, through production, media, embedded narratives about cultural practices, and childhood memories, MaXhosa by Laduma designs are inspired but not limited by

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Figure 5.2  MaXhosa by Laduma sweater on display, BHV (Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville) department store, Paris, France, 2017. Photo: V. Rovine.

the Xhosa beadwork that stands in for tradition. A sweater he showed on runways at fashion events in South Africa and in France and that featured in his promotional materials vividly declares Ngxokolo’s commitment to bringing tradition into contemporary designs: knitted into the sweater’s brightly colored stripes are the words: “My Heritage My Inheritance.” While MaXhosa by Laduma translates iconic Xhosa beadwork patterns into knitted fibers, reimagining beads in an entirely different medium, Malian master dyer and artist Aboubacar Fofana has focused on the technology of tradition. He digs deeply into historical, distinctively local weaving and dyeing techniques to produce work that is dedicated to the safeguarding of materials and methods. He does not identify himself as a fashion designer but rather as a visual artist, yet Fofana’s creations include carefully designed wearable textiles that bring together indigenous techniques and a globally oriented marketing sensibility. He is a preservationist, working to document and sustain Mali’s weaving and indigo dyeing techniques. Fofana’s indigo‐dyed textiles have been exhibited in several distinct museum contexts, both in the form of utilitarian products, including garments, pillows, and wall hangings, and as fine art, as paintings and installation works.11 Like Laduma Ngxokolo, Fofana’s practice was inspired by nostalgia for practices and objects associated with local, traditional culture. Ngxokolo ­

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experienced this nostalgia through his immersion in Xhosa culture, from the perspective of a newly initiated young man. In contrast, Fofana’s sense of loss was produced by his own dislocation from the culture of his childhood – he left Mali at the age of 12, when he was sent to live with an uncle in France (Cissé and Sagot‐Duvauroux 2003). Fofana experienced this move as a literal uprooting, severing his connections to a place and people that had nurtured him. He spent 30 years in France, where he had a career as a graphic designer, yet always considered Mali to be his home. His quest to recreate weaving and dyeing practices that are now rare even in very rural areas emerges out of a desire to recover his roots. Fofana believes that his absence from Mali explains his search for the deeply traditional ways of life that are part of his heritage: “It is my métissage that leads me toward this work.”12 For Fofana, textiles offer a means of recovering tradition, in the form of weaving and dyeing technologies. Along with his use of techniques associated with the past, Fofana brings his own aesthetic sensibility, honed by his work as a graphic designer and calligrapher, to his textiles. He began his work with textiles as an extension of these pursuits, applying calligraphic motifs to textiles to create works of art. After establishing himself as a graphic designer, he began to make extended trips each year to Mali and surrounding countries in order to study weaving and dyeing. He spent months in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Côte d’Ivoire, returning again and again to learn from indigo dyers, including some who were at first reluctant to share their knowledge. Through his research and his production, Fofana strives to preserve the materials and methods that were used to weave and dye cotton cloth in Mali before the introduction of synthetic dyes, imported threads, and non‐local weaving technologies. He established his atelier in Bamako in 2003, with six vats for indigo dyeing and a small group of employees. His study of indigo gave Fofana an appreciation for the medium’s global manifestations, leading him to seek out expertise in indigo‐dyeing cultures beyond West Africa. He credits his two apprenticeships to Masakazu Akiyama, a master indigo dyer in Japan, with vastly expanding his knowledge of the dye’s properties.13 At his studio and workshop in Bamako, weavers and dyers use handspun cotton threads, strip looms, and dye vats. Strip or horizontal looms, used by male weavers in many parts of West Africa, are emblematic of the region’s textile production. The long, narrow bands of fabric produced by these looms are stitched together to create the shawls, hangings, and other forms. In preparation for dyeing, Fofana and his staff tie off or stitch portions of the cloth to create resist patterns, using skills possessed by many women and some men in Bamako; the same techniques are used to create dramatic gowns using vivid synthetic dyes. Several immense ceramic vessels hold the deep blue indigo dye that Fofana and his small staff use to produce a carefully calibrated range of hues, each of which he identifies using terms in Soninke (his own ethnic group) and Bamana (Forjat 2000, pp. 74–75). In addition, Fofana aims to preserve techniques that have largely disappeared. After documenting these weaving and dyeing methods through his

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research with artisans in many regions of Mali, Fofana trains his employees. This way, he passes the skills to a new generation. Some of these techniques are rarely practiced even in small towns and villages, where people have less access to industrially produced goods and might be expected to rely on local production of textiles. Fofana traveled to Burkina Faso to find weavers who still worked on looms that incorporate only wooden parts. The beaters used to tamp down the weft after each pass of the shuttle – a crucial step in creating a cloth with a smooth texture and consistent thickness – but now incorporate metal strips that make the work easier because they do not require a delicate touch. By hiring the weavers, who brought their looms along with them, Fofana can produce cotton made to his own exacting specification, using delicate wooden beaters and handspun thread. Fofana’s scarves and shawls also incorporate historical sewing and crocheting techniques rarely employed today. He learned these skills, which are used to create finely worked fringes that adorn the edges of scarves and shawls, through the study of old textiles and repeated visits to villages where elders still remember the techniques. His dyeing technique also returns a widely practiced technology to its original, wholly local incarnation. In many Malian cities, towns, and villages, female entrepreneurs dye textiles for sale using imported, synthetic dyes. Even where indigo dyeing is practiced, synthetic indigo is added to the dye vats containing locally prepared balls of vegetal dye.14 By using only natural indigo dye, prepared in ceramic vessels and strainers, Fofana creates rich hues that range from sky blue to a nearly black color called lomassa in Soninke.15 His focus on the local through the context of global experience distinguishes Fofana’s work from that of countless other designers and producers of textiles. He uses techniques that are rigorously local, creating garments and other products that celebrate the traditional and the historical. Fofana reimagines techniques associated with the past to produce new forms that make contemporary fashion statements. His work, like that of Laduma Ngxokolo, represents one strategy by which African fashion designers have employed styles, materials, and techniques that evoke traditional cultures.

Tradition as Abstraction The incorporation of forms associated with local practices is not always ­apparent in the style of a garment. Instead, designers may link their work to African precedents through stylistic citations that require interpretation. These abstractions allude to sources of inspiration rather than resembling them directly. In this way, designers can bring their heritage and personal experience to designs without running the risk of finding their work defined by this aspect of their identity. Sakina M’Sa, whose rejection of the label “African designer” was cited earlier, demonstrates this conceptual approach to fashion design. This Paris‐based

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Comorian designer founded her socially conscious clothing brand in 1992. While her work does not make explicit stylistic reference to her East African heritage, elements of M’Sa’s designs and design‐related activities incorporate Africa and tradition. Rather than literal transpositions that characterize some African designers’ work, in which sources of inspiration are clearly identifiable, M’Sa exemplifies the absorption of African style while eluding to the expectations that are often attached to the continent in international markets. One series of dresses, created for the fall/winter 2009–2010 season, exemplifies M’Sa’s highly abstract evocation of Africa through tradition. The dresses, which M’Sa has described as “femme giraffe” style, incorporate dramatic pillow‐like rings around the necks, transforming the wearer’s upper body. These garments challenge fashion convention by distorting the body in an unexpected manner, unlike more familiar fashion design that may distort  –  with stiletto heels and padded shoulders, for example – but that follows convention in that distortion. Born and raised in the Comoros Islands, located off the coast of East Africa, M’Sa lived with her grandmother in a town on the largest of the nation’s islands. Her childhood in the Comoros – inseparable from her memories of her grandmother – is a key source of inspiration for her designs, serving as a touchstone for her conception of fashion as a means of building community as much as an aesthetic expression. M’Sa and her family emigrated to Marseilles, France, when she was seven, an experience that intensified her connection to that childhood. Growing up in Marseilles in the 1980s, M’Sa embraced the urban youth culture of the era, adopting punk style, with its emphasis on a worn, handmade, anti‐materialist aesthetic. She also began to study art, and developed a fascination for clothing as a medium that enabled her to express her interests in poetry, music, and visual arts. She attended the Institut Supérieur de la Mode in Marseilles, and then moved to Paris. Despite her fashion credentials, M’Sa avoided the fashion mainstream: While my friends were interns at Christian Lacroix, I was giving classes in clothing design in the quartiers [working class neighborhoods]. Entering the fashion world this way was good luck for me. It enabled me to create a discourse, to express fashion in another way. (Mensah 2008, p. 10)

This preference for unconventional approaches extends to M’Sa’s occasional incorporation of references to African traditions. M’Sa established herself in Paris through her clothing as well as through collaborative projects with community organizations and museums, which focus on the African community in France. For example, in 2006 she founded a non‐profit organization that provides training in industrial sewing technologies for women in Paris’s historically African Barbès neighborhood. She also directed an Africa‐wide competition for young designers. This event, L’Afrique

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Est A La Mode, is part of the Festival International de la Mode Africaine (FIMA), an important Africa‐focused fashion show held biannually in Niger. In 2009, M’Sa was appointed commissioner of the young designers’ competition. This was an opportunity to foster young talent from Africa, and to demonstrate through her own work that African designers need not play into preconceptions about Africa as stereotypically traditional, distancing the continent from the contemporaneity of fashion markets. Indeed, M’Sa expressed discomfort with designers who act as “mirrors of exoticism,” providing the “folklore” their audiences expect of an African designer.16 In her own runway show during FIMA’s main event, M’Sa presented her femme giraffe line. M’Sa described the femme giraffe dresses as her own revision of the characteristic attire of Maasai women, an East African ethnic group. The dresses’ pillow‐like collars are an abstraction based on the layers of beaded rings Maasai women wear. M’Sa intends the dresses to “pay homage” to Maasai women in a “sober” manner. Rows of beaded necklaces are, in M’Sa’s garments, transformed into pillows that softly yet dramatically reshape the upper body. The Maasai are among the African cultures that have come to represent the continent’s “exoticism” in popular imagination. Along with the Zulu, the Tuareg, and perhaps the Ashanti, the Maasai and related Maa‐speakers have become symbols, generalized icons of Africanness (Kasfir 2007, pp. 31–34). M’Sa has no direct connection with Maasai womanhood, beyond also being an East African woman (the Comoros has no cultural connection to the inland East African heartland of the Maasai and related peoples). Though not part of her personal heritage, M’Sa draws the Maasai into her own identity as an African woman. Although she is explicitly universal in her identity, M’Sa’s personal attachment to Africa is evident in the energy she devotes to projects like FIMA and her work with African women in Barbès. The allusion to emblematically Maasai traditional culture as an element of the dresses’ inspiration is, thus, a part of M’Sa’s own identity, yet it does not define the clothing visually. Ghanaian–American designer Mimi Plange also draws inspiration from forms that evoke tradition to create garments that confound ready stylistic association with Africa by absorbing these references rather than incorporating them directly. Plange was born in Ghana, raised in California, and is now based in New York City, where she established her eponymous design firm in 2010. African inspiration is a central element of the brand, prominently presented in its public relations materials, exemplified by Plange’s profile on the company’s home page: Africa remains a limitless font of inspiration for the Ghanaian‐born designer, who constantly seeks out the unusual and the lyrical found in African traditions, landscapes and lore, and reinterprets these themes in a refreshingly modern way.17

Two examples of Plange’s Africa‐sourced design draw from very different conceptions of tradition, one of which is entangled in colonial history while the other exemplifies the precolonial, quintessentially traditional past.

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Few artistic practices more vividly evoke Africa’s traditional cultures than body and facial scarification. The dramatic, extensive scarification patterns depicted on many iconic genres of African figurative sculpture call to mind traditional cultures, in which the body’s markings reflect ethnic identity, age grades, status, and other social structures. In 2015, Plange was inspired by this art form, whose antiquity in Africa is dramatically evident in the famous sixteenth century bronze and terracotta heads from Ife in Nigeria, many of which are covered with precise, parallel lines that represent scarification marks (Drewal 2009). Plange employs one such head in the promotional materials for her 2016 clothing line. In addition, she cites historical photographs of people wearing complex patterns on their faces and bodies. Ironically, many such photographs were produced in the context of the colonial‐era construction of Africa as primitive. Scarification was one source of “evidence” of this inferior state of being; photographs were created as ostensible ethnographic documents, as propaganda for missionization, and as titillating images for popular consumption in Europe and elsewhere.18 Whatever the impetus for their creation, for Plange these images offered insights into African adornment that beautified and socialized the body. This use of scarification as sartorial inspiration is further complicated and enriched by a very personal connection to the art form. Plange’s attention to scarification marks was first motivated by her curiosity about the delicate scars that patterned her own mother’s skin.19 Growing up in California, the context for these marks was distant from her daily life; Plange’s search for that context led to clothing that absorbs scarification into a very modern aesthetic. Plange employed leather, itself a skin, to create a series of garments and accessories inspired by the style and the texture of scarification patterns. Linear patterns are stitched into the dresses, skirts, and bags. Rather than a flat surface, the leather is made sculptural through the trapunto quilting technique (Figure 5.3). Trapunto, also called stuffed quilting, is made using two layers of material (usually fabric) with a thin layer of batting in between. Stitching through these layers produces a soft, swelling surface that adds dimension. Plange uses primarily black leather stitched in black thread in precise, linear patterns. On the body of the wearer, the effect is unmistakably suggestive of scarification – an icon of the traditional – and simultaneously sleek and futuristic in style. The garments themselves are subtle, operating independently from their sources of inspiration yet enriched by this connection to the designer’s own biography. In 2016, Plange drew inspiration from a very complicated and ambiguous African dress style: the longdress or ohorokweva onde, the characteristic attire of women of the Herero ethnic group in Namibia and Botswana. This dress style emerged out of a repressive – indeed, genocidal – history of German colonial power.20 The longdress is a floor‐length, long‐sleeved, voluminous garment with a high waist that resembles dress styles of the European past

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Figure 5.3  Mimi Plange leather dress adorned with trapunto embroidery. Photo: Mimi Plange. Reproduced with permission from Mimi Plange.

(Hendrickson 1994). The dress is worn along with a head tie made of the same fabric, which is characteristically folded into two projecting points. The garment is descended from the clothing of Victorian‐era Europe, the contemporary residue of a history of late‐nineteenth century missionization. The work of nineteenth and early to mid‐twentieth century Christian missionaries in Africa frequently involved efforts to transform the dress practices of their converts, and in the case of the Herero and neighboring groups this transformation was seen as particularly urgent. Prior to their adoption of European styles of clothing, Herero women wore a garment that did not cover their breasts, made of leather adorned with a mixture of ochre and animal fat to give it a richer, redder hue. For missionaries, the lack of cloth, the use of the ochre cosmetic, and the “inadequate” body covering combined to produce an unacceptably “primitive” image that lent urgency to their conversion efforts. The Herero faced much more than the transformation of religious practice, for German colonial policy in what was then German South West Africa aimed to exterminate the Herero through murder, starvation, and enslavement. In the face of such brutality, longstanding practices such as dress were transformed among the communities that survived, with new attire taking root and eventually flourishing. Herero women gradually replaced their leather garments with long dresses made of cloth acquired through trade, and over time they adjusted the garments to better suit Herero conceptions of ideal female bodies, with wider skirts and a higher waist. The longdress is completed by a head tie whose twinned projections retained the projecting references to cattle horns (cattle

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are a key source of wealth and social status for the Herero as for other southern African groups). Today, the longdress has become an emblem of local culture, worn by some women as daily dress and adopted more widely at cultural events and other important occasions. Their extraordinary dress has recently made Herero women an object of fascination for some Western observers. A 2013 book by photographer Jim Naughten, Conflict and Costume: The Herero Tribe of Namibia (Naughten 2013), seemed to spark an explosion of popular interest in the attire, as demonstrated by the number of popular media articles and reviews inspired by the book and associated exhibitions.21 Fascinatingly, it is the cloth rather than the shape of the garment that has inspired Plange. Designing her own fabrics, she has taken the floral motifs of the printed cloth used by Herero women and transformed them into wholly new forms that only faintly echo the longdress. Plange lays claim to this African – complicatedly African – source of inspiration in the narratives that accompany these garments onto the market. Like the stitched leather reimaginings of scarification patterns, these Herero‐inflected styles reorient us, requiring that we recognize the complexities and the limitations of Africa and of tradition as categories. This important insight is, in essence, what all of these designers provide. Whether they maintain the visibility of their sources of inspiration, as Xhosa beadwork patterns or indigo dyeing techniques, or absorb references to tradition into their own aesthetic languages, as M’Sa transforms Maasai beadwork, they sustain, translate, and appraise tradition rather than dissociating themselves from it. Much academic study of African cultures and lives, which still employs the traditional as an analytic category only with the distancing effect of scare quotes, might benefit from the model of what appears at first to be an unlikely medium for engagement with the traditional: fashion design.

Notes 1 By conceptualizing tradition as a cultural force rather than an attribute of people, things, and practices, I seek to emphasize its flexible and potentially productive nature. 2 See Mudimbe (1988) for an important early analysis of the cultural construction of Africa in academic discourse and in Western popular imagination. 3 Musée Galliera (Paris), ALAÏA (28 September 2013–26 January 2014); Galleria Borghese (Rome), Azzedine Alaïa: Couture/Sculpture (11 July 2015–22 November 2015); Groninger Museum (Groningen, the Netherlands), Azzedine Alaïa in the 21st Century (11 December 2011–27 May 2012). 4 The venture capital firm and the foundation shared the same name: Made In Africa. 5 This heightened visibility is exemplified by the inclusion of African designers in high‐profile shows such as New York Fashion Week, which in 2008 featured

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several African designers. In addition, major international fashion publishers – most notably Condé Nast’s properties French and US Vogue and http:// style.com – have increasingly covered designers from Africa, including several discussed here. In addition, these media outlets have featured other types of African fashion entrepreneurs. A recent profile of Nigerian fashion consultant Ooooota Sebastian Adepo exemplifies this coverage (Carlos 2016). 6 Interview with the author, Niamey, Niger, 1 November 2009. 7 See, for example, Price (1989) and Coombes (1994). 8 Fromont’s recent analysis of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the Kongo kingdom of Central Africa offers insights into the long history of creative adaptation of Western elements into local dress practices. These incorporations of European influence do not reflect Western imperialism but instead an exchange between polities that viewed themselves as equals (Fromont 2014). 9 These garments too, however, may have complicated histories that preclude simple identification as indigenous to a particular region or culture. 10 Interview with the author, 2 June 2012. 11 Most recently, Fofana’s work was featured at two venues in Documenta 14, the 2017 incarnation of this event, the epitome of the global economy of fine art. He used indigo‐dyed fabrics in a piece titled Fundi (Uprising) at a venue in Kassel, Germany, and he created an installation at another venue that featured sheep that had been bathed in indigo. His installation “Les Arbres À Bleus” was featured in the exhibition Cotton: Global Threads at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK (11 February–13 May 2012). In other contexts, the work is presented as garments and home decor, as in 2010, when he was one of six designers featured in So Miri, in which he showed garments and housewares (11 February–11 March 2010), and in 2009–2010, when Fofana’s textiles were sold by ABC Carpet in New York City, a high‐end furnishings store. 12 Interview with the author, 25 June 2009. 13 Interview with the author, 25 June 2009. 14 During my own visits to indigo‐dyeing communities in the Dogon region, I often saw large, empty metal barrels near the dyeing vats, marked BASF (the name of the German chemical company that manufactured the dye). 15 Interview, Bamako, 17 February 2010. 16 Interview with the author, 1 November 2009. 17 www.mimiplange.com 18 For a rich analysis of the colonial uses of African scarification, see Gable (2002). 19 Interview with the author, 25 April 2017. 20 The Herero of Namibia experienced colonialism as much more than cultural and political change. Their resistance to German encroachment on their lands led to a genocidal war that decimated the population through exceptionally violent and cruel tactics. Under these circumstances, the Herero maintenance of German missionary dress styles is all the more extraordinary. Several recent publications address this history, and the twenty‐first century efforts to account for the genocide through reparations and rewriting histories. See, for example, Kössler (2015).

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21 An online search for “Herero women” reveals that the book’s publication was quickly followed by coverage of Herero attire by CNN, The Guardian, Slate, and other news outlets.

References Bishop, C.P. (2014). Occasional textiles: vernacular landscapes of development. African Arts 47 (4): 72–85. https://doi.org/10.1162/AFAR_a_00184. Carlos, M. (2016). This is what real global style looks like. http://www.vogue. com/article/ooooota‐sebastian‐adepo‐cross‐culture‐creative‐nigeria‐africa‐ fashion (accessed 9 September 2016). Cissé, Y.T. and Sagot‐Duvauroux, J.‐L. (2003). La Charte du Mandé et Autres Traditions du Mali Illustrated by Aboubakar Fofana (trans.). Paris: Albin Michel. Coombes, A.E. (1994). Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England. New Haven: Yale University Press. Dadson, N. (2002). Exclusive interview: Ozwald Boateng. Agoo 1 (2): 32–38. Drewal, H.J. (2009). Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria. New York: Museum for African Art. Eicher, J.B. and Sumberg, B. (1995). World fashion, ethnic and national dress. In: Dress and Ethnicity: Change across Space and Time (ed. J.B. Eicher), 295–306. New York: Berg. Forjat, S. (2000). Afrique Bleue: Les Routes de l’Indigo. Aix‐en‐Provence, France: Edisud. Fromont, C. (2014). The Art of Conversion: Christian Visual Culture in the Kingdom of Kongo. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Gable, E. (2002). Bad copies: the colonial aesthetic and the Manjaco‐Portuguese encounter. In: Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (eds. P.S. Landau and D.D. Kaspin), 294–319. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gott, S., Loughran, K.S., Quick, B.D., and Rabine, L.W. (eds.) (2017). African Print Fashion Now! A Story of Taste, Globalization, and Style. Los Angeles: Fowler Museum at UCLA. Hendrickson, H. (1994). A symbolic history of the ‘traditional’ Herero dress in Namibia and Botswana. African Studies 53 (2): 25–54. Kasfir, S.L. (2007). African Art and the Colonial Encounter. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kössler, R. (2015). Namibia and Germany: Negotiating the Past. Windhoek: University of Namibia Press. Mazrui, A.A. (1970). The robes of rebellion: sex, dress, and politics in Africa. Encounter 34 (2): 19–30. Menkes, S. (2016). Azzedine Alaïa on Fashion’s current turbulence. https://www. vogue.co.uk/gallery/suzy‐on‐azzedine‐alaia‐aw‐2016‐ready‐to‐wear (accessed 5 August 2017).

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Mensah, A. (2008). Sakina M’Sa: la mode intelligente. Afriscope 6: 10–13. Mudimbe, V.Y. (1988). The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Naughten, J. (2013). Conflict and Costume: The Herero Tribe of Namibia. New York: Merrell. Nielsen, R. (1979). The history and development of wax‐printed textiles intended for West Africa and Zaire. In: The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment (eds. J.M. Cordwell and R.A. Schwartz), 467–495. The Hague: Mouton. Oliver, S.S. (2011). Designers take a fresh look at Africa. New York Times (8 December), E8. Price, S. (1989). Primitive Art in Civilized Places. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Probst, P. (2012). Iconoclash in the age of heritage. African Arts 45 (3): 10–13. Rabine, L.W. (2002). The Global Circulation of African Fashion. New York: Berg. Rovine, V.L. (2015). African Fashion, Global Style: Histories, Innovations, and Ideas You Can Wear. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Seeling, C. (ed.) (1999). Fashion: The Century of the Designer (1900–1999). Cologne: Könemann. Steiner, C.B. (1985). Another image of Africa: toward an ethnohistory of European cloth marketed in West Africa, 1873–1960. Ethnohistory 32: 91–110. Steiner, C.B. (2004). The tradition of African art: reflections on the social life of a subject. In: Questions of Tradition (eds. M.S. Phillips and G. Schochet), 88–109. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. van Beurden, S. (2015). Authentically African: Art and the Transnational Politics of Congolese Culture. Athens: Ohio University Press. White, B.W. (2006). L’incroyable machine d’authenticité: L’animation politique et l’usage public de la culture dans le Zaïre de Mobutu. Anthropologie et Societé 30 (2): 43–63. https://doi.org/10.7202/014113ar.

6

Urban Sights From Outdoor Streets to Interior Urbanism Gregory Marinic

In the aftermath of World War II, society confronted a global calamity of over 60 million dead, great cities reduced to rubble, and displaced persons on the move. The extent of destruction was far more extensive than previous wars, with much of Europe and East Asia left in ruins. In the early postwar years, political and economic shifts spawned a new world order that initiated unprecedented approaches to central city planning and development. Regeneration of urban cores gained urgency as urban planners and architects rethought the function and configuration of commercial streets to optimize flow. Master‐ planned subway systems, underground cities, skywalk networks, megastructures, hermetic hyperspaces, and shopping malls embodied design characteristics influenced by the Space Age. These spatial configurations have been widely critiqued in terms of their impact on the urban scale as interior spaces that shaped cities externally. The emergence of an identifiable parallel urbanism, however, simultaneously transformed cities through primarily internal means. Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, conventional urban systems networked as interior spaces incrementally grew within emerging transit infrastructures, megastructures, and enclosed shopping malls. These new typologies adopted forms and functions that had been historically associated with outdoor environments. This form of postwar urbanism – interior urbanism – is defined primarily by the vastness, continuity, and interconnectivity of interior spaces that together create a secondary or alternative urban system. Informed by ­utopian–Futurist influences on popular culture and capitalism, urban interiority responded to climatic, economic, and psychological motivations. A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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This chapter identifies the incremental interiorization of urban and suburban commercial districts as a significant, yet often overlooked paradigm that shaped cities after 1945. It proposes that the social and commercial vitality of cities has been simultaneously challenged and enriched by interior urbanism. The changing built environments of postwar Europe, North America, and the Persian Gulf region are examined as an important aspect of contemporary design history at the urban scale. The interior urban speculations of Giambattista Nolli, Victor Gruen, Richard Buckminster Fuller, Le Corbusier, and others contextualize a mid‐twentieth century paradigm shift that embraced utopianism, futurism, and the interiorization of historically exterior spaces. Southdale Center (1956) is identified as a pre‐eminent modernist prototype and climate‐responsive placeholder for conventional streets presaging the development of retail hyperspaces in the 1970s. Two examples of interior urbanism – The Galleria (Houston, 1970) and the Eaton Centre (Toronto, 1978) – divergently interfaced with urban context to influence the design of interior hyperspaces worldwide. Reconsidering and applying the spatial theories of Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard, this chapter concludes with a theorization of contemporary mega‐malls in Dubai as evolving interior alternatives to conventional urbanism.

Migratory Utopianism: Toward Interiorism In the early twentieth century, utopian theory became embedded within the social promise of modern architecture (Tafuri 1976). Utopia shifted from a conceptual “nowhere” within the minds of philosophers and transformed into a fantastical “somewhere” in the ponderings of architects and designers. The celestial became terrestrial and the abstractions of philosophy, literature, and art became increasingly worldly and achievable. At the urban scale, Kazimir Malevich‘s utopian towns, Mikhail Okhitovich‘s patterned collectives, Friedrich Kiesler‘s space settlements, and Georgii Krutikov‘s flying cities offered the most avant‐garde Suprematist projections of this future as an autonomous and interior‐oriented alternative to normative conditions (Riot‐Sarcey 1998). Le Corbusier’s utopian projects in the 1920s and 1930s reflected the heroic phase of Modernism, while his desire for “sun control” and “exact air” assumed human control for even the most fundamental aspects of ecology (Le Corbusier 1967). Although most of these sensational visions of the future were perceived as fantastical and naive, their dream‐like parameters were not entirely insurmountable as interiors. By the 1960s, utopia became increasingly possible as a hermetic interior realm at the urban scale. Responding to social unrest and suburban tastes, urban interiors offered an alternative approach to conventional inner‐city revitalization. On the one hand, internally focused megastructures responded to fear and uncertainty by facilitating surveillance and homogeneity. On the other,



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these projects addressed the complexities of mass transit expansion and city  center redevelopment, as well as shifting priorities for securable “cities within cities.” The interior approach to urban regeneration gained considerable m ­ omentum throughout the 1960s in North America. Montreal, an early innovator of the typology, developed various autonomous projects that incrementally contributed to the establishment of its extensive underground city. Place Ville Marie (1962) and Mies van der Rohe’s Westmount Square (1967) – an international style icon inspired by the Seagram Building (1958) in New York – promoted a  new lifestyle that allowed residents to live, work, and play without having to go outdoors (Spaeth 1985). In anticipation of Expo’67, several mixed‐ use ­ projects  –  Westmount Square, Place Bonaventure, and Alexis Nihon Plaza – were conceived as vertical extensions of the growing underground city. Entirely privatized and directly connected to the subway system, these projects offered retail, restaurants, entertainment facilities, exposition spaces, r­ esidences, and commercial space networked by internal hyperconnectivity. As a social undertaking, postwar architecture confronted normative social issues and interrogated their potential for evolution. Furthermore, architects and urban planners challenged conventions, ideologies, and utopian impulses in pursuit of innovation. By the late 1970s, however, prominent theorists began challenging the relevance of utopianism in mainstream architectural discourse by shifting their collective gaze to the past. In Collage City (1984), Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter declared that the second half of the twentieth century represented utopia’s final decline and fall, yet they voiced a profound sense of regret in its demise (Rowe and Koetter 1978). Although utopianism faded in architectural theory, it thrived as built interior urbanism. Even so, an increasingly anti‐utopian discourse has largely rejected the urban‐scale interiors built during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Many of these past visions of the future – megastructures, hyperspaces, and shopping malls – have turned toward dystopia or radical adaptation. From a historical perspective, under what societal and political conditions did these utopian interior urban spaces become both stylistically desirable and economically possible?

Interior Urbanism: From the Space Age to the City Center The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite in October 1957 and the NASA Apollo moon landing in 1969 encouraged a global collective consciousness surrounding the hermetic environments required by and produced for space exploration. The great promise of Space Age technological innovation was promoted in the West by the USA and in the East by the Soviet Union to address problems facing an increasingly complex and politically fractured world. Science became more visible in mainstream culture as primitive prewar social

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conventions and ethno‐national contentiousness waned. The era was characterized by widespread interest in otherworldly visual design influences in architecture, interiors, industrial design, and graphics. Fantasy environments were further fueled by countercultural experimentation with Eastern spirituality and psychedelic drugs, as well as its influence on art, fashion, design, and spatial trends. Parallel to actual space exploration and social revolution, future worlds were dramatically and provocatively visualized on television in Doctor Who (1963), Star Trek (1966), and The Tomorrow People (1973), as well as on the silver screen in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: Space Odyssey (1968). These fantastical propositions were often focused on the interior environments – the spaceships, spacesuits, and domed cities  –  of the future. The enduring impact of mass media on shaping generational expectations is undeniable  –  the future was considered to be close at hand and framed primarily through interiority. Space Age design exhibited “high–low” variation between more vernacular and accessible types  –  fast‐food restaurants, bowling alleys, and shopping ­centers – and a more curated high style that fused popular culture with sophisticated architecture. The convergence of fantasy entertainment and shopping with thematic architectural interiors shifted popular understandings of spatial design and building interiors at a civic scale. Likewise, the film entertainment industry and World’s Fair architecture began jointly pursuing more complex interior environments that incorporated conventionally outdoor activities. These fantastical spaces simultaneously confronted latent anti‐urban biases while being highly marketable to the suburban middle classes. By the mid‐1960s, the entertainment industry and contemporary consumer culture became increasingly blended. The 1964 New York World’s Fair merged aspects of high culture, consumerism, and spatial design into novel visual and sensorial experiences. As a shared endeavor among the World’s Fair development authority, the Pepsi Corporation, Walt Disney Enterprises, and the film industry, the UNICEF pavilion, It’s a Small World, was designed as a series of full‐scale exterior experiences within an entirely internalized environment. Spatial and ambient effects were orchestrated into dramatic effect as a thematic amusement ride. Visitors traveled in small boats through multistory urban spaces and landscapes to visit various regions of the world in a perceived “outdoors.” Animatronic dolls dressed in traditional costumes sang “It’s a Small World” together in various languages. Similar theming and spatial design strategies would be later amplified and integrated into amusement parks and conventional shopping malls. Although It’s a Small World conveyed the potential for outdoor environments to be entirely interiorized as themed experiences, the vast scale of the Panorama exhibition at the 1964 New York World’s Fair exhibited an even greater desire for urban control at the hyperscale. Conceived by controversial urban planner Robert Moses, Panorama is a scaled geographic model of the five boroughs of New York that was designed to celebrate the city’s infrastructure and public works. Originally housed within a large exhibition hall that



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later became the Queens Museum, it includes a scale model of every building in the city. As a metaphor for Moses’ aggressive projects that often harmed communities, the encapsulated Panorama reveals the utopian intentions of interiorization at a metropolitan scale.

Interiorizing the Urban Street Much has been said about the dramatic postwar collapse of American cities and the social cohesiveness that they fostered, as well as the simultaneous rise of a transcontinental suburban culture. After World War II, urban life in the USA began to fracture along socioeconomic and demographic lines as urbanites migrated to the periphery (Baumgartner 1988). Encouraging metropolitan change, the federal government legislated three initiatives that hastened the development of enclosed shopping malls in suburbs and central business districts. The Housing Act of 1949, the Federal‐Aid Highway Act of 1956, and urban renewal catalyzed and accelerated the abandonment of cities and the rapid growth of suburbs backed by racially exclusionary subsidized mortgages (Teaford 2008). The racial, ethnic, and economic fragmentation of American cities deepened as interstate highways fueled the wholesale collapse of downtown retail districts (Kneebone and Berube 2013). At the same time, suburbs witnessed the emergence of entirely new and autonomous forms of public– commercial space shaped by urban retail fragments set within amorphous landscapes. Car dependency and urban decentralization spawned the early development of suburban commercial strips (Axelrod 2009). Urban street life was translated into fully transactional experiences configured within the controlled and privatized interior confines of shopping malls. Decaying central cities stood in marked contrast to the thriving yet homogeneous suburbs. The postwar discourse of architecture and futurism responded by promoting the notion of interiorizing conventional urban conditions within terrarium‐like architectures. The domed city concept stepped out of science fiction and into reality when Richard Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao proposed a 2‐mile‐wide geodesic structure spanning Manhattan that would regulate weather and improve urban air quality (Buckminster Fuller 1965). Embodying Le Corbusier’s earlier and more modest propositions for environmental control, the dome would have entirely encapsulated midtown Manhattan from the Hudson River to the East River, from 21st Street to 64th Street. The massive structure was intended to reduce heating and cooling costs as buildings would not be individually climate controlled (Graham 2016). Rather, the entire dome would be conditioned to a moderate spring‐like temperature. Buckminster Fuller believed that the cost of building the dome would be offset by dramatic savings in climate control and environmental mitigation by exclaiming, “The cost of snow removal in New York City would pay for the dome in 10 years” (Buckminster Fuller 1965). His proposal addressed the

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most salient paradigm of the era – the increasing interiorization of suburban American civic life in which the town square or Main Street had taken the form of an enclosed shopping mall. Accelerating technological changes, social disorder, and the growing popularity of suburbia in the 1960s and 1970s catalyzed the need for American cities to embrace the seemingly endless desire for newness and convenience. American cities began experimenting with interventions that invoked the utopian ideals of Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse, rather than the modest urban theories of Manhattan‐centric Jane Jacobs (Jacobs 1961). Freeways and shopping malls came to dominate the narrative of metropolitan areas. Primarily middle‐class and predominantly white suburbanites sought urban spaces that were controlled and familiar (Palen 1995). Acknowledging the rapidly fraying social fabric of central business districts, architects began to turn buildings naively inward as an immediate and achievable design response. Megascale interiors reshaped the city to the suburbanite with internal environments that offered shops, cafés, plazas, terraces, and suspended gardens (Picon 1994). Using Victor Gruen’s suburban shopping mall as their model, many projects  –  but not all  –  turned their backs on the downtowns that they sought to revitalize. Physically and psychologically autonomous from the existing context, fortress‐like architectures segregated these futuristic interior worlds from urban chaos and poverty. Such projects attempted to reconcile downtown with social realities, while reinvesting white‐flight suburbanites into cities at a time when these conditions were drifting apart. By the late 1960s, architects were designing hyperinteriors that amplified the physical proportions of buildings by using characteristics of the traditional street indoors. Wallace Harrison’s Empire State Plaza (1965–1976), Edward Durell Stone’s Frankfort Capital Plaza (1972), and John Portman’s interior urban projects in Atlanta (1967), Los Angeles (1976), and Detroit (1977) marked a significant turning point in the urban interiorization of commercial streets. These complexes created expansive environments that transformed expectations for “public” downtown space (Goldberger and Craig 2009). While hyperinteriors provided a veneer of sophistication, they did so by employing basic elements that appealed to the middle‐ and upper middle‐class masses. Thus, urban interiorization may be viewed as an extension of urban idealism proposed by Garden City theorists, in Le Corbusier’s vision for the Ville Radieuse (1924), in Ludwig Hilberseimer’s Vertical City (1924), as well as in the more quotidian encounters celebrated by Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961).

Victor Gruen’s Interior Street The utopian realm of suburbia has historically epitomized the American Dream of opportunity and prosperity expressed in greater autonomy, single‐family home ownership, and car dependence (Beauregard 2006). In the early postwar



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years, suburbs were where most Americans wanted to live and the rest of the world took notice (Baumgartner 1988). As Americans left urban neighborhoods behind, suburbia imparted enduring influences on worldwide consumer tastes and housing expectations. Shopping malls emerged as uncontested icons of American culture – exemplars of social and commercial values that represent the USA to the world and Americans to themselves. This suburban model replaced conventional commercial streets across North America and was later introduced into central business districts worldwide as a placeholder for conventional forms of urbanism. Austrian‐born architect Victor Gruen employed tactics gleaned from his understanding of the European arcade  –  the framing and encapsulation of  goods objectified within eye‐level displays  –  to design the world’s first enclosed shopping mall, Southdale Center (1956), in suburban Minneapolis. Commissioned by the Dayton Co. department store, Gruen engaged European socialist ideals to critique suburban consumption in 1950s America (Wall 2005). He modeled Southdale on the Viennese arcades and sidewalk cafés of central European cities to create urbane and sophisticated communal environments – town squares in the suburbs – that offered climate‐controlled comfort. A two‐level plan and bilevel service road funneled shoppers into both levels at once (Hardwick and Gruen 2004). Second‐level guardrails were designed to be intentionally low to provide unobstructed views of shops on both floors. Store density and the atrium core fostered an active pedestrian environment that mingled shops, cafes, and performances to create an indoor urban culture in suburbia. Gruen channeled downtown authenticity by incorporating entertainment and social experiences into Southdale. He blurred the notion of civitas, whereby private developers funded the development of perceived public space within a suburban context (Bednar 1990). As an interiorized form of the town square, Southdale influenced an entire generation of suburban shopping mall designs and transformed popular understandings of what public space and streets could be. In the European modernist tradition, the restrained architecture and diminutive scale of Southdale contrasted sharply with the future of shopping mall development in North America and worldwide. For generations of Americans raised in the postwar suburbs, expectations of civic space were incubated in the encapsulated worlds of shopping malls – many authored by Gruen – and, thus, were orphaned from any tangible connection to downtown. As the developmental patterns of shopping malls became synonymous with automobile dependency and sprawl, Gruen privately lamented his role in fostering these activities (Loukaitou‐Sideris and Banerjee 1998). The widespread development of banal and opportunistic malls fell far short of Victor Gruen’s aspirations. Most enclosed malls failed to invest in the qualitative and quantitative values that set Southdale apart from its progeny. During their heyday, however, the malls that Gruen designed were widely applauded by leading architectural critics. Architectural Record magazine

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claimed that the Southdale Center was “… more downtown than downtown itself” and extolled that its civic qualities brought urbanity to the suburbs (Hardwick and Gruen 2004). Gruen did not believe that his suburban shopping malls would cannibalize downtown retail (Smiley 2013). Rather, he felt that his civic‐minded indoor retail environment – with its socialist agenda of mixing communal gathering spaces with culture  –  would put an end to the strip shopping centers and fast‐food restaurants that lined suburban commuter arteries (Smiley 2013). Gruen assumed that shopping malls would not plunder downtown commercial districts  –  the first tenants of Southdale were not national chains, but secondary outposts of stores in downtown Minneapolis (Hardwick and Gruen 2004). This doubling of locations, however, ultimately resulted in the decline of downtown retail districts. By the 1960s, interest in more substantial and sophisticated indoor shopping experiences responded to consumer demands for larger and more upscale retail. Addressing elevated expectations for architectural grandeur and place‐making, these new malls were inspired by two retail forerunners  –  the continental European arcades and the Southdale Center. Hermetic, internally focused mixed‐use complexes sought to fortify the downtowns and midtowns of major cities by enhancing appeal to suburban consumers (Lassiter 2006). Several notable examples of this typology were developed worldwide, including Rochester Midtown Plaza (Victor Gruen 1963), Birmingham Bull Ring Centre (Sydney Greenwood 1964), Montreal Place Bonaventure (Raymond T. Affleck et al. 1967), Buffalo Main Place (Harrison and Abramovitz 1969), Detroit Renaissance Center (John Portman 1977), Sydney Centrepoint Shopping Centre (Donald Crone and Associates 1972), Paris Forum des Halles (Claude Vasconi 1979), London Barbican Centre (Chamberlin et al. 1982), and Cleveland Galleria at Erieview (Kober/Belluschi Associates 1987). These projects recomposed, idealized, and enclosed the commercial street into above‐and‐below ground hyperstructures. Two prominent North American examples – The Galleria in Houston (1970) and the Eaton Centre in Toronto (1978)  –  employed urban interiorization with divergent approaches to consumption and civic space. These developments would come to define a generation of imitators that either rejected or embraced the ­surrounding city.

The Galleria: Houston The concept of an enclosed shopping mall with attached hotel towers in Houston was originally proposed in the 1940s by Texas oilman Glenn H. McCarthy (Burrough 2008). Envisioned for the Shamrock Hotel, his plan was abandoned once the property was purchased by the Hilton Hotels Corporation. In the early 1960s, developer Gerald D. Hines sought to resurrect the earlier concept by master planning a “new downtown” 11 km to the west of the city center on the I‐610 circumferential expressway (Garreau 1991). Designed by



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architect Gyo Obata, this new downtown was focused on a shopping mall that turned its back to the unregulated sprawl of Houston. The Galleria master plan for Post Oak was unveiled to the public in 1966 (West 1980). Its first phase opened in 1970 with 56 000 m2 of retail space across three levels, including the Neiman Marcus department store and an ice skating rink. The Houston Oaks Hotel opened in 1971, followed by the first office towers. Additional phases added 60 000 m2 in 1977, 34 000 m2 in 1986, 65 000 m2 in 2003, and 93 000 m2 in 2006 (Meeks 2012). With each expansion, the project increasingly catered to upmarket retailing. Today, The Galleria offers over 400 stores and restaurants, two high‐rise hotels, and three office towers (Simon Property Group 2016). It is the fourth largest shopping mall in the USA (Simon Property Group 2016). Much like the nineteenth century passages of Paris and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, The Galleria rejected conventional urban notions of streets and building frontages to create a secondary order based on interior connectivity. Rather, it leveraged the potential for a shopping mall to anchor a privatized interior urban system into an edge city. Furthermore, The Galleria co‐opted its concept and iconography from the Milan Galleria to shape an urban experience that promised suburban comforts, conveniences, and indulgences to middle‐class Americans (Figure  6.1). Its first phase consciously reframed the sprawling randomness of strip‐mall corridors by reinvesting people into an “urban” space composed of interior spaces. It offered Houston something that it remarkably lacked – a symbolic core. Like most suburban shopping malls, The Galleria excluded the conventional street to create a secondary interior‐oriented platform city in its place. The Galleria is based on the premise of a platform city where people can live, shop, and work within a vast and weatherproof internally connected pedestrian zone. Although executed on a fundamentally much smaller scale than Buckminster Fuller’s domed proposal for Manhattan, Obata implemented a phased and achievable strategy at The Galleria that blended the monumental qualities of the European urban covered arcade with North American mall culture. Similar to Buckminster Fuller’s midtown Manhattan dome proposal, however, the phased development of The Galleria operated at an urban scale by means of an aggregate system of climate‐controlled lateral shopping concourses, tubes, and atria. Achieving a continuous environmental effect that sprawls across several city blocks, it serves as the hub of a city‐within‐a‐city district that includes several landmark buildings designed by notable architects. At the inception of the project, Hines requested an amenity that would elevate the ground‐floor rents to those on the upper level (Lomax 2013). Obata responded by placing an ice skating rink at the center of the mall under a barrel‐vaulted skylight. The ice skating rink was a major success from both the standpoint of revenue generation and qualitative value (Coleman 2006). Retail rents on the ground level matched the upper “fashion” level, while the event of ice skating offered a memorable place to mingle and people‐watch.

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Figure 6.1  The Galleria ice rink, Houston, Texas. Source: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Public Domain.

The Galleria’s ice skating rink remains one of the most popular spaces in a city that notably lacks identifiable public places for social engagement. Houston’s role as a hub of the petroleum industry, space program, and healthcare has enabled The Galleria and its larger environs to become the focal point of middle‐ to high‐end retail in the entire region. The project learned from several forerunners by adopting public amenities such as the ice skating rink from the Rockefeller Center and the monumental barrel vault from the Milan Galleria. For Hines, adopting a hermetically sealed strategy for The Galleria laid the possibility of an eventual break between the boundary of the contained interior and amorphous exterior, allowing the project’s master‐­ planning rules to inform adjacent parcels. In the early years, this would have been inconceivable in unregulated Houston; however, today, the greater Galleria Uptown area is one of the better independently master‐planned areas in the metropolitan area. Even so, The Galleria’s impact on creating real urbanization is negligible. Its primary elevation on Westheimer Road fronts an unsightly conventional parking lot. Shoppers prefer to drive rather than walk between various shopping venues in the Galleria Uptown district. In short, there is virtually no walkable street life nor presence of true urbanity.



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A strategic business sensibility and an entrepreneurial nature enabled Hines to develop many architecturally significant and economically viable projects throughout Houston and the USA. Houston provided a lucrative testing and proving ground for his novel and financially profitable approach to both buildings and edge city urbanism. The Galleria’s economic success may be linked to qualitative aspects of its monumental interior architecture, spatial characteristics, as well as design particularities, which have remained resilient. In terms of architecturally significant shopping centers, The Galleria remains among few options in Houston. The recent rise of outdoor lifestyle centers at Town and Country and the renovated River Oaks Plaza offer alternatives; however, these retail areas cannot compete with the massive scale of The Galleria. The project and its immediate vicinity have been rigorously adapted to remain both relevant and responsive to retail shifts, long‐term leasing issues, and financial challenges. Viewed through a capitalist lens, The Galleria is a phenomenal and enduring success.

Eaton Centre: Toronto The Eaton Centre is an urban mixed‐use shopping mall and office project in the heart of downtown Toronto. Named for the now defunct Eaton’s department store, it is bound by Yonge Street to the east, Queen Street to the south, Dundas to the north, and served by two subway stations. Designed by Eberhard Zeidler, Bregman and Hamann Architects, the Eaton Centre includes two department stores, three office towers, a hotel, and the Ryerson University Ted Rogers School of Management (Moran 2014). Much more than a shopping mall, the Eaton Centre is a national icon. It is a hyperspace and modern‐day arcade – a multileveled urban space that serves as a primary node between the central business district, civic center, and main shopping district (Figure 6.2). The origins of the Eaton Centre may be traced to Timothy Eaton’s dry goods store in the nineteenth century. Over several decades, the Eaton family purchased adjacent parcels to facilitate expansion of the department store itself as well as warehouse and support operations. By the 1960s, many of non‐ department store related activities were transferred to cheaper sites in the suburbs, and Eaton’s began to explore development opportunities to enhance its vast land holdings in the city center. In the mid‐1960s, Eaton’s announced plans to develop an extensive, multiblock shopping and office complex that would include a new department store (Coleman 2006). Initial plans called for historic structures such as the Old City Hall, City Hall clock tower, and Church of the Holy Trinity to be demolished. Fierce opposition ensued, and Eaton’s placed their plan on hold in 1967 (Coleman 2006). In 1971, plans for the Eaton Centre were reintroduced to the public after considerable revisions. This new plan preserved the Old City Hall, but controversy remained as the Church of the Holy Trinity was slated for demolition. The proposal was revised to not only accommodate preserving the church, but

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Figure 6.2  Eaton Centre. Photo: Gregory Marinic.

also ensure that the new project would allow sunlight into the church. These adjustments resulted in substantial changes to the original concept. The new Eaton’s store was shifted north to Dundas Street as it would be too large to maintain in its original Queen Street location and preserve the Old City Hall. This change created a mall anchored by two department stores at either end – Eaton’s to the north at Dundas and Simpson’s to the south at Queen. The shopping spine was shifted east toward Yonge Street and designed with no frontage along Bay Street, allowing the Church of the Holy Trinity and Old City Hall to be preserved.



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Cadillac Fairview Corporation – the largest real estate development company in North America at the time – opened phase 1 of the Eaton Centre in 1977 with a design that channeled the spirit of the nineteenth century arcades (Black et al. 1983). Its vaulted and glazed roof spans nearly 900 ft and offers a critical mass of shops, restaurants, and services. Despite monumental proportions, the Eaton Centre is very well integrated into its urban site. The subdivided plan accommodates a fine‐grained series of masses and interior spaces that address the surrounding urban fabric. Rather than a simple linear layout, the existing street patterns generated by the Old City Hall and Church of the Holy Trinity broke down the large mass of the galleria into five separate blocks. The former Eaton’s store at Dundas connects directly to the shopping hall, whereas the former Simpson’s (currently Hudson’s Bay) department store on Queen requires crossing the street, using the upper‐level bridge or underground tunnel. The design incorporates various flows including pedestrians from the streets, the underground network, subway stations, and streetcars, as well as vehicular access with integrated parking garages. In the original design, the Yonge Street façade was set back, blank, and monolithic. Corresponding to the conventional shopping mall and its encapsulated program – the façade offered neither street shops nor visual porosity. In the early 2000s, the developers adapted the Yonge Street façade to bring it closer to the street with a more typical urban street edge and stores opening directly onto the street (Gibbs 2012). Connectivity is layered and creates a porous and highly activated enclosed space that feels much like an outdoor public square. From a spatial perspective, the Eaton Centre is quite unlike historic gallerias in that each floor plate is considerably different, rather than a stacked replication. Beneath its monumental glass vaulted roof, fragments of urbanity are co‐ opted to blur the boundaries between the interior and exterior. Frozen in mid‐flight, a sculptural “flock” of Canada geese entitled Flight Stop (1979) by Canadian artist Michael Snow navigates the central spine (Figure 6.2), while a geyser‐like fountain dramatically claims the basement level (Warkentin 2010). Large floor openings reveal the lowest floor with connections to the subway, allowing daylight to infiltrate the deepest spaces of the Eaton Centre. Allowing for both orientation and circulation, three escalator bays distribute flows and create understandable sequences. The various zones were human scaled, yet the drama of a multilevel space carries an urban gravitas offering enduring appeal. The Eaton Centre shares common ground with the Milan Galleria by acting as a covered, urban street rather than a downtown shopping mall. Both systems are monumentally vertical as well as linear. Both spaces engage articulated facades and “windows on the street” that activate the main space. Here, movement and activity are the main event – pedestrians move about on three levels using stairways, escalators, elevators, bridges, and balconies. Fountains, sculptures, and trees add civic character to an otherwise privatized space of consumption. It blends the aesthetic and spatial organization of the Milan Galleria and the Centre Pompidou, while simultaneously engaging the

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European social and urban aspirations of the Southdale Center. The Eaton Centre is designed for spectacle and spectatorship. It harks back to the earliest forms of urban consumption embodied in the bustling arcades and gallerias of continental Europe.

From North American Shopping Malls to Global Interior Urbanism As two cities with divergent agendas for postwar urban development, Houston and Toronto spawned urban gallerias with contrasting views of the city. The Eaton Centre extended the urban form of downtown Toronto by engaging its existing orders and incrementally adjusting to changing urban conditions. It acknowledged history and engendered a more timeless sense of urbanity. In doing so, the Eaton Centre has organically grown into an integral part of its context. Neither entirely high end nor low, the Eaton Centre hosts international retailers alongside Canadian and local brands, while its shoppers have become more globalized. Accretions to the original design have made the Eaton Centre blend more seamlessly with its urban context, while the addition of the Yonge–Dundas Square park plaza by Brown and Storey Architects (2002) extends the interior connectivity of the Eaton Centre to the outdoors by creating a Times Square‐ inspired gathering space (Goodfellow and Goodfellow 2010). Jointly conceived in 1998 by Toronto City Council, downtown business interests, and community groups, the square forms part of the Yonge Street Regeneration Project (Goodfellow and Goodfellow 2010). By blurring its edges and networking adjacent outdoor spaces, it has contributed to shaping a larger exterior urban ecosystem. The adaptive porosity of the Eaton Centre and its spatial relationship with Yonge–Dundas Square continue to positively shape the surrounding neighborhood and occupancy patterns of Yonge Street. In this sense, the Eaton Centre has become increasingly influential as an urban‐scale design intervention. Conversely, The Galleria aspired to a similar Milan Galleria‐inspired a­ esthetic, but it neither responded to contextual forces nor addressed urban form beyond its boundaries. It remains economically viable, continually upgraded, and provides a communal gathering space for Houston; however, its effect on enhancing the greater urbanity in Houston is debatable. The Eaton Centre became part of the city by bowing to the urban fabric. It has since contributed to establishing a more coherent and blended presence within its neighborhood. Instead of an internally oriented and highly defined space, the Eaton Centre has become more visually fragmented and urbane over time. The Galleria, however, remains a hermetic and automobile‐centric place. It fostered urban development – but no real urbanity. As a reflection of the capitalist mantra of Texas, the larger Galleria Uptown District established a master‐planned jurisdiction, but apart from the water wall



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fountain its public offerings are entirely transactional. Although an undeniable economic success, The Galleria suffers from a political and social context that places very few, if any, expectations on quality urban design. In short, urban public space in Houston remains geographically and socioeconomically segregated, while upmarket residential development continues to migrate further beyond the core to the periphery. In those tabula rasa contexts, the regional shopping mall is no longer the reigning paradigm. Instead, lifestyle centers and faux town squares act as new placeholders for actual urban places – places that a more civically oriented Galleria could have made better. The Galleria and the Eaton Centre ultimately influenced the design of countless offspring built during the 1980s and 1990s throughout North America, and later in the Near East and East Asia. In North America, the enclosed shopping mall as a hybrid form of interior urbanism and entertainment architecture peaked with the development of two projects in cold‐climate regions  –  the West Edmonton Mall (1981–1999) in Edmonton, Alberta, and the Mall of America (1992) in Bloomington, Minnesota. Owned by the Iranian‐Canadian Ghermezian family, these vast retail–restaurant–entertainment complexes have continually drawn millions of visitors to their respective cities. Inspired by the urban bazaars of Persia, where shopping and entertainment intermingle in one place, the West Edmonton Mall and the Mall of America inspired the late 1990s rebuilding of the Las Vegas Strip. Themed Las Vegas properties include the Bellagio (1998)  –  inspired by the Italian Renaissance; Paris Las Vegas (1999) – evoking Haussmannian boulevards on the Right Bank and intimate alleys of the Latin Quarter; and The Venetian (1999) – modeled with urban fragments of canals and piazzas. These vastly scaled developments used themed architecture to transform ordinary shopping malls into entertainment‐oriented interior urbanism. These projects mix aspects of World’s Fair architecture with retail, cultural references, and amusement park rides. Indoor streets and urban plazas create a middle ground between reality and fantasy. Together, the Ghermezian retail developments and Las Vegas mega‐malls represent the apogee of twentieth century shopping mall culture in the West. Furthermore, these malls served as climate‐responsive hyperspace precedents for themed mega‐malls that would later rise in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and Manila in the early twenty‐first century. The most recent hyperspaces in the Gulf region and East Asia have translated and advanced design principles from the West to new cultural and developmental contexts. Although these massive shopping malls have been designed by well‐regarded design practices, their architectures are variously historicist, conventional, or kitsch rather than iconic and avant‐garde. They have been largely ignored by the avant‐garde critical discourse of urban planning and architecture. Even so, their impressive scale and costly articulation represent a paradigm shift in consumption, as well as the changing nature of contemporary urbanism and design practice in the developing world.

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Dubai Emblematic of the dramatic rise of global cities in the Gulf region, Dubai embodies the phenomenon of leisure‐oriented retail development as a form of interior urbanization. Much like the coldest metropolitan areas of North America, climate was a catalyst for interiorizing conventional urban spaces by means of shopping malls. Consistently sunny with temperatures rising beyond 40 C, Dubai’s hyperspace interiors are used to simultaneously urbanize and mitigate its predictably harsh climate. Three malls in particular – Ibn Battuta Mall (2005), Mall of the Emirates (2005), and Dubai Mall (2008) – ­demonstrate the amplified market conditions, design aspirations, and physical proportions of the early twenty‐first century worldwide shopping mall boom. They are ­primary facilitators of capitalism, tourism, and consumption in the Emirates. Together, these mega‐malls preceded a more recent shift toward Web‐based direct‐delivery retailing, and, thus, they may embody the terminal phase of massive bricks‐and‐mortar retail development. Furthermore, they are a microcosm of contemporary interior urban typologies and the forerunners of important projects throughout the broader Gulf region and East Asia.

Ibn Battuta Mall Located in The Gardens district of Dubai, Ibn Battuta Mall opened in 2005 with 350 000 m2 of floor space, including 275 shops, 50 restaurants, and a 21‐ screen cinema. Its developer, Nakheel, claims that Ibn Battuta is the largest themed shopping mall in the world. Dewan Architects incorporated aspects of fantasy architecture and entertainment in the design by narrating the history of Ibn Battuta (1304–1368), a Moroccan scholar and explorer who traveled from the Iberian Peninsula to East Asia. Over the course of 30 years, he visited most of the Islamic world and many non‐Muslim lands. Employing Ibn Batutta’s voyage as a basis for their concept, the architects and interior designers of Ibn Battuta Mall drew inspiration from the architecture of Andalusia, Tunisia, Egypt, Persia, India, and China. The exterior building envelope and interior promenade through six enclosed courtyards operates much like the original It’s a Small World ride of the 1964 New York World’s Fair or the themed lands of Walt Disney World’s Epcot Center. Here, a Muslim Arab scholar’s contribution to global exploration is celebrated by a fantasy microcosm environment that intermingles culture with shopping, dining, and entertainment. The design of Ibn Battuta Mall situates individual courtyards in relation to their global geographic distribution from west (Andalusia) to east (China). The vastness of the floor plan with its urban spatial configurations, scalar qualities, and architectural characteristics makes Ibn Battuta Mall a definitive example of thematic retailing and contemporary interior urbanism. At the western portal, Andalusia is idealized as a hybrid land of art, architecture, science, and poetry. Andalusia Court incorporates Arabic stylistic references to the Alhambra



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Palace and Grand Mosque of Cordoba. Its central courtyard is topped by a star‐shaped coffered ceiling and articulated in materials including cast stone wall surfaces, multicolored Arabesque mosaics, and terracotta floor tiles. A replica of the Fountain of Lions serves as the focal point of this district. An arcaded concourse connecting Andalusia to Tunisia features a wood‐ beamed ceiling with carved inlaid panels. Tunisia Court draws inspiration from the coastal town of Carthage with its whitewashed stucco facades, wrought ironwork, and stained glass windows. Evoking the spatial and ambient qualities of a North African souk, Tunisia Court is configured in a network of pathways with ceilings rendered as a blue sky at mid‐afternoon. Street lamps, cobbled flooring, mosaic tilework, cast stone surfaces, and vegetation adorn its interior “streets.” The district incorporates a food court – architecturally inspired by the fortresses of Monastir and Sousse – that includes food stalls offering international cuisines and café seating. Cultures of the Near East are depicted in two themed districts that pay homage to ancient civilizations. The Pharaonic era is featured in the Egypt Court using design motifs referencing the pharaohs, pyramids, hieroglyphics, and temple architecture. Modeled in the manner of an urban bazaar, its central arcade is lined with columns topped by papyrus capitals and pointed arches. Surfaces are rendered in cast sandstone with relief details depicting iconographic, logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic hieroglyphs. A thematic color scheme throughout the district – muted tones of white, black, yellow, green, blue, and red – is derived from Pharaonic art, talismans, jewelry, and native flora of the Nile Valley. A dark‐stained, wood‐beamed ceiling with inset slatwork creates a night‐time atmosphere at all hours of the day. Overscaled hanging Ramadan lanterns bathe the expansive space in ambient light. The adjacent Persia Court – perhaps the most finely executed – draws inspiration from the Islamic architectural heritage of Isfahan and its spacious Grand Bazaar. A large‐scale dome, sheathed in vibrant mosaics, covers the central courtyard with its brass chandelier (Figure 6.3). Vaulted concourses, clad with intricate multicolor tilework, connect this district with Tunisia to the west and India to the east. A co‐ordinated turquoise, blue, and gold color scheme is materialized by stained glass, ceramics, and metalwork softened by upholstered furniture. The design of India Court was inspired by the Indo‐Islamic Mughal era of the thirteenth century. Its central courtyard incorporates architectural references to the iconic Taj Mahal, Red Fort, and Palace of the Winds. The focal point of India Court is the Elephant Clock, a monumental wood‐carved reproduction timepiece based on an original work by medieval inventor Al Jazari (1136–1206). The Elephant Clock incorporates multicultural influences from India and Africa – the elephant; from China – two dragons; from Persia – the phoenix; from Greece – waterworks; and from Islamic culture – the turban. India Court is rendered predominantly in white cast plaster with red‐glazed tile accents and brass chandeliers. Grandly scaled concourses feature coffered

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Figure 6.3  Persia Court at the Ibn Battuta Mall. Photo: Gregory Marinic.

ceilings that create a bazaar‐like atmosphere. Most of the sit‐down restaurants are located in this district. At the eastern portal, the largest of the themed areas  –  China Court  –  is designed around a vast space that features a full‐scale Chinese junk set within a shallow pool as its focus. Shopping concourses feature white marble columns and coffered ceilings with royal motifs symbolizing happiness and prosperity. Temple arches, red‐lacquered surfaces, and dragon iconography are predominant aspects of the design.

Mall of the Emirates Designed by Pasadena‐based F + A Architects, the Mall of the Emirates is located in the Al Barsha area of Dubai on the Sheikh Zayed Road. Opening in 2005, it features a total leasable floor area of 255 489 m2 with 630 stores, 90 restaurants, a 14‐screen cinema, and an indoor ski slope. Majid Al‐Futtaim Properties developed the Mall of the Emirates as the world’s first “shopping resort” embodying its destination mall strategy that combines comprehensive retail offerings, restaurants, and luxury accommodation with entertainment, recreational, cinematic, and cultural activities. Its three‐story configuration offers internal connections to structured parking, two luxury hotels, and a ­subway station. The Mall of the Emirates incorporates historicist Arabic and Mediterranean influences in its interior architecture, exterior facades, and landscape design.



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The floor plan is designed in the form of an urban grid with two primary longitudinal axes and five secondary transverse axes. The most exclusive stores are housed in the Fashion Dome – a monumental barrel‐vaulted space modeled on both the Milan Galleria and Houston Galleria – as well as on the first floor of the Luxury Wing. The Mall of the Emirates draws over 42 million visitors annually and is rigorously programmed with a year‐round schedule of activities that enhances its retail and leisure offerings. Many of these events populate concourses and courtyards, while more tactical programming  –  such as strolling musicians and portrait artists – adds an urban ambiance to the interior spaces. Apart from the shopping concourses, the Mall of the Emirates houses the Dubai Community and Theatre Arts Centre (DUCTAC) – a live performance and visual arts space; Magic Planet – a two‐level family‐oriented entertainment center that includes games of skill, video games, trampolines, bowling, thrill rides, and other amusements; and Ski Dubai – a 22 500 m2 indoor ski resort that includes an 85‐meter‐tall indoor “mountain” with five slopes of varying steepness including black diamond and 400‐meter‐long runs. A quad lift and tow line carry skiers and snowboarders to the summit. Additional features include a zip‐line, tube runs, freestyle zone, and the mid‐slope Avalanche Café. The Snow Park is a 3000 m2 winter‐themed environment that includes a snow cavern, twin‐track bobsled runs, tobogganing hills, and a live penguin habitat.

Dubai Mall Dubai Mall is an urban galleria‐style shopping mall and part of the Downtown Dubai complex centered on the world’s tallest skyscraper – the Burj Khalifa. Owned by EMAAR and designed by DP Architects, it includes 1200 stores, two anchor department stores, and over 200 food outlets, as well as additional attractions including an Olympic‐sized ice skating rink, a replica of London’s Regent Street, the Dubai Aquarium and Underwater Zoo, a 22‐screen cinema, the Kidzania children’s entertainment center, and the Emirates A380 Flight Simulator Experience. In addition, The Souk offers a precinct with traditional Arab clothing, jewelry, tribal handicrafts, housewares, and handmade rugs. Dubai Mall is the largest shopping mall in the world by means of floor area with 502 000 m2 and is connected to the Burj Khalifa/Dubai Mall red line subway station by an air‐conditioned footbridge. It hosts the Dubai Shopping Festival – a primary tourist attraction for the emirate – and draws over 80 million annual visitors. Dubai Mall is a multileveled interior urban hyperspace and hub of a much larger central business district, shopping area, and residential zone. It incorporates historicist Arabic, Mediterranean, and contemporary influences in its interior architecture, exterior facades, outdoor urban spaces, and peripheral landscaping. Exterior facades are highly articulated and porous, offering generously scaled spaces for outdoor cafés, display windows, and several monumental entrance portals. Its three‐level floor plan is configured as a continuous

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circuit punctuated by several atria and circular courts. The primary circumferential concourse is bifurcated by a central axis and food court. The most exclusive stores are housed in the Fashion Avenue zone  –  a monumental space featuring 85 luxury retailers that functions much like an urban street. Dubai Mall is robustly programmed with year‐round cultural, sporting, and performance activities that enhance its retail program. Many of these events are programmed into the courtyards and outdoor civic spaces surrounding the mall.

Theorizing the Interior Urbanism of Dubai In 1982, Marxist theorist Fredric Jameson reflected on utopianism by proclaiming: “Today the past is dead … as for the future, it is for us either irrelevant or unthinkable.” In his book Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (2005), Jameson claimed that the utopian impulse was critically important to contemporary architecture and urbanism (Jameson 2005). He interrogated the collapse of communism and distinguished between the notion of utopia as a program versus utopia as an impulse. Jameson contrasted the master‐planned societies of programmed utopianism with a bottom‐up alternative that advances heroic and transformative ideas (Jameson 2005). His advocacy for the utopian impulse similarly invokes the image of the collective, futurist, and indeed revolutionary, actions of the avant‐ garde as an antidote to top‐down autocracies. Ironically, the utopian interior hyperspaces of Dubai reflect the authoritarian vices that Jameson so derided. In 1992, Jameson interrogated the spatial motivations of interior hyperspaces and their relationship to consumption. In Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, he claimed that the rising power of multinational capital was embodied by Late Modernism, and, particularly, in the interior hyperspaces of the Centre Pompidou, the Toronto Eaton Centre, and the Los Angeles Bonaventure (Jameson 1992). He proposed: I believe that, with a certain number of other characteristic postmodern buildings, such as the Beaubourg in Paris, the Eaton Centre in Toronto, or the Bonaventure in Los Angeles aspire to being a total space, a complete world, a kind of miniature city. This new total space, meanwhile, corresponds to a new collective practice, a new mode in which individuals move and congregate, something like the practice of a new and historically original kind of hyper‐crowd.

Jameson’s insights may be further applied to the twenty‐first century hermetic hyperspaces of Dubai, whose contemporary forms of interior urbanism represent metaphors of an increasingly global and consumptive society aggressively shaped by advertising and social media. Capital has been privileged over civitas and real urbanity in the uncritical architectures of Ibn Battuta Mall, the Mall of the Emirates, and the Dubai Mall.



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The commodification of culture as themed architecture idealizes and recycles the past in what Jameson referred to as the schizophrenic disposition of postmodern space (Jameson 1992). For Jameson, postmodern schizophrenia is derived from a lack of historicity or the disappearance of true history due to a postmodern recycling of the past. In this sense, his theory aligns with the absence of a substantial urban and architectural history in the Emirates for which recent development attempts to construct physical places through fantastical idealization. Dubai’s postmodern hyperspaces express the postmodern excesses of a fundamentally consumptive global society that increasingly lacks an appreciation for high art, architecture, and design. At the urban scale, Dubai has been shaped by mega‐malls that restrict its ability to grow organically into a nuanced urban ecosystem. Led by developers and governmental interests, the largest architectural practices have largely disinvested themselves from advancing critical architecture and urban design. Thus, historicist pastiche has been endlessly applied while generic Modernism wraps building exteriors to project newness and a developed identity. In this sense, the external architectures of the Mall of the Emirates and the Dubai Mall are coded to the public as “modern” as their inhabited interiors express historicist postmodernity. To an even more extreme degree, the Ibn Battuta Mall uncritically employs nostalgia as a utopian narrative in themed interior architecture that sanitizes, hybridizes, and reinterprets the past. Like Jameson, sociologist and cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard identified the original World Trade Center, the Centre Pompidou, and the Los Angeles Bonaventure as Late Modern buildings that revealed the hybrid cultural logic of modernity and postmodernity (Baudrillard 1982). Baudrillard described Late Modern buildings and hyperspaces as an unintentional parody of Modernism related to an arbitrary and misleading spatial language (Baudrillard 1982). His observations were rooted in the poststructuralist conviction that meaning is constructed through systems of signs working in unison. These systems may be further applied to the shopping malls of Dubai – interior urban hyperspaces that demonstrate radical regional shifts operating simultaneously in both global architecture and popular consumption. Both Jameson and Baudrillard propose that the subversive nature of the modern parody collectively situates the original World Trade Center, the Centre Pompidou, and the Los Angeles Bonaventure within the postmodern (Baudrillard 1982). For Baudrillard, the notion of modernist parody represents a dialectic relationship between normativity and subjective aesthetic preferences. Engaging his perspective on society’s enslavement to mass‐media – a notion that can be extended to the more recent rise of social media – as well as Michel Foucault’s critique of subjectivity, the mega‐malls of Dubai reveal the decline of critical Modernism and the rise of something more coded and intuitively packaged for mass consumption. Baudrillard believed that the ideal inner worlds of the original World Trade Center, the Centre Pompidou, and the Los Angeles Bonaventure applied

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aspects of urbanism within building interiors (Baudrillard 1982). Similarly, the mega‐malls of Dubai have been isolated into even more autonomous interior worlds  –  or micro‐worlds  –  where vastness heightens the insignificance of external architecture, relationships to the immediate periphery, and connectivity to the larger city. The generic postmodern exterior envelope of the Mall of the Emirates, for instance, turns its surface into a virtual postmodern mirror of the surrounding context. At the ground level, diminutive exterior portals connote an emphasis on arriving by car. Interiorized direct connections to the subway station further divorce human activities from the outdoors. Interiority has been coded as advanced and superior to actual urbanism whereby users are not encouraged to interact with a knowable exterior. As such, the Dubai mega‐ malls spatialize Baudrillard’s theory of the consumptive and spatially ambiguous motivations of postmodernity in variant ways.

Conclusion The cross‐cultural growth of interior urbanism may be historically and typologically linked to the medieval bazaars of the Near East, and, later, emerging in the arcades, gallerias, shopping malls, tunnel systems, and skywalk networks of the West. The historic arcades of continental Europe and North America responded to capitalist and consumptive forces that spawned the potential for an alternative interior commercial world. The nineteenth century arcades of Paris, Vienna, Milan, Budapest, and elsewhere facilitated the transfer of interior urban principles to cities in North America by means of industrialization and immigration. These early interior urban precedents influenced Victor Gruen in his design for the Southdale Center. His interiorized street for the suburbs recomposed civic activities, shops, and department stores into an interior connective system. Since the rise of the Parisian arcades in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, urban interiorization has been driven by utopian motivations, yet it remains an inherently unoptimistic enterprise. By encapsulating and controlling outdoor urban conditions, it mirrors broader pessimism in society and skepticism of the city, as well as the rejection of natural variations in climate. Aspects of capitalism and utopianism influenced the designs for the Eaton Centre in Toronto and The Galleria in Houston. Each project advanced interior urbanism by creating viable interiorized alternatives to commercial streets that idealized conventionally outdoor conditions. The Galleria was envisioned as the heart of a privatized edge city – a raised platform of an entirely autonomous, self‐sufficient, and automobile‐centric development. Here, Hines developed a mixed‐use complex that reflected his understanding of commercial leasing, retail density, people, and their response to notable architecture. His philosophy  –  mobilized initially in the two largest cities of Texas  –  created places of social importance within placeless cities. This strategy launched a new understanding of the enclosed shopping mall – particularly for sprawling and



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formless cities – as a capitalistic typology that would prove to be market driven and globally transferrable. Returning full circle back to the Near East, the early twenty‐first century urban growth of Dubai has been highly defined by interiority and trend‐influenced interior design at an urban scale. Do the amplified proportions of shopping malls represent cynicism, idealization, or utopia? On the one hand, internally focused megastructures urbanize by means of top‐down privatization by offering vastness but questionable urbanity. On the other, these mega‐ projects confront urban complexities that address large‐scale sites in harsh climates. Thus far, a critique of the interior urban spatiality of Dubai has been lightly documented regarding the long‐term impact of interior urbanism on the city’s ability to develop authentic urbanism. As evidenced herein, the early theoretical critiques of urban interiority proposed by Jameson and Baudrillard in the 1980s and early 1990s may be applied anew to analyze and theorize emerging work in the Gulf region and East Asia. In contemporary Dubai, the spatiality and ambiguities that so entranced Jameson and Baudrillard exist in far more complex and robust forms of interior urbanism influenced by an increasingly globalized and uncritical world. The future resilience and relevance of interior urbanism in the region remains a work‐in‐progress.

References Axelrod, J.B.C. (2009). Inventing Autopia: Dreams and Visions of the Modern Metropolis in Jazz Age Los Angeles. Berkeley: University of California Press. Baudrillard, J. (1982). The Beaubourg‐effect: implosion and deterrence. JSTOR October 20: 3–13. Baumgartner, M.P. (1988). The Moral Order of a Suburb. New York: Oxford University Press. Beauregard, R.A. (2006). When America Became Suburban. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bednar, M.J. (1990). Interior Pedestrian Spaces. London: Batsford. Black, J.T., Howland, L., and Rogel, S.L. (1983). Downtown Retail Development: Conditions for Success and Project Profiles. Washington, DC: ULI‐the Urban Land Institute. Buckminster Fuller, R. (1965). The Case for a Domed City. St. Louis Dispatch (26 September), p. 39–41. Burrough, B. (2008). The man who was Texas. Vanity Fair (October). https:// www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/10/oil_excerpt200810 Coleman, P. (2006). Shopping Environments: Evolution, Planning and Design. Amsterdam: Architectural Press. Garreau, J. (1991). Edge City: Life on the New Frontier. New York: Doubleday. Gibbs, R.J. (2012). Principles of Urban Retail Planning and Development. Hoboken: Wiley.

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Goldberger, P. and Craig, R.M. (2009). John Portman: Art and Architecture. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Goodfellow, M. and Goodfellow, P. (2010). A Guidebook to Contemporary Architecture in Toronto. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre. Graham, W. (2016). Dream Cities: Seven Urban Ideas that Shape the World. New York: Harper. Hardwick, M.J. and Gruen, V. (2004). Mall Maker: Victor Gruen, Architect of an American Dream. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House. Jameson, F. (1992). Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Raleigh: Duke University Press. Jameson, F. (2005). Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. New York: Verso. Kneebone, E. and Berube, A. (2013). Confronting Suburban Poverty in America. Brookings Institution Press. Lassiter, M.D. (2006). The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Le Corbusier (1967). The Radiant City; Elements of a Doctrine of Urbanism to be Used as the Basis of Our Machine‐Age Civilization. New York: Orion Press. Lomax, J. (2013). A shopping center it is not. It will be a new downtown. Houstonia (1 December). https://www.houstoniamag.com/articles/2013/12/1/secrets‐ to‐the‐galleria‐intro‐december‐2013 Loukaitou‐Sideris, A. and Banerjee, T. (1998). Urban Design Downtown: Poetics and Politics of Form. Berkeley: University of California Press. Meeks, F. (2012). A look back: Galleria’s opening caught world’s eye. The Houston Chronicle (4 September). https://www.chron.com/memorial/news/article/A‐ look‐back‐Galleria‐s‐opening‐caught‐world‐s‐eye‐3838796.php Moran, B. (2014). Architecture in North America since 1960. In: A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture: 1960–2010 (ed. E. Haddad and D. Rifkind), 139–162. Farnham: Ashgate. Palen, J.J. (1995). The Suburbs. New York: McGraw‐Hill. Picon, A. (1994). L’invention du toit terrace: imaginaire architectural, usage et techniques. In: De Toits en Toits: Les Tois de Paris (ed. F. Leclerc and P. Simon), 36–42. Paris: Les Éditions du Pavilion de l’Arsenal. Riot‐Sarcey, M. (1998). Le Réel de l’utopie: Essai sur le politique au XIXe Siècle. Paris: A. Michel. Rowe, C. and Koetter, F. (1978). Collage City. Cambridge: MIT Press. Simon Property Group (2016). About The Galleria‐A Simon Mall. https://www. simon.com/mall/the‐galleria/about (accessed 1 December 2016). Smiley, D.J. (2013). Pedestrian Modern Shopping and American Architecture, 1925–1956. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Spaeth, D.A. (1985). Mies van der Rohe. New York: Rizzoli.



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Tafuri, M. (1976). Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development. Cambridge: MIT Press. Teaford, J.C. (2008). The American Suburb: The Basics. New York: Routledge. Wall, A. (2005). Victor Gruen: From Urban Shop to New City. Barcelona: Actar. Warkentin, J. (2010). Creating Memory: A Guide to Outdoor Public Sculpture in Toronto. Toronto: City Institute at York University. West, R. (1980). My home, the Galleria. Texas Monthly (30 July). https://www. texasmonthly.com/articles/my‐home‐the‐galleria

Part III

Space

7

Virtual Space Rina Arya

Introduction A priest strides rapidly along the road from Northridge Abbey through Goldshire to Stormwind City, excited that he has been sent for advanced ­training in the Cathedral of Light. In the Temple of the Moon at Darnassus, a priestess learns new supernatural healing techniques while bathed in ­moonbeams and standing beneath a colossal statue of the goddess Elune. At the top of a precipice in an archipelago of magic‐shrouded islands, an anthropologist ­studying shamanism wonders if she can trust a totem to save her if she leaps towards the rocks far below. In a remote valley, a shaman prepares to attack archaeologists whose digging will desecrate his people’s holy burial grounds, activating a protective totem before unleashing his pious rage. The first of these four religious professionals is a Human, but the others are a Night Elf, a Draenei, and a Tauren. Indeed, none of them are people exactly, but the avatars of people in the dominant massively multiplayer online role‐playing game, World of Warcraft. (Bainbridge 2013, p. 3)

William Sims Bainbridge’s opening lines from EGods (Bainbridge 2013) give a taste of the fantasy scape that is typical of virtual online worlds, and conveys the extent of creative and imaginative options where we can construct characters and experiences that are far removed from mundane reality. Digital technology has enabled the increased sophistication of avatars, of three‐dimensional (3D) graphical representations of the user, making it compelling to align our

A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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dreams and desires of who we want to be with our online personae. Digital media forms, including online worlds, games, and social media sites, have increasingly populated the imagination of the contemporary age, making them credible sites of investigation for twenty‐first century cultural experience. This chapter examines the possibilities that are opened up by virtual spaces and the consequences of it in the digital age, including the impact on the physical environment. Virtual spaces are often defined by contrast with the physical 3D space of the everyday world.1 In addition to increasing options in games, films, virtual worlds, and other modes of entertainment and communication, virtual space has also created possibilities for a range of industries such as healthcare and the built environment through the practice of 3D modeling and other processes of augmented reality. The changes in communication (including interaction) that have occurred because of digital media have repercussions in the cultural sphere, in the transformation of sociocultural concepts such as community and friendship, as well as the critical question of what we define as the “real,” issues which have been interrogated by scholars working in the field. One of the challenges of writing about technological advances is that no sooner than technology becomes familiar it is supplanted by a newer innovation. More important is the examination of the combined impact of technology and the changes that it will have on our lives, and to view this in terms of a continuum of transformation.

What is Virtual Space? Before we consider what virtual space is we need to break the compound term into its component parts and to think in the first instance about the meaning of the virtual. The virtual is that which is not real; it is artificial or illusory. It may involve the representation of real objects, which, however naturalistic, are not real, or it may refer to the creation of the unreal. The Allegory of the Cave, as presented by Plato in The Republic (§514a,2–517a,7), is arguably the first notable account in the West that distinguishes reality from the virtual (representations of it). According to Plato, human beings are in the grip of a systematic illusion. The Allegory describes how people have been imprisoned from childhood and all they can see is a cave wall where things outside the cave are casting their shadows on the cave wall. We are under the ingrained illusion that the shadows we are looking at are what is real rather than merely shadows. The philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and understands that the shadows are not real. For Plato the task of the philosopher is to enlighten: to make people turn around and see that the shadows are mere representations and that reality has quite a different, deeper character. This distinction between deceptive appearance and hidden reality is found again in the seventeenth century in the work of René Descartes. One of Descartes’ notable thought experiments, known as the dream ­argument (in the first meditation), was to examine our state of consciousness.



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He raised the question of whether, in everyday life, we are awake and perceiving reality or we are merely dreaming, meaning that reality is veiled from us. Descartes challenges us: how can we tell that we are awake and perceiving reality as opposed to being asleep and merely dreaming what passes for everyday life? As with Plato, Descartes raises the perplexing issue of what is mere appearance, what is real, and how we can distinguish between them. They both raise the idea that nature may depart very radically from what we complacently but unreflectively take it to be. The disjuncture in these cases is between two states, the real and the apparent or the illusory. We may perceive that which is apparent or illusory is the real but it is not in fact real. While many of our experiences of the virtual may in fact be mediated through digital technology, in what is described as cyberspace, we can speak about non‐ digital virtual spaces. Aharon Kellerman endorses Or Ettlinger’s view about the distinction between virtual space and cyberspace, where he argues the former is an umbrella term that encompasses the latter “subset,” to use his descriptor (Ettlinger 2008, p. 33, quoted in Kellerman 2016, p. 24). Virtual space is “the visual presentations of real space and material artifacts in all forms” (Kellerman 2016, p. 30). Within the context of the digital, virtual space combines the “virtual” with the “spatial” to refer to: 1. A perceived representational space created by computer graphics software that employs a Cartesian coordinate system consisting of X, Y, and Z axes; and 2. A metaphorical way of conceptualising the interactions that “take place” over a computer network. (Chandler and Munday 2011, p. 452)

Arguably all forms of virtual space contain unembodied information. Digital virtual spaces can of course be populated by real people who bring with them their experiences of embodiment by experiencing feelings and sensations. The concept of cyberspace was explored in the science fiction novels of William Gibson, and was particularly associated with his 1984 novel Neuromancer, which refers to the non‐space of computer networks and has come to be seen as a parallel space or universe to the physical world which links “disparate physical space and individuals through a shared virtual space” (Grosz 2001, p. 76). In his poetic words Gibson speaks of cyberspace as: A consensual hallucination, experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation by children being taught mathematical concepts … A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters of constellations of data. Like city lights, receding. (Gibson 1984, §3, p. 67)

Dale Bradley unpacks cyberspace in spatial terms, describing it “as a new ­frontier, an empty and/or formless space ‘discovered’ in the interstices of information and communication technologies: a new frontier which awaits

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socialization” (Bradley 1995, p. 10). James Kneale (1999, p. 207) develops a similar line and describes cyberspace as a “virtual database, in which the combined knowledge of [Gibson’s] information society is represented as virtual objects in an infinite space, organised as a regular grid” through which users move in and through shifting “from one location to another” enter and leave as they will. The spatialization of movement enables users “to make sense of the ‘nonspace’ of information, allowing them to create imagined geographies of the Internet and other databases” (Kneale 1999, p. 207). Michael Benedikt raises the important point about the relevance of the property of time in thinking about cyberspace. He asks: “Since in cyberspace the very concept of space is clearly at issue, is not the concept of time also at issue? How should time be treated?” (Benedikt 1991, p. 120). The remainder of the chapter will focus on digital virtual spaces within Web 2.0. The types of virtual spaces within cyberspace have changed as a result of the evolution of the World Wide Web. In the earlier stages, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, what is described as Web 1.0, virtual spaces were static not dynamic and consisted of pages connected by hyperlinks (instead of dynamic HTML), meaning that most users acted as consumers of content (rather than producers). The next stage of development, Web 2.0, occurring in the noughties, allowed users to create user‐generated content including social networking sites or other platforms that encouraged interaction in multiple ways, including the sharing, storage, and dissemination of many different kinds of media. Users were able to respond and personalize information in ways that were hitherto not possible. The development of a more dynamic Web was accompanied by a more interactive culture in which users both consume and construct content, as seen in the growth in virtual worlds and virtual communities. But however close the two worlds are there is always a boundary between the physical and the virtual that is conceptualized by the interface, the point of connection yet difference between two systems. Mark Poster uses the term “membrane” to describe it, which is fitting given the types of interface seen in current technologies such as Smartphones, which “allow seamless crossings between … two worlds, thereby facilitating the disappearance of the difference between them …” (Poster 1996, pp. 20–21, in Gane and Beer 2008, p. 53). Virtual spaces within cyberspace can be contained within virtual worlds, which are computer‐generated simulated environments, often allowing for multiple users. They “can be explored from the first‐person point of view of an embodied participant … or in the form of an avatar” (Chandler and Munday 2011, p. 452), thereby enabling users to metaphorically live a parallel life in cyberspace. Users are identified by (and identify with) their created avatars and explore the virtual world while interacting and communicating with other users in a variety of ways from the textual to the gestural. The geography of online worlds varies and is often categorized across genre lines. Standard elements include the user’s response to certain stimuli and the ability to manipulate aspects of the “artificial” world. The first virtual online worlds were chat



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rooms that evolved into MUDs (Multi‐User Dungeons; later called Multi‐ User Domains), which were multiplayer real‐time virtual worlds that combined the component parts of virtual worlds. Virtual worlds can also be mediated through virtual reality simulators. This requires the wearing of a headset (or head‐mounted display), which provides sensory input simulation, mimicking a real or imagined environment. This creates the perceptual illusion of immersion, something experienced in virtual online worlds but through other means. The experience of flying a plane, for instance, feels as if one is really flying a plane, even though this is not the actual case in reality. The advancement of technology means that the user’s body and online avatar can be more closely linked because of motion detection systems, which are used not only in the entertainment industry but also for educational purposes and other forms of training. Robert Geraci discusses how researchers at the Institute of Creative Technologies (ICT) at the University of Southern California have used motion sensing through Microsoft’s Kinect to control World of Warcraft using body motions. “The Kinect detects the user’s movements, which are translated via software provided freely by the ICT to the World of Warcraft keyboard controls” (Geraci 2014, p. 213). The growing synergy between the (physical) user and (virtual) avatar where the body is contiguous with its user enhances user experience and further blurs the boundary between the real and the virtual.

Virtual “Physical” Spaces Before looking at digital virtual spaces more closely it is important to consider the impact that digital technology has had on sociocultural notions of spaces within the cognate disciplines of geography and architecture or, in broader terms, the built environment. Digital technology has radicalized the relationship between physical space and structure, the implications of which have been discussed by the critic of technology Paul Virilio, who anticipating the effects of the digital age comments on the “critical” situation “space finds itself in … just like one would speak of critical times, or of a critical situation.” He argues how “space is under threat … space too is being destroyed” (Armitage 2000, p. 33). Other theorists in architecture and urban design similarly argue for the challenges that digital technology has placed on conceptions of space and place. Mike Crang describes how “these technologies are seen as facilitating, if not producing, a qualitatively different human experience of dwelling in the world; new articulations of near and far, present and absent, body and technology, self and environment” (Crang et al. 1999, p. 1). Emine Mine Thompson considers what the practice of architecture entails before looking at how technology has changed it. Working with a standard definition of architecture, she shows how digital technology undermines or at least transforms how we understand the function of discrete architectural spaces. Architecture is “the art and science of designing structures and their

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surroundings in keeping with aesthetic, functional or other criteria … Architecture is now understood as encompassing the totality of the designed environment; including buildings, urban spaces and landscapes” (Fleming et al. 1998, pp. 21–22, quoted in Thompson 2008, p. 2). Both these definitions imply the physicality of its reference; architecture involves the construction, organization, and structuring of physical spaces. The growth of digital technology in everyday life has problematized real physical spaces, resulting in a blurring of boundaries between real and virtual space and prompting the question posed by Thompson: “what is today’s architecture really about?” (Thompson 2008, p. 2). While arguing for a normative understanding of physical space before interrogating the shape and forms of virtual space, Thompson draws on William J. Mitchell’s research to inform her observations, in particular Mitchell’s mapping of space or place to function. This meant a specialization of function where a particular activity was performed in a particular place: e.g. work in an office. “Buildings were distinguished from one another by their differing uses, and the inventory of those uses represented social division and structure” (Mitchell 1995a, p. 47). Mitchell maintains that “[b]uilt spaces will still be needed for living, work, and recreation, but they will be organized and configured in new ways” (Mitchell 1995b, abstract). The term “recombinant” is used to describe the new configurations of spaces, which are no longer homogeneous but are fluid and multiple. It is worth pointing out, however, that, even before the introduction of digital technology in the urban environment, we experienced a sense of the virtual in relation to postmodernism in which structure was not aligned to purpose, leading to the use of virtual ornamental features that were divorced from functionality. Referring to architectural changes in a number of North American cities, Trevor Boddy gives an account of changing urban life in the 1980s through the construction of thoroughfares that streamline and manage the passage of people in artificial features such as skyways and underground streets that prevent the natural flow of people through unencumbered city streets and public spaces. These structures, designed to minimize inconvenience, were “simulations of urbanity” (Boddy 1992, p. 125, quoted in Light 1999, p. 112).2 Boddy states how: Over the past decade, new extensions to the city have appeared in downtown areas across the continent. In cities as various as Minneapolis, Dallas, Montreal, and Charlotte, raised pedestrian bridges connect dispersed new towers into a linked system; mazes of tunnels lead from public transit to workplace without recourse to conventional streets; people‐mover transit systems glide above the scuffling passions of streetbound cities. Grafted on to the living tissue of existing downtowns, these new urban prosthetics seem benign at first, artificial arms and plastic tubes needed to maintain essential civic functions. Promoted as devices to beat the environmental extremes of heat, cold, or humidity that make conventional streets unbearable, they seem mere tools, value‐free extensions of the existing urban realm. (Boddy 1992, p. 125)



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They are anything but that. These pedestrian routes and their attached towers, shopping centers, food fairs, and cultural complexes provide a filtered version of the experience of cities, a simulation of urbanity. By eliminating the most fundamental of urban activities – people walking along streets – the new pedestrian systems underground and overhead are changing the nature of the North American city (Boddy 1992, p. 124, quoted in Light 1999, pp. 111–112). A decade later, in the mid‐1990s, Mitchell showed how the introduction of cyberspace into the physical environment had further transformed urban spaces. If we view Boddy’s account as a partial transformation where the physical environment is being altered through the management of space, digital technology, as seen in Mitchell’s account, has further fragmented these spaces, causing physical displacement. This has resulted in what Mitchell presents as twinned spatial concepts corresponding to specific functions, where the real space component stands apart from “its virtual twin” to show the effects of physical displacement (quoted in Thompson 2008, p. 5). The gallery becomes the virtual museum; the department store, the electronic shopping mall; and banking chambers are now ATMs. In all cases the physical spaces that once represented and contained the activity in question have been replaced by virtual representations that are accessed via a computer screen. This increases access and efficiency, in that you do not need to go to a particular physical space, thereby saving time and other economies but diminishing other features, including the real encounter with the people/objects that enhance the experience. This is particularly stark in the case of the virtual museum. Many would argue that while surveying webpages or interactive virtual tours, one may be able to acquire factual and aesthetic information about artworks in a particular exhibition, for instance, but not capture the value attained in seeing the work first-hand. Building on Mitchell’s groundbreaking research into the integration of architectural practice with digital technologies and the challenges this places on conventional concepts about urban design, Thomas Horan uses the metaphor of fragmentation to describe the impact that spatial devolution has on the visual and sociological. “Technology facilitates the fragmentation and recombination of places,” what is described as “digital placemaking” in a variety of environments, including “homes, workplaces, libraries, schools, communities, and cities” (Horan 2000, p. 6), transforming organizations into virtual environments. In a similar vein Page and Phillips talk about the “hybridization of dataspace and physical space, and the constitution of the augmented city” (Page and Phillips 2003, pp. 10–12, quoted in Aurigi and De Cindio 2008, p. 318). What is interesting here is the use of the transferred epithet  –  where “augmented,” a term traditionally used in a technical sense to refer to (the enhancement of) a real‐world environment through computer‐generated input, is applied to “urban spaces,” and also to digital concepts, that of “cellspace, dataspace [which] seem crucial … as spatial elements of augmented

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reality” (Aurigi and De Cindio 2008, p. 318). To various degrees these perspectives salvage a concept of the physical city, which in Virilio’s more hard‐line view disappears, or subsumes it to the virtual city (Armitage 2013, p. 52). Jennifer Light offers a balanced critique of the effects of digital technology in urban spaces. She examines the impact of the erosion of “authentic” urban life in architectural spaces that are becoming increasingly commodified and managed in various ways, as evidenced in the shopping mall, for instance (Light 1999, pp. 113–116). But far from bringing about the decline of the city, cyberspace can revitalize civic and community life in various ways (Light 1999, pp. 126–127). Light’s account reflects the reactionary impact that the dislocation of physical spaces can have, but also the simultaneous recognition of the pervasiveness of digital technology in the built environment.

The Psychological and Social Impact of Digital Culture The development of digital media is accompanied by increasing and pervasive ethical concerns about the effects that these forms have on social interaction, especially within youth culture, but also, more recently, the impact this has on the individual and wellbeing. Just to be clear, this does not refer to people who incorporate digital technology into their lives in order to facilitate communication but rather to those (not necessarily of a particular age) who construct and develop interpersonal relations almost exclusively virtually. These behaviors and habits have transformed the way relationships are conducted. The last few decades have seen the rise of studies about the effects of online violence in video games and films on youth culture in which it has been hypothesized that high degrees of realism may blur boundaries between the real and the imaginary, resulting in antisocial behavior by vulnerable subjects (Anderson and Bushman 2001; Anderson and Dill 2000; Dill and Dill 1998). Connecting in cyberspace is not an unconventional practice for many global subjects. People “network” along many different lines, resulting in increasing online communities. A burgeoning area is digital religion. One of the pioneers of this area of research, Heidi A. Campbell, for instance, examines the effects of new media on religion and the Internet’s potential to shape and extend religious activity (Campbell 2013, p. 1). The study of online religion considers among other things the forging of new identities and communities that are only made possible in virtual spaces and the translation of religious ideas and practices from the domain of physical space to the virtual. One especially complex area is how rituals that are carried out in the real space–time world can be reenacted online. A further concern involves the validation of religious authority. A question that is central to the methodology of online religion research is  how the sacred, which is central to religious feeling, can be mediated and transformed into what is commonly regarded as the profane space of the Web. More broadly, within the discipline of digital culture new methodologies and ethnographies have



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been devised that take seriously user interaction and participation mediated by information and communication technologies (see Hine 2015). A theoretical term that has gained currency showing the validity of “digital” relationships is “copresence”;3 the sense of “being with others” irrespective of not sharing the same space, which can be therapeutic and intimate. Sherry Turkle has examined at length the psychological and social consequences of people’s evolving relationship with digital culture and the impact this has on human relationships. She takes a synoptic perspective, examining how life online should be seen as socially significant in the expression of identity (Turkle 1999). But she also evaluates how technology can impinge on human relations in detrimental ways. Using emotionally charged phrases such as “connected but alone?” Turkle asks whether “as we expect more from technology … we expect less from each other” (Turkle 2011). Commentators such as Turkle maintain that the richness and intimacy of human face‐to‐face interaction and the bonds that are built in that type of interaction – i.e. conversation – are lacking in online communication, which is primarily about contact. In “Hiding behind the screen” Roger Scruton mulls over the social and psychological effects of the construction of identity in virtual spaces (Scruton 2010). Recognizing the benefits of accelerated communication and the opportunities afforded to parties who may not otherwise enjoy social interaction he cites a number of disadvantages that concern the unreality of virtual relationships. It is one thing to place a screen between yourself and the world; it is another thing to inhabit the world on that screen as the primary sphere of your relationships. Investing one’s emotional life in the adventures of an avatar, one retreats completely from real relationships. Instead of being a means to augment relationships that exist outside it, the Internet could become the sole arena of social life – but an unreal life involving unreal people. The thought of this reawakens all of those once‐fashionable claims of alienation and the fetishism of commodities of which Marx and his followers accused capitalist society. The nerd controlling the avatar has essentially “placed his being outside of himself,” as they would have it (http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/ hiding‐behind‐the‐screen). Scruton does not concede that relationships formed within virtual spaces are real, or authentic, treating them as evasive of real encounters. Scruton has in mind the Platonic distinction between the real and the representation, believing that the “inferior” and unreal digital world of the computer can never match up to the “authenticity” of real life. Building on this, we can take the line that an integral part of the human experience is sentience, which we experience through the condition of being embodied, and that it is the lack of the embodied self in the digital that contributes to its unrealness and inauthenticity. An opposing view propounded by Robert Geraci argues for the enriching qualities of online existence. A self‐professed gamer, who takes as his subject online gaming worlds, Geraci vouches for the significance of virtual identities which enable users to choose how to be themselves and how to interact with

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others, decisions which affect them not only within the virtual domain but also in the room (Geraci 2014, p. 213). Geraci’s view underscores the importance of two ideas to which I will now turn my attention: how we define what is real, and the simultaneity of the domains of the real and the virtual, which I argue describes today’s approach to digital technology in many parts of the world.

The Real and the Virtual In Plato’s and Descartes’ respective positions there is a qualitative and ontological distinction between the real and the apparent or represented. Aristotle held a different view about mimesis (imitation), which he believed was not a hindrance to the quest for reality but which was the means by which the real becomes apparent. More recently the theorist Jean Baudrillard showed the logic of Plato by showing how we live in a simulated environment, where the virtual, in the sense of the simulated, constitutes our perception of reality. In “The orders of simulacra” in Symbolic Exchange and Death (Baudrillard 1993) he explains the perceptual and paradigmatic shifts of thinking that underpin societal values in the trajectory of a historical process, which convey how reality should be understood. Baudrillard’s study was a critique of the political economy of the sign and is significant for the subject of virtual space because he shows how digital media increasingly shapes our understanding of the world. He talks about how “Digitality is among us. It haunts all the messages and signs of our society” (Baudrillard 1993, pp. 61–62). The virtual in the current day is not a substitute for the real, but is a representation of the real, which has a bearing on how we interpret life online, and problematizes views about the inauthenticity of online identity. The development of Baudrillard’s post‐1970s notion of the simulacrum begins with the first order of simulacra, which corresponds with the period of the premodern, specifically with the Renaissance. Here the image was a counterfeit to the real, which was regarded as illusory and inferior. The second order of simulacra, corresponding to the Industrial Revolution, was the era of mass production, resulting in a proliferation of copies. It was still possible to access the “real” but it became less important.4 In the twentieth century, the postmodern epoch, we experience the third order, “[t]here is no more counterfeiting of an original, as there was in the first order, and no more pure series as there were in the second; there are models from which all forms proceed according to modulated differences” (Baudrillard 1993, p. 56). This is the age of the hyperreal, which is more real than the real. Here there is no longer a distinction between reality and the representation; the representation determines the real. To restate, the sign (of the real) is substituted for (and displaces) the real. Simulations have become based on other simulations, and it is impossible to trace the origin of the simulacra. This has become the dominant way of understanding the world and is borne out in the surface ontology of



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different digital media forms including television, news media, film, and cyberspace, which are more “real” to us than the non‐media physical world. Baudrillard uses examples of “media” events such as the Gulf War, which he controversially believed did not take place – he asserted that the war was a virtual rather than an actual war – to show the impact of mediatization. The news media does not reflect real‐world events but instead creates its own simulated reality, thereby blurring the boundaries between what is “real” and virtual. Hyperreality is acutely experienced in virtual reality. The technology of virtual reality uses software‐generated sensory images to replicate an environment (real or imaginary) with which the user is able to interact. Within this immersive environment the representation feels real, and prompts real phenomenological responses. Michael Heim defines virtual reality as “an event or entity that is real in effect but not in fact” (Heim 1993, pp. 108–109). Elizabeth Grosz talks about the need to make a distinction between the virtuality of the spatial framework and the phenomenological realism of the sensory experiences (Grosz 2001, p. 79). The thinner, less visible, and more intuitive interfaces on contemporary digital devices enhance this sense of the hyperreal because it becomes easier to be immersed. The encroachment of digital virtual spaces in the twenty‐first century makes it more difficult to separate the physical from the virtual, an idea explored earlier in the work of William J. Mitchell. Instead of viewing the virtual and physical as dichotomous, they should be conceived of simultaneously. Arguing from the built environment perspective, Emine Mine Thompson argues for the importance of considering the physical and virtual together within our everyday lives, in which the virtual intersects with the physical. She gives numerous examples of how physical spaces such as offices and hotel rooms have had to adapt to ensure that they are receptive to the needs of contemporary users in the digital telecommunications era She states how “information and telecommunication technologies are pushing the boundaries of real‐space with digitally enhanced virtual space that is accessible anywhere and located nowhere (Riewoldt 1997, p. 7)” (Thompson 2008, p. 2). Digital virtual spaces have invaded physical spaces perceptually in that they affect the user’s experience of the environment. In its inception cyberspace was treated as something that was out there, as an imaginary space that was distinct from physical space but that was enmeshed with it on occasion. The ubiquity of digital presence has altered how it is viewed within everyday life. One is not either in the physical world or in digital online spaces – offline or online – but frequently both simultaneously. The two domains have become seamless; they are not viewed separately but rather as coexisting and converging.5 Rightly or wrongly we use our a posteriori experiences of being in the physical world – and of embodiment – to shape our understanding of cyberspace. Certain laws of nature such as gravity, friction, and locomotion ground our experience of the physical world and while online we draw from our real‐world experience to inform our virtual selves. Given its dependence on real‐world

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space for its definition it has become inevitable that various ideological precepts such as “virtual property” and “virtual trespass” have been applied to cyberspace (Chandler and Munday 2011, p. 90). Equally, the manifold experiences and encounters online enrich life outside of the virtual plane. More generally the synchronous consideration of “real” and virtual online spaces acknowledges the social importance of shaping identity in virtual spaces, which for many who do not have the confidence or skills to approach people face to face gives them the opportunity to build public identities. The potential for online interaction gives mental and emotional freedom to people who experience certain challenges in their everyday lives and can be a “platform for social support” (Best and Butler 2015, p. 183).6 And, ironically, it allows some people to actually be authentic, and pursue options that they may have felt inhibited from doing in their “real” worlds. Viewing the two concurrently recognizes the significance of cyberspace in culture. Geraci’s reminder of the persistence of virtual worlds conveys their ontological importance: “Virtual worlds are not simply games that disappear at the flick of a switch; you cannot simply overturn the board and make the results disappear. These worlds remain even in the player’s absence or frustration. They are full of other players who help create the environment through their own goals and work” (Geraci 2014, p. 3). As an imaginary space cyberspace has the potential to reconfigure sociocultural norms. Posthumanists continue to exploit the human–machine amalgam as a way of expanding the boundaries of human identity. Feminist theorists, such as Donna Haraway, have exploited the potential to rethink patriarchal divisions between male and female identity, which Haraway uses as a way of making room for another third identity, thereby reinventing female spaces (Haraway 1991). Sadie Plant, a pioneer of cyberfeminism, wrote in the 1990s about the exciting possibilities that awaited women: After decades of ambivalence towards technology, many feminists are now finding a wealth of new opportunities, spaces and lines of thought amidst the new complexities of the “telecoms revolution.” The Internet promises women a network of lines on which to chatter, natter, work and play; virtuality brings a fluidity to identities which once had to be fixed; and multi‐media provides a new tactile environment in which women artists can find their space. (Plant 1996, p. 170)

3D Printing: from Pixel to Voxel Since the twentieth century designers have been turning to 3D design to promote their ideas to clients. It is ideal for objects in industrial and product design – from cars to kitchens – and enables the realistic visualization of concepts and designs in 3D interactive design environments. This is useful for clients because they are able to envisage a vivid picture of what they are being invited to commission. The 3D projection is also advantageous from a sales perspective because it enables the customization of design for individual



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needs. One of the latest technologies to make its mark on society, which has changed the face of manufacturing and design, is 3D printing, which has been used in a wide variety of sectors including the food and sports industries, sports equipment, household gadgetry, architecture, and medicine. Known in the trade as “additive manufacturing,” it has recently come to the attention of the public, but its roots are older than people may think. Carl Deckard and Joe Beaman invented the first selective laser sintering printer c. 1986 at the University of Texas (Lipson and Kurman 2013, p. 9). It has attracted interest in the last few years because the technology has now become available to small businesses and even households, whereas initially it was regarded as specialist equipment privy only to manufacturing companies and professional designers.7 In the chapter so far, virtual spaces, as digital spaces, are set up as alternative realities for communication, entertainment, and other purposes. Our experience is grounded in the empirical world, but, as commentators are showing, virtual spaces are increasing in their cultural significance; not simply because of the amount of time spent in them but because of what they can provide and even enhance. This led to the suggestion presented that they should be viewed in parallel with the physical, thereby thinking of the two realms in concert. We know that the physical facilitates the virtual, but within the context of the user experience the two are enmeshed. 3D printing is a reverse case of the usual pathway because here we have an instance of the virtual‐as‐the‐digital preceding the physical. A description of the mechanics of 3D printing is needed: 3D printers follow instructions that are fed to a computer in the form of a design file. Thereupon the 3D printer ejects or solidifies material (liquid, powder, etc.) in layers, allowing for solidification in time. This eventuates in the 3D form. This process involves the physical (object) being created from the virtual  – where the latter refers to both digital instructions and the literal non‐space (virtual space) in the 3D printer. This is different than erstwhile 3D modeling techniques, which developed representations of an object via software. Even in cases of computer‐simulated representations the result is virtual. 3D printing takes this a stage further by using the digital codes to produce a real object ex nihilo. Another noteworthy development seen in 3D printing is the manipulation of the physical, an observation that contrasts with the manipulation of the digital that we see in virtual worlds. The digital is able to manipulate physical form to a hitherto unprecedented extent, both in the mixture of material compounds and in the creation of seamless forms. As Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman elaborate: [m]aking objects in layers opens up the ability to physically output a broader range of digital concepts. If a shape’s design has precise internal hollows or interlocked parts, a 3D printer is the first output device that can realize such designs in the physical world. (Lipson and Kurman 2013, p. 12)

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3D printing is able to overcome traditional manufacturing in at least two respects. First, it can make objects of any shape, thereby avoiding the complex assembly of interlocked parts; second, it can combine materials, meaning that the material is superior in quality. The digital innovations of twenty‐first century design (computer‐aided design; CAD) are seen in many different media, including films, games, and animation, but what we have here is unprecedented in that digital technology is able to create novel objects “whose combined whole will be greater than the sum of its parts” (Lipson and Kurman 2013, p. 15).8 Lipson and Kurman give an excellent account of “the promise and peril of a machine that can make (almost) anything” and innumerate the possibilities of 3D printing in different spheres. They talk about actual and hypothetical situations, all of which convey the extent of enhancement. Here are some examples of “modest manufacturing miracles [that] are already taking place”: In England a technician scans the feet and ankles of Olympic sprinters and puts the data into a computer. The computer does a few quick calculations. The technician 3D prints new track shoes that are customized for each athlete’s unique body shape and weight, gait and tastes. On the other side of the world, NASA test‐drives a version of its Mars Rover in the Arizona desert. On board the Rover are several custom‐made 3D printed metal parts. Many of these parts have complicated shapes made of curves and inner hollows that could not have been manufactured by anything other than a 3D printer. In Japan, an expectant mother wants to create the ultimate commemoration of her first ultrasound. Her doctor edits her ultrasound image and 3D prints a precise, highly detailed replica of the fetus. The result, an avant‐garde 3D printed plastic tribute to the tiny fetus, encased for posterity in a block of hard transparent plastic. (Lipson and Kurman 2013, p. 7)

The future of 3D printing involves keeping abreast not only of technological advances and new materials but also of ethical issues about what should and should not be manufactured. Most people recognize the benefits to society of tissue and organ manufacture for patients who are in need, but the situation is different for procedures that involve cosmetic rather than medical concerns. There are also questions about the manufacture of illegal merchandise, such as drugs and firearms, that need to be considered.9 But the potential that digital coding has to transform manufacturing processes and generate bespoke physical objects that may have never been imagined before reveals not only the synergy between the physical and the digital but also how we have come full circle.

Conclusion Virtual space is a term of growing importance in today’s world and contemporary design. It was necessarily defined in contrast to the physical space–time domain that corresponds to the actual. It has applications in non‐digital and



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digital environments, where it refers to representations that are contrasted with the “real.” Within contemporary culture, however, with the crisis in boundaries between the real and the virtual the representation  –  the ­simulation  – ­displaces the real, the impact of which is seen in media forms. The simulation of reality is all we have, and these simulacra precede and determine our reality, which explains the popularity of virtual environments. Over the years the visualizations of cyberspace have become more detailed and enhanced, as have the possibilities of what we can actually do there. In contemporary culture we can live out parallel lives in cyberspace where we can shape our identity and lifestyles in whichever ways we choose. From a consumer/user perspective virtual spaces expand the options in different ­ spheres of life, including communication, leisure, healthcare, and the environment, which have had profound changes in many societies and culture on a global scale. The creation of virtual spaces has created new challenges for designers in the advancement of new materials, media, and techniques. From the point of efficacy the Internet has not only speeded up processes of storage, distribution, and communication but also altered social relations. In its inception the digital virtual was often configured in opposition to the real in which it was seen as a threat to the physical “real” world. Current literature betrays more accommodating sentiments that recognize the simultaneity of online and non‐online experiences and identities as legitimate. Elizabeth Grosz offers a compromise: the two realms are not necessarily seen as being in opposition but that the virtual is an expansion of the real. “The virtual poses no threat to the real because it is a mode of production and enhancement of the real: an augmentation, a supplementation, and a transformation of the real by and through its negotiation with virtuality” (Grosz 2001, p. 89). Lipson and Kurman’s perspective is prescient too and forecasts a return to the physical, but interestingly through, and not in spite of, the virtual. Referring to 3D printing and the bearing that it has on the creation of new materials and forms, virtual designs have the potential to expand the possibilities of materiality, conveying how “[t]he end of the 20th century was about information becoming digital. The 21st century is going to be about bringing the virtual world into closer alignment with the physical one” (Lipson and Kurman 2013, p. 13).

Notes 1 This view was held at least prior to relativistic physics, in which space and time are considered as aspects of a single space–time manifold. 2 Boddy also views the separation of spaces in terms of a class agenda (1992). 3 The sociological concept of “copresence” has been used within the context of contact in digital media, “in the sense of being together with other people in a remote physical environment … or the sense of being together with other people in a technology‐generated environment” (Zhao 2003, p. 445).

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4 Walter Benjamin discusses how the era of mass production led to the eradication of the aura (see Benjamin 2008). 5 A similar situation arises for surveillance in many cultures, which is no longer regarded as being “out there” but has encroached upon people’s lives and physical spaces (see Lyon 1994). 6 Best and Butler (2015) examine the use of Second Life for people with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). 7 The company MakerBot sells consumer‐led 3D printers (Lipson and Kurman 2013, p. 52). 8 Lipson and Kurman also discuss how in the future 3D printers will be able to “blend raw materials in new ways [that] will witness the emergence of entirely new classes of materials” (Lipson and Kurman 2013, p. 265). 9 The ramifications on intellectual property rights, raised by Lipson and Kurman, need to be considered.

References Anderson, C.A. and Bushman, B.J. (2001). Effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal and prosocial behavior: a meta‐analytic review of the scientific literature. Psychological Science 12 (5): 353–359. Anderson, C.A. and Dill, K.E. (2000). Video games and aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavior in the laboratory and in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78: 772–790. Armitage, J. (ed.) (2000). Virilio: From Modernism to Hypermodernism and Beyond. London: SAGE Publications Inc. Armitage, J. (ed.) (2013). The Virilio Dictionary. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Aurigi, A. and De Cindio, F. (eds.) (2008). Augmented Urban Spaces: Articulating the Physical and Electronic City. Farnham: Ashgate. Bainbridge, W.S. (2013). EGods: Faith Versus Fantasy in Computer Gaming. New York: Oxford University Press. Baudrillard, J. (1993). Symbolic Exchange and Death. London: SAGE. Benedikt, M. (1991). Cyberspace: some proposals. In: Cyberspace: First Steps (ed. M. Sorkin), 119–224. Cambridge: MIT Press. Benjamin, W. (2008 [1936]). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, (trans. J. A. Underwood). London: Penguin. Best, K. and Butler, S. (2015). Virtual space: creating a place for social support in second life. Space and Culture 18 (2): 183–197. Boddy, T. (1992). Underground and overhead: building the analogous city. In: Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space (ed. M. Sorkin), 123–153. New York: Hill and Wang. Bradley, D. (1995). Situating cyberspace. Public 11: 9–19.



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Campbell, H.A. (ed.) (2013). Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds. New York: Routledge. Chandler, D. and Munday, R. (2011). Oxford Dictionary of Media and Communication. New York: Oxford University Press. Crang, M., Crang, P., and May, J. (1999). Introduction. In: Virtual Geographies: Bodies, Space and Relation (eds. M. Crang, P. Crang, and J. May), 1–20. London: Routledge. Descartes, R. (1996 [1641]). Meditations on First Philosophy, (trans. J. Cottingham). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dill, K.E. and Dill, J.C. (1998). Video game violence: a review of the empirical literature. Aggressive and Violent Behavior 3 (4): 407–428. Ettlinger, O. (2008). The Architecture of Virtual Space. Ljubljana: University of Ljubljana. Fleming, J., Honour, H., and Pevsner, N. (1998). The Penguin Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. London: Penguin. Gane, N. and Beer, D. (2008). New Media: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Berg. Geraci, R.M. (2014). Virtually Sacred: Myth and Meaning in World of Warcraft and Second Life. New York: Oxford University Press. Gibson, W. (1984). Neuromancer. London: Grafton. Grosz, E. (2001). Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. Heim, M. (1993). The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality. New York: Oxford University Press. Hine, C. (2015). Ethnography for the Internet: Embedded, Embodied and Everyday. London: Bloomsbury. Horan, T. (2000). Digital Places: Building our City of Bits. Washington, DC: Urban Land Institute. Kellerman, A. (2016). Geographic Interpretations of the Internet. Switzerland: Springer. Kneale, J. (1999). The virtual realities of technology and fiction: reading William Gibson’s cyberspace. In: Virtual Geographies: Bodies, space and relation (eds. M. Crang, P. Crang, and J. May), 205–221. London: Routledge. Light, J.S. (1999). From city space to cyberspace. In: Virtual Geographies: Bodies, Space and Relation (eds. M. Crang, P. Crang, and J. May), 109–130. London: Routledge. Lipson, H. and Kurman, M. (2013). Fabricated: The New World. Indianapolis, IN: John Wiley & Sons. Inc. Lyon, D. (1994). The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society – Computers and Social Control in Context. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Mitchell, W.J. (1995a). City of Bits: Place, and the Infobahn. Cambridge: MIT Press.

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Mitchell, W.J. (1995b). Recombinant architecture. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 4 (3): 223–253. Page, S. and Phillips, B. (2003). Urban design as editing. Mimeo 18. Plant, S. (1996). On the matrix: cyberfeminist simulations. In: Cultures of Internet: Virtual Spaces, Real Histories, Living Bodies (ed. R. Shields), 170–183. London: SAGE Publications. Plato (2007). The Republic, (trans D. Lee). London: Penguin Books. Poster, M. (1996). The Second Media Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Riewoldt, O. (1997). Intelligent Spaces: Architecture for the Information Age. London: Laurence King Publishers. Scruton, R. (2010). Hiding behind the screen. The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society 28 (Summer): 48–60. Accessed 29.08.17 http://www. thenewatlantis.com/publications/hiding‐behind‐the‐screen. Thompson, E.M. (2008). Is today’s architecture about real space, virtual space, or what? Northumbria Built and Virtual Environment Working Paper Series 1 (2): 1–8. Turkle, S. (1999). What are we thinking about when we are thinking about computers? In: The Science Studies Reader (ed. M. Biagioli), 543–552. New York: Routledge. Turkle, S. (2011). Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books. Zhao, S. (2003). Toward a taxonomy of copresence. Presence 12 (5): 445–455.

8

Interior Atmosphere Lois Weinthal

Atmosphere as the Intersection of Planetary and Interior It is astonishing to consider that one word, atmosphere, can apply to two vastly different scales: one at the intimate realm of the architectural interior, the other at the larger scale of the planetary. Not only is it a scalar change, but also the way in which the word is defined at each of these scales differs. Atmosphere, in reference to the planetary, relies upon measurable, scientific data, as shown by centuries of study in astronomy, meteorology, and physics. The results have yielded evidence that can be measured, and, if argued, even further data is required to contradict the proven points. Yet, when we turn to the scale of interior design and architecture, atmosphere is often defined from an emotional description, an intuitive response that utilizes copious amounts of adjectives, often without data to support these first impressions and these informal and casual observations. A subtext to the difference between meteorology and inte­ rior is that one is seen as more rigorous and methodical, while the other is lackadaisical; however, I would argue that atmosphere in the context of interior design and architecture has been misinterpreted and aligned with subjective observations taking away from measurement that affects the interior, such as light, materials, air, and gravity. After all, these are the same elements that affect the planetary scale, which are also subject to novice descriptions through moody adjectives.

A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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The interior may be at the local realm of this greater macrocosm, but it is where we spend most of our time. Engineers who study indoor air quality note that we spend over 90% of our time indoors (Klepeis et al. 2001). From a human­ ities perspective, the significance of the interior acts as a base for the French philosopher Georges Perec in his writings on the quotidian and the domestic realm in Species of Spaces and other Pieces, in which he focuses on the domestic activities over the course of the day and maps these in relation to time and space (Perec and Sturrock 2008). What we do on the interior at the local level is also central to the study of how it affects the greater meteorological atmosphere through issues surrounding sustainability and energy consumption. This is made evident by the materials selected for the interior, where the lifespan of a project can be six months or five years, or the orientation of a structure to a site that allows users to maximize natural light as a means to reduce energy consumption. Through these scalar and disciplinary lenses, the design of interior spaces comes forward as a critical and meaningful place. Interior designers and architects coa­ lesce this information spanning the scientific, perceptual, and ethical in order to shape interior space. At the same time, the interior is both permanent and tem­ porary and is reflected in built projects that respond to and are subject to this duality, a default condition of being atmospheric. The works referenced throughout this chapter start with projects that are abstract and explore fundamental qualities of the interior where light and air are dominant attributes. The works continue to show the evolution of these elements as they migrate towards built examples that shed the theatrical and respond to users’ needs. Accompanying this migration are critiques of the usage of the word atmosphere across disciplines and levels of rigor that accom­ pany it. As a start, the two scales – the planetary and interior – are drawn together in the same context as in the classic film The Wizard of Oz (Fleming 1939), where outside and inside merge into one atmospheric tornado. The transition from the outside measurable world to Dorothy’s dream‐like state takes place when she is knocked unconscious and thrust into the dream of her house being caught up in the whirling eye of the tornado. The film’s director used the view from inside looking out to establish an impossible view where Dorothy’s house is riding the wave of the tornado, and objects shift inside, implying the house is bouncing on top of the cyclone. At the same time, Dorothy sees familiar friendly and unfriendly characters on the outside gliding past her window. As Dorothy enters her dream‐like state, she understands the rationale of a tor­ nado, but is literally caught up in the disbelief of visions outside her window. The outside condition can be explained by science, but the view from inside to outside is thrown into disarray. It is at this moment that the director supersedes the laws of physics and shapes the tornado to support the dream‐like state of Dorothy’s vision. When analyzed, the tornado can be understood through scientific reasoning of weather‐related conditions that are measurable. In contrast, the interior is



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established as an atmospheric “mood” that dispels measurement as a means of supporting the dream‐like state. A question that emerges is why does the term lend itself to two vastly different scales that have no shared accountability in the form of measurement, but, ironically, describe conditions for both inside and outside? How can one usage of atmosphere be grounded in science, measure, and precision, making it highly objective and justifiable, whereas another usage, defined by subjective language, evokes personal emotion and lacks the same degree of justification? If the two usages of atmosphere were placed at opposite ends of a sliding scale, in which meteorological measurement is at one end and interior moods and emotions at the other, the intervals along the way would see the shedding of scientific research at one end and flowery language at the other, thereby allowing the two scales to move closer to one another. In doing so, precision shifts to interpretation, and vice versa. This is what allows for small talk about the weather, such as “looks like it’s going to rain today” or “there’s a chill in the air,” because we know that rain and chill can be gauged on scales of humid­ ity and temperature, thereby retaining a sense of objectiveness and measure­ ment to support the casual observer. In contrast, when a room is described as “calming” or “cozy,” these are wildly open for interpretation until the senses are interrogated.

Mist, Vapor, Gas If a contemporary setting could reposition Dorothy’s dream‐like state into this balance between atmospheric measurement and subjective mood, one could point to the Blur Building by Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS + R). By understand­ ing the properties of water, atmosphere, and site, DS + R constructed a transi­ tional building that bridged the dual use of the term atmospheric. Through an understanding of water and its properties, such as the transition of liquid to mist, they were able to construct a building that changed the state of water so visitors experienced an environment that was both inside and outside, dream‐ like yet constructed, and filled with mist (DS + R 2018) (Figure 8.1). There is no denying that the experience of moving through vapor and mist is magical. To achieve this, there was no man behind the curtain like there was in The Wizard of Oz; instead, measurement, scale, and knowledge of mechanical sys­ tems helped produce construction documents, which then allowed emotional responses to follow. Adding to the magical outcome is the understanding that mist, as a spatial experience, is not practical on an everyday level since we do not really walk around in raincoats and our workplace settings are not condu­ cive to these types of conditions. It is a timed event, one that has expiration to it, like the Blur Building had for six months during the 2002 Swiss Expo. An example that removes the raincoat and mist and takes one step closer to an atmospheric experience inside can be found in Anthony McCall’s 1973 film

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Figure 8.1  Blur Building illuminated at night. Photo by Beat Widmer. Image courtesy of Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

Line Describing a Cone. McCall’s film relies upon a dark room where air parti­ cles are made evident through a fog machine, much like the occurrence of see­ ing dust particles highlighted by sunlight. The film is designed such that, over the course of 30 minutes, a projected point of light turns into a line drawing a circle, resulting in a spatial cone of light between the projector and screen. By the end of the film, viewers can walk around and through the geometric cone made visible by light through the aid of a fog machine. This moves us closer to the two ends of the atmospheric sliding‐scale meeting (rationale and wonder), but still relies upon special effects to get there. Mist, vapor, gas … these are all words used in the scientific definition of atmosphere. Outside of the scientific realm, they embody wonder since we can­ not grasp these elements in the way we can a static piece of wood. They change more quickly in ways that are unpredictable, leaving us to reflect upon where and what they were. If we consider these elements of wonder in the design process, they are naturally occurring and often followed by emotive responses. The same holds true for designing with light, materials, and gravity for interior design and architecture, so that when well orchestrated they also follow with emotive responses. The design process comes first and shapes these elements into conditions informed by measurement and rationale, such as orienting a design to complement a lighting scenario or the benefits of a site. This should not be confused with an emotional description, which has found its way falsely at the start of the design process rather than at the end as a reflection on the



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experience. When designers dictate up front an emotional term that defines their design, such as “warm,” “inspiring,” or “calming,” it truncates the design process and forfeits critical steps in the design process that can generate unex­ pected outcomes while simultaneously gaining knowledge. These emotions can still be obtained, but the terminology will always be subjective to an indi­ vidual and will lose credibility when placed at the start. In these projects, like the tornado in Dorothy’s state of Kansas, the exterior condition causing the tornado can be scientifically understood through data, yet the interior condition – the view from inside to outside in Dorothy’s dream‐ like state – is understood as the psychological, subjective, and emotional. This is where a core issue lies in understanding the term atmosphere in the context of interiors, where designers take different starting positions for design strate­ gies. Some rely upon evidence‐based design, while others rely upon the subjec­ tive and emotional. I will confess that I am skeptical of the subjective and emotional since it forgoes rationale. This leaves us at a crossroads of two very different ways in which atmosphere is used, and the crossroads of subjective and objective. Because of my skepticism, it is my role to provide examples that rein­ force a rigorous design process that builds upon knowledge rather than emo­ tion. Knowledge helps to answer the question of why design decisions are made and provides a reason, whereas design processes that rely upon the emo­ tional and subjective fall away from a rational answer. Meteorology and the science of understanding atmosphere cannot move forward without objective data, whereas interior design has flexibility. Some level of fact is necessary in order to provide interior spaces that support health, safety, and welfare for users, which are then interpreted into construction doc­ uments and specifications. This architectural language is measurable and legal, but still allows for flexibility in the design process. This latter part – flexibility in the design process – is what typically gets called atmospheric but without the same level of science as meteorology. When taking the novice out of the pic­ ture, atmosphere, in the meteorological sense, does not get misinterpreted with emotional description, yet atmosphere in the interior does. The use of emo­ tional terms, symbiotic with flowery language, is a thorn in the side of the discipline of interiors as designers find themselves in different camps spanning levels of rigor. This chapter seeks to reposition the word atmosphere, and its subsequent use of emotion, in the design process. By removing the subjective from the start, it sets up the design process for accountability. The result is not meant to eliminate the whimsical descriptions that accompany successful inte­ riors, but, rather, to substantiate the design process at the start so that whimsi­ cal responses can follow. If the tone of this chapter moves in and out of a heavy‐handed critique of emotive, it is because there are an infinite number of ways in which to start a design process that opens up new paths that simultaneously advance the knowl­ edge of designers. This is meant to clear up a misguided use of emotive to show that it is not a rigorous path to design, but, rather, a post‐design reflection, and

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interior architects and designers should be held up to a higher bar than design­ ing by feeling.

Etymological Migration In order to understand how atmosphere found its way into describing spatial conditions, it is important to acknowledge the original meaning to account for the etymological migration to the interior. The origin of the word atmosphere has its roots in Latin and Greek, and atmosphere has been used in the context of science since the 1600s to describe elements such as vapor, mist, and air, specifically in the context of meteorology (Merriam‐Webster Online Dictionary 2018). It is not surprising that atmosphere has been used in this context much longer than it has been used for describing interiors. After all, interiors is a young discipline, having evolved into a recognized profession only in the last century – and this is still debatable. But one can see how the word found its way into the interior. Vapor, mist, and air are ephemeral, fleeting, and magical, and designers strive to translate these qualities into man‐made environments. At some point, interiors co‐opted the word but did not use it in its original application, in which results were garnered through measurements made by tools and instruments. Rather, its usage benefitted from the poetic descriptions that summarized the measurements of scientific results. The poetic became a descriptive summary of scientific results, and in some design processes the designer moved the act of summarizing to the start of a project, before meas­ urements had been obtained. By doing so, the description of interiors snow­ balled into a flurry of adjectives that could be believable but not accountable since there was no consequence in doing so. Once a designer or, in many cases, a design student is pressed to define how these words inform a design process, the argument falls apart. The defense of poetic language, such as “beautiful,” “warm,” and “enlightening,” to describe the start of a design process turns into an inquisition in which the question of why design decisions were made goes without unsubstantiated proof until it becomes apparent that there is no one definition that holds true objectivity like measurement. This is not to say that interior architecture and design should be void of adjectives, but, rather, a rigorous design process substantiates initial ideas, and then the poetic termi­ nology described with emotional terms is earned at the end. Returning to the fundamental understanding of atmosphere, it applies to planetary air, water, and gases. In The Earth’s Atmosphere: Its Physics and Dynamics, Kshudiram Saha provides an understanding of the Earth’s atmos­ phere by summarizing it as a “gaseous envelope,” further understood by the composition and proportion of elements. This phrase, the “gaseous envelope,” is an example of a summary after the facts are known. The use of the term “envelope” is common language for interiors since it spans the poetic but also technical terms when designers address the layers that span interior and



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exterior, usually found in building facades. Saha moves onto the equally impor­ tant role of water and its phase changes that take multiple forms found in evaporation, condensation, vapor, clouds, rain, and ice, all examples that we understand in our Earth’s atmosphere (Saha 2008, p. 10). Color and light also enter the description as some gases are identified with color, such as nitrogen, which gives planet Earth its blue sky. As soon as these conditions – color and light – are further investigated, a wealth of knowledge comes to the foreground that gives shape to the built environment using scientific concepts. It allows for the poetic and flowery language to be replaced by substantiated phenomena and applied to a design process that enriches the experience of the built envi­ ronment. The tools themselves become equally important; otherwise, how would meteorologists have extended their knowledge without the invention of telescopes and radars. Proof requires tools in order to measure, and the range of tools is expansive depending upon what is being measured.

Perception The intent of this chapter is not to linger in the discipline of meteorology, but to recalibrate the use of the term atmosphere for interiors. Before determining what is atmospheric, the act of perception must come first. The study of per­ ception used by interior architects and designers can be found in reference to psychology and phenomenology. Although distinct disciplines, they bring accountability to perception and have crossover with one another, resulting in multiple streams of study that span the subjective to the objective. The act of perception legitimized its place in interior design when the North American academic body the Council for Interior Design Accreditation (CIDA) listed a set of topics based in psychology as standards to be taught in interior design programs. In the most recent version of these standards, these topics are taught in the context of human‐centered design, in which emphasis is placed on understanding the principles of psychology that affect the way we perceive the built environment and its impact on “human experience, behavior and performance,” followed by the expectation that students will “analyze and syn­ thesize human perception and behavior patterns to inform design solutions” (CIDA 2018). The outcome is meant to develop a body of knowledge derived from data, which cannot be replaced by subjective emotions. The human‐centered perspective found in psychology finds its way into phe­ nomenology at various points in literature, but phenomenology seeks to include an understanding of the larger world outside of the body. There are many facets to the study of phenomenology that address the meaning things have in our experience, notably, the significance of objects, events, tools, the flow of time, the self, and others, as these things arise and are experienced in our “life‐world.” (Smith 2016)

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This quote applies directly to one’s experience of the interior and identifies everyday activities that can be measured, which, in turn, can contribute to the shaping of interiors. The study of phenomenology has a history of writings that span subjective experience to empirical studies, and by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, David Woodruff Smith points out that “phenomena are the starting points in building knowledge, especially science. Accordingly, in a familiar and still current sense, phenomena are whatever we observe (perceive) and seek to explain” (Smith 2016). This last part – “seek to explain” – ­strengthens the path of accountability and knowledge. Phenomenology is important to the role of perception on the interior, it encompasses a way of thinking about our interaction with time, space, and objects that contribute to an atmosphere. Together, psychology and phenomenology provide lenses for measuring and gauging elements, whether visible to the eye or not.1 Psychology and phenomenology are topics much greater on their own, so much so that this chapter cannot provide an overview since the topics are too expansive. Instead, including them here is meant to acknowledge that different forms of perception contribute to the design process, which helps to validate observations, which, in turn, have found their way into architectural writings. Perception and atmosphere are drawn together in the same writings that include measurement, research, and tools in a series of lectures later published as Atmospheres by Peter Zumthor. In his lectures, Zumthor speaks about how “We perceive atmosphere through our emotional sensibility – a form of perception …” (Zumthor 2006, p. 13). This is one example in which atmos­ phere comes first and perception follows. In order to generate the atmospheric environment, Zumthor returns to fundamental elements in creating architec­ ture where “Processes and interests, instruments and tools are all part and parcel of my work” (Zumthor 2006, p. 21). Together, these elements have accountability and measurement. The starting points are concrete ideas and practices that result in poetic language. Zumthor guides readers through nine sections that contribute to his design process, with the fifth entitled “Surrounding objects.” In this section, he points out the atmospheric condition of the personalization of interiors (Zumthor 2006, p. 35). In one example, he shares with the audience his reflection of two domestic interiors filled with objects, books, and instruments, and comments that these types of views are important since they “help me to imagine the future of rooms in a house I’m building, to imagine them actually in use” (Zumthor 2006, p. 39). This comment differentiates two conditions, pre‐ and post‐occupancy, where pre‐occupancy includes design and construction and is followed by post‐occupancy, which allows personalization and, subsequently, an atmospheric condition to be rendered. Personal effects, such as objects, books, and instruments, require measured space in order to house them in the interior. This example reinforces the notion that an emotional response to an atmospheric condition is one that takes place after design and ­construction – rather than from the onset of the design process. In the outcome, one can



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look at Zumthor’s work and see that process, precision, and material know­ ledge are fundamental to the results that inherently form an atmospheric condition. A related publication that approaches the topic of atmosphere is Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture, co‐authored by Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Alberto Perez‐Gomez. The authors identify significant topics that contribute to the shaping of atmospheric conditions and place these topics under the heading of “Phenomenal zones.” A selection of these zones include color, light and shadow, time duration and perception, water, sound, and site circumstance – all of which span the planetary to the interior because they are timeless and scale‐less (Holl et al. 1994). Taken from this list, color is often considered to give atmosphere to the inte­ rior. In their discussion of color, Holl et al. (1994) make the argument that color is not a solitary element but that it changes in relationship to light, mate­ rials, and the context in which it is viewed. When these elements are discussed at the scale of the planetary and interior, the language around them reveals contrasting rationales when speaking about color. At the scale of the planetary, color is defined through measurement in the form of light waves and spectra. At the scale of the interior, this measurable data gets translated into perceptions of hot, warm, and cold as a summary of the scientific language, and has a ten­ dency to fall further out of measurement and stray into associations with the emotional. Holl et al. (1994) do not segue into the subjective emotional per­ ceptions; instead, they make an argument for understanding the foundations of color theory in relationship to the context in which it is placed, such as qualities of natural light that can be tracked as it changes throughout the year, which, in turn, affects the perception of the color spectrum. They stay away from the emotional interpretation of color in order to bridge the scientific to the phe­ nomenal. In examples of his work, Steven Holl tests these variables through architectural section drawings to reveal how light can bounce off hidden painted surfaces as a strategy for indirectly drawing color into the interior. As light conditions change, the intensity of the color quality changes over the course of the day and seasons. The result is the essence of color rather than the immediacy of color. The integration of color into the built realm reinforces its interaction with light and materials to form a sensory experience, in which vision plays a pri­ mary role. Juhani Pallasmaa redirects the focus to the sense of touch in rela­ tionship to materials and their ability to age and weather over time. At an environmental scale the process of patina emerges as materials are exposed to air and weather conditions, and at an intimate scale materials patina over time by the repetitive use of touch by occupants. At both these scales, Pallasmaa references temperature as a common form of measurement, where the skin of a building captures heat from the sun, while the skin of the body gauges the temperature of materials through touch. In his quote “The skin traces spaces of temperature with unerring precision…”, both the skin of a building and the

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skin of the body are drawn together through temperature and touch (Holl et al. 1994, p. 33). Madalina Diaconu expands upon the role of patina in the context of atmos­ phere by observing how a material’s ability to patina “emerges from inside of it, indicating therefore an imminent dynamics of the matter” (Diaconu 2006, p. 132). Materials that are fabricated with less mechanical production acquire a complementary patina from touch and weather, revealing the dynamic inner matter that speaks to a material’s evolution. Diaconu continues with Upon closer inspection, patina can also be defined as the visible surface of a tem­ poral depth,2 giving a good example for the manner in which time itself can be converted into an aesthetic agent. (Diaconu 2006, p. 132)

The relationship between time and patina draws out a desired aesthetic that tran­ sitions a material into having added value because the owner now “buys time” (Diaconu 2006, p. 132). By understanding material properties, designers can integrate elements such as light, temperature, and patina that change over time and play a role in the design processes that span the planetary to the body. In an additional publication, a special issue of Architectural Design: Interior Atmosphere, edited by Julieanna Preston, essays highlight a collection of projects in which materials, color, light, and air are recurring themes. The presence of air currents, previously mentioned in The Wizard of Oz and Line Describing a Cone, surface again in one essay reflecting the everyday where windows and mechanical systems move air. Through experiments and documentation, Malte Wagenfeld mapped air currents on the interior as a means of understanding patterns of air­ flow. These studies produced diagrams and patterns, which he summarized: As a result, I no longer just feel or imagine such subtle traces: I now have the begin­ nings of a visual grammar with which to envisage air … as well as the building blocks for a vocabulary with which to describe such phenomena. (Wagenfeld 2008, p. 25)

Wagenfeld does not leave this data in the realm of the theatrical; instead, he documents this knowledge to bring to the design of programmed spaces such as an office environment. A diverse field of researchers who study the indoor environment from a sci­ entific perspective support the study of air and its effect on the interior. There are scientific journals devoted to this research, including Indoor Air, Building and Environment, and Indoor and Built Environment. To the outside observer, the indoor atmosphere seems scientifically the same as the outdoor atmos­ phere: there is no visual difference between the air and there is nothing magical about the boundaries of the interior that change the air. However, the science of the indoor environment is notably different from the outdoor environment for several technical reasons: there are many more fabricated surfaces indoors, the flow of air is generally smaller and governed more by the construction and



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operation of the building, rather than just by meteorology, and there is a thou­ sand times less light and no rain inside (Nazaroff et  al. 2003). Even more importantly, the interior exists through its interactions with occupants. The mass of Earth’s atmosphere is about 5 exatonnes (5 × 1018 kg), approximately 0.1% of that is the air in urban atmospheres, and 0.0001% of that is the air in buildings (Nazaroff et al. 2003). However, because we spend 90% of our time in indoor environments (Klepeis et al. 2001), we breathe that 0.0001% of the air at a much higher rate and it has a profound influence on our perception of the indoor environment, as well as our health. When the interior is approached from the scientific perspective, the language often shifts to one that describes mass, air, and energy flows, concentrations of air constituents, and sources and sinks for contaminants (Siegel 2011). There are a variety of ways that scientists query the indoor environment, including measurements of air properties and contaminant concentrations, computer simulations, laboratory experiments on interior components or physical mod­ els, and by measuring the physical and psychological response of occupants in a real or simulated environment. The science of the interior includes language that describes the impact of the environment on the occupant and that addresses psychological perceptions, irritants, odors, and a variety of health effects. These impacts are influenced by both the nature of the interior and the occupant. The same environment will be perceived very differently by different occupants, but the measurable data provides a common base through which to view the results. In turn, this data provides interior designers and architects with greater knowl­ edge about the understanding of air – even less visible than mist – on the inte­ rior and moves closer to bridging the measurable scale found at the planetary realm to the microscale of the interior. This collection of writings, framed under the umbrella of atmosphere, estab­ lishes the interior as a practice that utilizes objective information, whether it be measurement, materials, precision, or tools at the start of a design process resulting in atmospheric conditions and, subsequently, producing emotional responses at the end.

Shaping Atmosphere The examples at the start of this chapter such as Line Describing a Cone and the Blur Building fall into the realm of the abstract and theatrical because of the use of water, vapor, and mist, making them non‐conducive to the functional needs of interior design. These conditions are fleeting and ungraspable, whether at the scale of art installation or at the scale of meteorological. In the examples that followed, where atmosphere was brought into architectural writings, such as those by Zumthor, they began to align with the general attributes of atmos­ pheric conditions as defined by meteorology  –  light, materials, and gravity. These too are fleeting and change with time, especially in the interior, where

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elements are more difficult to predict because of the changing nature by which we occupy interiors. The interior relies upon the static nature of architecture as a base upon which temporary elements are located. These can be furniture, the movement of a door swing, or the decision by an occupant to open or close a window for comfort. The point of connection between the static and fleeting can be grounded in measured drawing, thereby acting as the hinge point between the measured and the poetic. The move away from installation and into functional examples can be found in the works of Tom Kundig and his office Olson Kundig. The practice places emphasis on light, materials, and gravity, with strategies that exaggerate these properties when engaged by a user. In one of Kundig’s seminal projects, Studio House, the mundane becomes extraordinary in the design of a kitchen island. The passive kitchen island with countertop and underneath storage is animated when put into use. Traces of action, such as the arc made by opening a cabinet door, are inscribed on the floor with a complementary relationship of materials and hardware. A material threshold of concrete floor with a cast metal arc makes visible the arc of the door swing and the dynamic act of opening and closing. The design requires knowledge of material properties, precision, and the act of cast­ ing as one material ends and another begins. As a result, details are thought through at the start rather than applied as an after‐thought (Figure 8.2).

Figure 8.2  The kitchen island at the Tom Kundig‐designed Studio House in Seattle, WA, USA, is a collaboration between Tom Kundig and Gulassa Metalworks along with another subcontractor who produced the cast‐concrete top and rolling doors. The larger metal surfaces and cast‐in‐floor rolling tracks are patinated steel, while the hardware and wheels are cast bronze. Photo: © Paul Warchol. Image courtesy of Olson Kundig. Reproduced with permission.



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Building upon elements that contribute to an atmosphere, Kundig articu­ lates artificial and natural light. In The Brain Studio, the gesture of moving a reading light closer to oneself is animated through a motorized pulley system that allows lights to be raised and lowered as needed, thereby acting as a gauge of events throughout the day. As night draws closer, the light moves closer to the occupant for reading. In another project, Chicken Point Cabin, interior and exterior speak to one another through a wall‐sized window that capitalizes on natural light with a view out to a landscape with a lake. The exaggerated window is opened with a hand‐cranked mechanical system that pivots the entire window‐wall open. The scale and mechanics of the window transform the mundane into the extraordinary, recalling the dream‐like state during the tornado that Dorothy views out of her house in The Wizard of Oz. Hints of these mechanical systems are found in earlier works, such as the hand‐operated window system that provides ventilation in Maison de Verre by Pierre Chareau or the material thresholds of old and new, concrete and metal, found in works by Carlo Scarpa. Like Scarpa’s drawings, Kundig’s drawings are grounded in construction documents, but animated by overlapping sketches that express the dynamic nature of the interior as elements that open and close, pivot and rotate, making visible the anticipated use by occupants. The window provides another opportunity for developing an atmospheric condition. Curtains help mediate light and temperature, and in a research pro­ ject Kennedy Violich Architecture (KVA) transformed the role of the curtain to be more active than passive. In a collaborative project commissioned by the Vitra Design Museum, in Weil am Rhein, Germany, KVA worked with engi­ neers to develop a prefabricated structure called the Soft House. Emphasis was placed on the flexible and adjustable roles of the domestic curtain that could change according to a user’s needs. Using the curtain as a foundation, and working with a collaborative team, KVA integrated organic photovoltaic nano­ technology into a textile to harvest sunlight to independently produce energy outside of a connected grid. Energy was returned to the house through this altered textile that “transforms the household curtain into a set of energy har­ vesting and light emitting textiles that power solid state lighting and portable work tools such as laptops, digital cameras, etc.” (Kennedy and Violich 2008). Where curtains are typically one of the last elements to be installed, this textile transformation took on a primary role and dictated the design parameters of the prefabricated house so that the curtain could benefit from its orientation on a site. The path to customizing the curtain to the site included the use of parametric design to optimize the architectural structure as a container for the curtain, which, in turn, maximized the curtain’s performance. In this context, the curtain took on a new approach to addressing atmosphere (Figure 8.3). In 2013, an iteration of the Soft House left behind the single‐family residence in order to increase the functionality of the curtain for a multifamily residence in Hamburg, Germany. The parametric designed structure gave way to a pro­ grammable ribbon system that maximized the textile surface in relationship to

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Figure 8.3  Responsive interior curtain for Soft House, 2008. Source: Soft House, Kennedy and Violich Architecture. Image courtesy of Kennedy and Violich Architecture.

the sun with the ability to twist and rotate (Gerfen 2014). In both versions, the goal to capture solar energy and utilize it independent of a municipal energy grid was the design problem put forward; the answer resulted in the physical manifestation of curtains that respond to different sites, bringing a new layer of meaning to the role of curtains.

Afterthoughts Curtains, doors, and light fixtures all have the potential to be afterthoughts since they are typically the last to be installed. At the same time, they have the greatest potential to provide atmosphere. The projects referenced above span low technology to high technology as examples that remove common elements from the mundane and ordinary, and are translated into the context of the unexpected and wonder. The path to achieving this cannot be done without building upon a body of knowledge that utilizes a critical approach in order to produce poetic descriptions. Design strategies, along with the role of perception, reveal opportunities for variables in the built environment to change, thereby creating a different form of animation, such as light moving across a brise‐soleil over the course of the day. When moving into the interior, the atmospheric is further animated.



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It accounts for the way light alters the interior, but also the way in which a person enters a room and chooses to sit by a window, engage with the scale of a door, and the touch of a door handle. This chapter seeks to task those work­ ing in interiors to make them accountable and rigorous through objective design strategies rather than relying upon the subjective emotional state at the start. In the end, one can design however one chooses, but the utilization and implementation of knowledge that is accountable makes a design more rele­ vant to its purpose. Atmosphere spans planetary to interior, and in both of these scales light, materials, air, and gravity offer unlimited potential.

Notes 1 It is important to note that, while CIDA recognizes psychology as a topic to be covered in the list of accreditation standards, the counterbalance of phenome­ nology is not recognized, thereby creating an imbalance in education as seen through the lens of CIDA. Phenomenology has earned a place in architectural discourse and, by extension, should be integrated into the accreditation lan­ guage of interiors. 2 See “la surface d’une profondeur” as the definition of the visible in Maurice Merleau‐Ponty Le Visible et l’Invisible, suivi de notes de travail (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), p. 180.

References Council for Interior Design Accreditation (CIDA) (2018). Professional Standards 2018: Standard 7. Human‐Centered Design. https://accredit‐id.org/wp‐ content/uploads/2018/01/Professional‐Standards‐2018_Final.pdf (accessed August 26, 2018). Diaconu, M. (2006). Patina – atmosphere – aroma: towards an aesthetics of fine differences. In: Logos of Phenomenology and Phenomenology of the Logos. Book 5. The Creative Logos: Aesthetics Ciphering in Fine Arts, Literature and Aesthetics, vol. 92 (ed. A.‐T. Tymieniecka), 131–148. Springer. Gerfen, K. (2014). Soft house. Architect 103 (7): 99–103. Holl, S., Pallasmaa, J., and Pérez‐Gomez, A. (1994). Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture. A + U Publishing Co. Ltd. Kennedy, S. and Violich, F. (2008). http://www.kvarch.net/projects/74 (accessed 15 January 2018). Klepeis, N.E., Nelson, W.C., Ott, W.R. et al. (2001). The national human activity pat­ tern survey (NHAPS): a resource for assessing exposure to environmental pollutants. Journal of Exposure Analysis and Environmental Epidemiology 11 (3): 231–252. McCall, A. (1973). Line Describing a Cone. Film, 16 mm, projection, 30 minutes, filmed in New York City.

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Merriam‐Webster Online Dictionary (2018). Atmosphere. https://www.merriam‐ webster.com/dictionary/atmosphere (accessed 16 January 2018). Nazaroff, W.W., Weschler, C.J., and Corsi, R.L. (2003). Indoor air chemistry and physics. Atmospheric Environment 37 (39): 5451–5453. Perec, G. and Sturrock, J. (2008). Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, Rev. edn. Penguin Books. Saha, K. (2008). The Earth’s Atmosphere: Its Physics and Dynamics. Berlin: Springer. Siegel, J. (2011). Engineering the indoor environment. In: Toward a New Interior: An Anthology of Interior Design Theory (ed. L. Weinthal), 348–357. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Smith, D.W. (2016). Phenomenology. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, winter edition (ed. E.N. Zalta). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/ entries/phenomenology (accessed 15 January 2018). Wagenfeld, M. (2008). The aesthetics of air: experiments in visualizing the invisi­ ble. Architectural Design – Interior Atmospheres 78 (3): 20–25. Zumthor, P. (2006). Atmospheres. Basel: Birkhäuser.

9

Home Truths Identity and Materiality in the Postwar Interior Ben Highmore

In 1912, in the catalogue for the second Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition, King George V, the British monarch of the day, claimed that “the foundations of the national glory are set in the homes of the people” (Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition 1912, p. 2). Today, I read in the latest IKEA catalogue that “furniture is not just furniture. It facilitates your way of living, and contributes to your unique idea of home” (IKEA 2017, p. 94). Between 1912 and 2017 something has evidently changed in the way homes are being imagined: for George V, homemaking was part of a national, collective effort. He may have been deluded about the values that he saw British domestic life reflecting, but the idea that home was a place for the continuation of traditions, and that those traditions had a particularly national characteristic (which, in the case of Britain, meant at least four possible national characteristics), was a commonly held view at the time. IKEA, on the other hand, is making a claim for the uniqueness of “your” home. And yet it is doing so in a catalogue that supplies home furnishings to 48 countries via 384 giant retail outlets (Inter IKEA Systems B.V. 2016). A “unique idea of home,” it seems, is performed by individuals who have access to a massive system of delivery of furnishing, stretching across Europe, North America, Australia, and China, but absent from Africa, most of Southern Asia, and South America. But if the idea of “home” shifts during a century of social and cultural change, then it does not do so in a linear fashion. Indeed, what looks like a move from the communal and collective to the individual (a diminution in perspective) can also be seen as a shift from the national to the international or global (a huge expansion in perspective). The history of the interior is one that is best A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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recognized as recursive, as witnessing returns as well as departures. The design historian and anthropologist Alison Clarke admits that “there has been an undoubted shift from conceptualising the home interior as a relatively static entity (in terms of familiarity, tradition, and adherence to class‐prescribed genres of décor) to one defined by late twentieth century ideals of tireless modernization and projected aspiration” (Clarke 2009, p. 262). But she also alerts us to the way that today’s interior styles are sustained and developed as part of our life histories, and in ways that are not incompatible with previous understandings of the home. Tradition and modernization within the home are not two tendencies that remain exclusive to each other; rather, such forces are pleated together in domestic practices that are animated by a complex range of interests and ideologies (individualism, fashion, family, aspiration, memory, class, and so on). The theme of individualism, for instance, was recognized in the interior design style Art Nouveau, which was influential among French high society at the end of the nineteenth century. For Walter Benjamin “the transfiguration of the lone soul was its [Art Nouveau’s] apparent aim. Individualism was its theory. With Van de Velde, there appeared the house as expression of the personality. Ornament was to such a house what the signature is to painting” (1983[1935], p. 168). The idea that the interior should express “personality” has remained across the century: what has changed has been the conventions under which personality should be expressed. For some, large collections of bric‐a‐brac are what stamp personality onto an interior; for others, it will be austere decoration and uncluttered surfaces. Compared with fin de siècle France we could say that today many, many more people are caught up in the processes of thinking, enjoying, caring, and worrying about their interiors as a space that expresses “personality.” Does this mean, then, that one of the transformations that the postwar interior is witnessing is the democratization of interior design? Certainly design fashions are now not just the preserve of high society: shops like IKEA have made modern designs widely available; television offers us endless suggestions about how to make the best of our homes; magazines and newspapers are brimming with advice; and the online world offers seemingly infinite opinions (Lees‐Maffei 2014). So if by democratic we mean that more and more of us are entangled and implicated in the rhythms and energies of interior design then the answer would be “yes.” But if by democracy we mean practices of openness and equality, then the answer would have to be “no.” As the cultural theorist Tracey Potts explains, the more that everyone is implicated in the process of designing the “good life,” and the more everyone is given the task of making their interiors express “personality,” the more opportunities there are for others to judge that personality, and to judge the image of the good life that a house proposes: Given the perceived free availability of design principles it follows that we can be held to account for what our homes say about us. The era of design democratization is simultaneously that of harsh and unsparing judgment. The illusion of a flat

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and open field of choices and decisions legitimizes violent adjudications about one another’s lifestyles and living arrangements. (Potts 2006, p. 157)

Under these conditions, then, it would seem that the interior could just as often be a source of anxiety as it could be a place of refuge and respite. In his historical examination of public culture across the eighteenth to the twentieth century, the sociologist Richard Sennett saw a gradual turning away from the lively social world of town squares, markets, and taverns to what he names as the “tyrannies of intimacy,” where the focus of social life is on domestic routines in mortgaged houses (Sennett 1986[1976], p. 337). This was the domestic home as refuge from the hurly‐burly of public and commercial life, but for Sennett it was also an evasion, a way of turning your back on obligations to a world that was bigger than friends and family. Walter Benjamin recognized something of the material conditions for this turning inwards during the 1830s and 1840s as “living‐space became distinguished from the place of work” (Benjamin 1983[1935], p. 167). In preindustrial society home and work were often a single dwelling, but one effect of industrialization and urbanization was the gradual separation of home and work and the consolidation of new types of interiors: the office on one hand; the middle class home on the other. And yet here is probably the most emphatic sign of the recursive nature of the history of the domestic interior: is it possible to make these claims today? Is the domestic home really separate from the world of work when it is networked into communication systems that allow us to work anywhere and all the time? And is the home a refuge from the public realm when it is often the place for our voting and for our engagement with social, political, and cultural debates? For Sennett, television – that crucial domestic medium – was a key phenomenon for disengagement with an active public sphere: “you cannot talk back to your TV set” (Sennett 1986[1976], p. 283); yet with social media the invitation is always, precisely, to “talk back.” In what follows I am going to pursue these thoughts by looking at two aspects of postwar interior design and the home. The first is the question of how home facilitates (and frustrates) the production of identity and the way that the interior vacillates between being an arena of self‐fulfillment, a space of refuge, and renewal, and the way that the domestic interior can be a place of anxiety, of self‐annihilation, and existential doubt. This vacillation becomes particularly pronounced when the domestic interior is seen as a gendered space, but it is also visible when the house is seen from the perspective of sexuality and race. The second aspect of the home I am going to look at concerns the question of technology and media and how their development has transformed the material circumstances of home, particularly in how we practice and perform as private and public selves. Lastly I will look to the future and consider how environmentalism, climate change, and the financial absurdities of the housing market might impact on how we feel about our homes and how we might need to inhabit them differently to achieve a sustainable and progressive future.

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Identity and Interiors The role of the domestic interior in the making and unmaking of identity is radically uncertain in the postwar period. On the one hand it seems to offer unrivaled opportunities for self‐fashioning, for self‐actualization, or for supporting a range of fragile and robust egos. On the other hand, it has featured as a place of thwarted ambition, of haunted identities, and of isolated lives. Perhaps one of the most damning indictments of the postwar interior as a place of aspiration and value was offered by Betty Friedan in her 1963 classic statement of second‐wave feminism, The Feminine Mystique. In looking at the years since the end of World War II, Friedan remarks that in the early 1960s: Interior decorators were designing kitchens with mosaic murals and original paintings, for kitchens were once again the centre of women’s lives. Home sewing became a million‐dollar industry. Many women no longer left their homes, except to shop, chauffer their children, or attend a social engagement with their husbands. (Friedan 1965, p. 15)

The swanky interiors of North America’s suburban homes, with labor‐saving devices and every form of modern convenience, were paraded in the shelter literature of the day as the ultimate goal of the American Dream, and yet they were also the setting for women as suffering from a suffocating conformity, from chronic isolation, and from a general existential anxiety. What seemed important here was that this was a scene of affluence, a space that “had it all,” and yet it was also deeply unsatisfying for the very group it was supposed to be designed for: the middle‐class housewife. The image put forward of the North American suburban house in the postwar period became the paradigmatic image of a general material affluence. But it did more than provide an image of wealth. In its distance (symbolic as well as physical) from its inner‐city counterpart, the suburban home established a racial, as well as class based, set of connotations: The configuration, décor, possessions, and maintenance of the house (and the labor involved in that maintenance) all provided opportunities to convey a range of images and lifestyles. Inner‐city apartment dwelling, noise, crowding, smells, and manual labor all spoke of a working‐class past and ethnic origins. Little proclaimed whiteness, class stability, and citizenship quite like a house of one’s own in the suburbs. (Harris 2013, p. 21)

And just as class and race were inscribed in the practices of the suburban “good life,” meanings and practices of gender and sexuality seemed inscribed in the interior in similarly material and metaphoric ways. Heterosexuality and patriarchy, for instance, seemed ingrained in the distribution of rooms, from the master bedroom to ideas of “dens.” For the cultural theorist Sara Ahmed objects

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like the dining room table can become “kinship objects” that casually demand compulsory heterosexuality as a practice of family routines (Ahmed 2006, pp. 80–92). The suburban house, as a paradigmatic space, is a form of social architecture that assumes a host of identities as taken for granted: heteronormative, patriarchal, white, able bodied, sports loving, and so on. Anyone who did not fit these patterns of identity was cast on the outside of the suburban house’s picture window. For some, that meant refashioning and queering domestic space for dissident sexualities (Cook 2014; Potvin 2014), for others it meant finding other and often temporary solutions. For many young women, especially those excited by a life outside of marriage and family, there was an alternative to these expensive prisons: the singleton apartment or flat where a woman might “make it on her own,” as the theme song for a famous situation comedy had it. That television comedy was The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which ran on CBS from 1970 to 1977. It featured Mary Richards (played by Moore), who, recently dumped by a long‐term boyfriend, moves to Minneapolis to start a new career, working at a male‐ dominated TV station as the assistant producer for the daily news program (by 1977 she would be the producer for that fictional news show). Her apartment is a large bedsitting room (and the show is based around just two settings: work and home), with a split‐level floor, large windows, and galley‐style kitchen, which can either be left as open plan or shut off with folding glass partitions. The room has a walk‐in closet, a wood‐burning stove, and the seating area appears “sunken” (Figure 9.1). The large room is shown in various establishing shots as the second‐floor room in a large, late nineteenth century house, with Palladian windows and weatherboard facade. And yet inside it could pass for either a large open‐plan apartment in a modern high‐rise block or a loft apartment in a repurposed factory or warehouse (one wall is exposed brick). The style of furnishing (colonial wicker, Victoriana, simplified modern) positioned Mary as fashionable and fun, rather than as dogmatically tied to a specific “style.” Eclecticism in interior design, particularly in the mixing of a loose modernist style with Victorian ornament and quirky mismatched furnishings, could be seen as the dominant style of the switched‐on, go‐getting young in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. This non‐style style separated the interior from the exterior. A Manhattan loft‐style interior could be remade in Minneapolis suburban vernacular housing; a country cottage look could be the aesthetic choice for a kitchen in a tower block apartment. Eclecticism offered the promise of flexibility, both stylistically and socially. It appeared democratic because it looked as if no particular thought had gone into it. Such casualness, though, was for many a well‐rehearsed formula of practiced improvisations. What mattered more than the eclectic style, though, was the social relations that these rooms seemed to articulate. In novels, films, and TV series in the late 1960s through to the 1980s we see a world of young, relatively affluent, nearly always white, twenty‐ somethings, living alone or together, some in modern flats, others in fairly

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Figure 9.1  Mary’s Minneapolis apartment: open plan and eclectic. Source: Mary Tyler Moore Show: Season 1 (1970). Produced by MTM Enterprises, original network CBS, and distributed by 20th Television. Frame grab by Ben Highmore.

ramshackle housing. If the US television series Mary Tyler Moore Show was the ultimate example of the single woman as successful “woman‐about‐town,” British television offered a much more downbeat environment for “making it on your own.” In TV series such as The Liver Birds (BBC 1969–1979), Man About the House (ITV 1973–1976), and Rising Damp (ITV 1974–1978), modern eclecticism is fashioned out of the reality of the tired furnished rooms that young people could afford, and which could only be disguised by a well‐ placed piece of textiles (a throw) and posters that promise an endlessly deferred revolution of sex, politics, and music (classic images could include Che Guevara, a female tennis player scratching her bottom, and Jimi Hendrix in a paroxysm of musical ecstasy). But what mattered most was that these were rooms inhabited by the unattached – by singletons who were not responsible for partners or dependents, and who had no domestic ties to a parent generation. While these fictitious interiors were teaching a generation about the domestic circumstances for “making it on your own,” the reality for many domestic households was often quite different. The postwar housing crisis in Britain, for instance, was the result of a number of factors (war damage, dilapidated

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housing stock, population increase) and was often addressed with shoddily built alternatives. Mass housing projects, which were often the dominant housing solution across Europe and North America, had a varied outcome. In Britain some of the slab and block housing, which initially seemed to be so successful, suffered from poorly fabricated interiors and within a year or two were in a bad condition: “we went in in May 1970, and all seemed to go well until September when a sudden deterioration set in. We began getting damp in the flat and after a week a green fungus began to appear on the furniture and the bedding. I had a carpet which went completely green‐mouldy” (Ernest Dove in Allaun 1972, p. 79). This man in his fifties, who was unable to work due to ill health (chronic bronchitis and heart condition), was stranded in a damp flat on the fourteenth floor of a new housing block. Despite the many successes in mass housing it was becoming clear that, without sustained investment and careful social planning, the social dreams that inspired a generation of architects and planners could turn into a nightmare geography of exclusion. In France, where some of the most socially progressive housing was built in consultation with those who would be its inhabitants, mass housing had an ambiguous status: “during the 1960s, housing estates were the proud face of modern France to some” while others “dismissed the new projects as ‘rabbit cages’ and ‘silos for people’” (Cupers 2014, p. 317). The Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017 (a social housing block in North Kensington, London), which resulted in the loss of at least 70 lives, was a catastrophic result of funding priorities: the fire was exacerbated by costly cladding designed to make the buildings look more appealing from the outside, while basic safety requirements for large‐scale housing (for instance, sprinkler systems) were missing. Social housing estates and poor quality private housing were often the destination of those who were taking up residence in a new country. In countries with current and former colonies, housing estates could become ghettoized enclaves of a new postcolonial reality: Algerians and Moroccans in France; South Asians and those from the Caribbean in Britain. Of course migration was not a new postwar situation and many countries owe their history to extended patterns of migration. But the postwar period did offer a new international situation as many countries in the world entered into new global relationships as suppliers of labor, both manual and intellectual. The postwar period featured a new multiculturalism that became the bedrock for how many people experienced metropolitan life. It became expected that urban life across the globe featured a diversity of ethnic traditions that was made most visible and available in shops and restaurants. It became expected that many if not most residents of a city had not been born there, and that a good proportion had moved from another country. In Daniel Miller’s extensive exploration of the interior rooms of one randomly chosen street in London he found that the main thing residents had in common was that they were nearly all from elsewhere and that there was no “typical” household: “maybe it is better to start seeing the typical London household as a Norwegian married to an Algerian” (Miller 2008, p. 4).

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The diversity of ethnic heritages, as well as income brackets and household situations, is articulated in the domestic interiors of those who have migrated. In her study of the homes of immigrants from what used to be called the Soviet Union (Russia and its soviet satellites) who had set up home in New York and Boston, the late Svetlana Boym (who was herself from St. Petersburg, though it was Leningrad when she was a child) was particularly interested in what she called “diasporic souvenirs.” At first she wondered if these are mementoes that had been smuggled out of the Soviet Union on hasty voyages via Israel, and were objects placed in the home to nostalgically commemorate a former home culture. In talking to the inhabitants she found out that nearly all of these immigrant souvenirs had been picked up since emigrating in flea markets and junk shops in the USA. Rather than pointing backwards, as objects from childhood might, they pointed to their current situation: “diasporic souvenirs do not reconstruct the narrative of one’s roots but rather tell the story of exile” (Boym 2001, p. 336). In a similar vein the design curator Michael McMillan examines what he terms the “migrant aesthetics” of the changing conditions of the West Indian front room in British houses across the decades since the 1950s. By compiling an archive of family photographs and reminiscences from two generations of British citizens with Caribbean heritage he created a composite picture of the West Indian front room. As with Boym, objects that relate to a place left behind were not mementoes from the past: what Jamaican family living in Jamaica would have a velour cushion saying “souvenir of Jamaica” (McMillan 2009, p. 53)? The elements that make up the migrant aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s domestic interiors of black Britons were testimony to the energetic work of homemaking in circumstances where the world outside the front door was often cold and uninviting, or simply profoundly racist. In this situation a migrant aesthetic needed to work hard to make a hospitable space that was not looking back to the past, but was creating a hopeful future in a new c­ ountry. A domestic migrant aesthetic is not just about transplanting an aesthetic ­fashioned elsewhere into a new situation, and nor is it simply camouflaging different h ­ eritages by the wholesale adoption of a host aesthetic. Take the choice of wallpaper (an item which, because of different weather conditions, is almost unknown in the Caribbean or in other tropical countries): It was much brighter that that used in a typical English home. It reflected memories of the sunshine and vivid colours of the tropics with birds, trees and flowers in crimson, orange, and purple, and variations of patterns of squares and circles. … The aesthetic purpose was to get as much colour, life and movement into this room as possible. (Stuart Hall, cited in McMillan 2009, p. 58)

In the face of a distinctly unfriendly culture, where the dead‐eyed stare of racism was often a daily reality, the migrant aesthetic does not nostalgically try and recreate a Caribbean past in urban Britain; instead, both the Caribbean and the

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present circumstances are plundered for resources that could enliven the present. The domestic interior faces the hostility of the host culture by mustering joie de vivre fashioned from tropical drinks and fitted carpets, family photographs, and colorful wallpaper.

Technology, Media, and Material Change Today, in the global north, a key site for “identity work” is the teenage bedroom. Here, adolescents are given space within the household to sleep, to do their homework, to play, and, importantly, to undertake the work of self‐fashioning. To peek into these rooms (invited or uninvited) is often to glimpse an incipient identity emerging from, and away from, childhood and family. A fledgling adult human is struggling to be born among posters of a slightly older peer culture that has successfully fledged (pop stars, actors, sports stars), and yet often the paraphernalia of an earlier stage of the life course is also evident in the soft toys that cannot yet be jettisoned. Today it is easy to spot the apparatus of self‐fashioning in the laptops and smartphones that link up to networks of social media where newly minted identities are being given their first public hearings and outings. As children’s roaming in physical space has drastically declined in the years since 1945, their roaming in virtual space has risen exponentially: Mounting restrictions on children’s physical mobility outside the home since the late twentieth century correspond with a belief that children should have a personal and private space in the family household. Compromising this private space, the child’s bedroom is becoming more and more media‐centred, often crammed with new communication appliances that sustain individual, privatised media use. (Chambers 2016, p. 69)

Media technology seems unavoidable in today’s homes and is altering how the interior is inhabited. But we need to look at more mundane technologies as well to account for the emergence of the teenage bedroom as a particular kind of space. In the immediate postwar years, when families were generally larger, it would have been odd for a child to have had his or her own bedroom. Even in very wealthy households where there would be ample space, brothers would share rooms together, just as sisters would: it was part of the sociable world of family life. What required changing was not so much family life as the role of the bedroom and the social status of young adolescents. Before the late 1970s in Britain under half of households had central heating and this proportion gets less and less as you go back towards 1945. In a cold climate, during most of the year, a bedroom cannot become a day room without some form of heating. And while older housing stock would have had fireplaces in every bedroom it was massively labor intensive to keep multiple fires alight during the day. Living

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rooms/kitchens were often the center of family life because these were rooms that were well heated either through a cooking range or through fires. Central heating, then, is the necessary technical condition for the modern teenage bedroom to become used during the day, just as the ideological conditions of the “teenager” as a particular social category needed to change so that adolescents were seen as needing privacy and space within the home. Many of the first householders to convert their homes to central heating saw no point in extending the system to the bedrooms. To account for how we exist in our homes today we would need to consider the importance of mundane technologies such as central heating alongside the social changes that thought it would be important for children to have a room of their own. Mundane technologies like central heating had other effects besides creating the conditions that could allow the teenage bedroom to be an identity incubator. One of the most significant changes in the domestic interior since 1945 has been the opening up of the interior: the shift from small, separate (and easily heated) rooms to large, open‐plan, kitchen–dining rooms, or even larger amalgams of kitchen–dining–sitting rooms, where we eat, play, watch television, read, listen to music, cook. This open‐plan living offers us a mode of being simultaneously together and separate within a single household. If the house of the 1950s conjured up an image of the household (which was often seen as the nuclear family) gathered around a hearth, or a television set, or a radio, then today’s house is often pictured (in shelter magazines and IKEA catalogues) as a site where the household is scattered across sofas and floors, often engaged in individually distinct activities (one listens to music on headphones, another plays a video game, while another watches a film on a laptop). This image of the household as plugged into various devices is, of course, reliant on the availability of such devices. But a necessary condition for such a scattered orchestration of the household is the more invisible condition of there being ambient heating (and, in many countries, ambient cooling) supplied via central heating and air‐conditioning systems. But this scattered social space might also articulate something of the condition of today’s households where less “nuclear” forms of family are often the norm, where “blended” amalgams of previous families exist together. The extent of the massive technologizing of the home can be gauged by looking at the energy outlets in a present‐day home compared with one from the 1950s. In Britain a three‐ or four‐bedroom modern house built in the 1950s might have six electrical sockets spread across the whole house. Today, in 2017, a similar size new‐build house would have 15–20 sockets in the main living room alone, and about the same in the kitchen. And yet, given the enormous changes in technology, the actual design of houses and interiors has remained comparatively resilient to change. In 1965 the design critic Reyner Banham could wonder if a home necessarily had to be a house, or a house‐like receptacle. In an influential essay from 1965 titled “A home is not a house,” Banham asks:

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When your house contains such a complex of piping, flues, ducts, wires, lights, inlets, outlets, ovens, sinks, refuse disposers, hi‐fi reverberators, antennae, conduits, freezers, heaters  –  when it contains so many services that the hardware could stand up by itself without any assistance from the house, why have a house to hold it up? (Banham 1965, p. 70)

Banham was inviting architects and designers to radically reconceive the fabric of home and was influenced by architects and designers associated with the group Archigram, which was at the time imagining “plug‐in cities” and pop‐up housing (Curtis 1998; Sadler 2005). And yet such experiments in radically reimagining the house and the home often remained exercises in “paper architecture” without seriously altering the shape and pattern of our physical domiciles. The real reimagining of the home was performed in more banal, but also more sustained ways. For instance, today the practice of online shopping and the “Internet of things” (a situation of ubiquitous computing where our devices – from fridges to car – have smart capacities that connect to the Internet and communicate) has altered what we do at home, as well as significantly altering the world around us. One of the architects of the home shopping revolution was the IT consultant Michael Aldrich. In 1984 he described the possible future home as a “command base.” It is a prescient piece of predictive speculation that begins by auditing the energy capacity of the modern home: A 1984 home has about the same installed horsepower as a turn of the century textile mill. Domestic appliances are in abundance – cookers, washing machines, clothes dryers, vacuum cleaners, hair dryers, toasters, refrigerators, freezers, food‐mixers, electric kettles and irons, pressure cookers, dish‐washers, coffee machines, deep‐fat fryers and the rest. For information, education and entertainment, there are transistor radios, hi‐fis, static and portable televisions, video cassette recorders, audio cassette players and even Citizen Band radios.1

But Aldrich was primarily concerned not with the way that the home was in 1984, but with what the home could be like if it kept technologizing, particularly if it adopted the computer as something that could link the productive capacity of home life with a larger world of production and commerce (Highmore 2014, pp. 251–257). Aldrich’s predictions about the effects of computers on the home were by and large fairly accurate: the home has to a large extent become a “command base,” from which we take care of our finances without having to go to the bank, from which we do a lot of our shopping without having to go out and scour actual physical shops. Today we can sit at home watching television while buying our annual holiday online. It is at once a hermetic existence (potentially) but one that is endlessly communicative. It is also a world of invisible labor: we have taken on the role of travel agent, bank clerk, shop attendant, and financial consultant, as well as many other roles.

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Communication technologies have also changed the nature of the expanded geography of the home. In their temporary homes in Brighton, UK, for instance, my East Asian students spend time, every day, talking with their parents who remain in China, South Korea, and so on. Via Internet applications like Skype, anyone with access to a broadband internet connection can freely spend time on real‐time “video calls.” In their global travels the moderately well‐off do not have to leave their country of origin behind; it can become part of their new domestic interior in the shape of domestic routines and media practices. Through digital corridors, what once was far away can be relatively close at hand, at least as a set of digital signals that can visualize faces, reproduce inflection, sound, and everything apart from the visceral presence of bodies. As a daily routine practice the lives of distant intimates can fill our domestic spaces. In multicultural societies the interior might speak of a variety of roots and routes: of origins, of diasporic connections with families spread across continents, of places where connections still exist. And just as peer‐to‐peer communication practices might animate the domestic interior in significant ways, so too does media consumption. Our domestic geographies might situate our homes in national, religious, and linguistic contexts but these contexts are not simply there outside the front door. Wandering along a multicultural street in any metropolitan area we can glimpse satellite dishes, while a host of other communicative wires go unseen. These connectors and portals might link to local national broadcasting media but they might also connect to a far‐flung world of daily soap operas from Argentina, and news programs from Algeria. When we open a front door in Berlin we do not always enter into a German interior: we may well be entering into rooms filled with Turkish‐speaking broadcasts, with news items connected to Ankara and Istanbul. As the transnational media researchers Asu Aksoy and Kevin Robins put it: All across the European space now, Turkish‐speaking populations are tuning in to the numerous satellite channels that are broadcasting programmes from Ankara and Istanbul. Just like other migrant groups  –  Maghrebis, Arabs, Chinese, Indians, Afro‐Caribbeans, and many more – they are now able to make use of transnational communications to gain access to media services from the country of origin. This has been an entirely new phenomenon, a development of the last decade, which has very significant implications for how migrants experience their lives, and for how they think and feel about their experiences. (Aksoy and Robins 2003, p. 89)

Domestic interiors are, or at least they have been, a practice of settlement. Whether we are migrating from another continent, or from the suburbs to the city (or vice versa), or migrating from childhood to adulthood, the domestic interior is testimony to the degree to which we are settled in our life course. Media is now a crucial part of that settlement. It does not furnish our homes

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with inert boxes that are prepared to sit inconspicuously in the corner. Media animates our homes as part of living, social space. Media today is less a vehicle of representation, and more a continual and domestic practice that alters what we mean by home.

Domestic Futures In a book about the Bloomsbury Group and their domestic aesthetic and lives, Victoria Rosner can claim that “it was interior design  –  and not architecture – that articulated a visual and spatial vocabulary for describing the changing nature of private life” (Rosner 2005, p. 9). And it is true that we get little sense of the radical social changes that have been going on by looking at the architectural forms that we have generated under the heading “home.” We get a better sense of our changing domestic conditions by peeking into a teenager’s bedroom. They may be sitting there in relative comfort. But where is “there”? In a world of constant access to online worlds, a teenager may be both in a private space (within a bedroom in a house) and in all sorts of new public spaces such as Internet chat rooms, gaming forums, and peer spaces that parents hope are not being inhabited by adult predators. But if this offers one image of the impossibility of thinking of domestic space as entirely physical, we would do well to look at other spaces that for many people are now home. The shanty towns (or “improvised housing,” in the official discourse of local governments) of many African, South Asian, and South American cities offer another image of home. Many of these homes have been in existence now for generations. Today’s inhabitants are quite often paying rent to the descendants of the first builders and occupants of these shacks. The shacks are made out of the unwanted waste and discarded materials of industrial and urban production: in North Africa, shanty towns are called bidonvilles after the large metal drums (bidon) the shacks are often made from. The practice of collecting discarded materials carries on inside, where walls are often decorated with advertising and promotional materials: Shack dwellers live in similar conditions in Cape Town, Sao Paolo, Dakar, Mumbai, and Mexico City. But the spectacle of “branded poverty,” in which Nike and Kentucky Fried Chicken, Lucky Star and Koo jockey for space with the household cliché of the lounge suite and flock wallpaper that middle‐England would take for granted, is particularly poignant in these patched together lives. (Barac 2007, p. 156)

In the sprawling shanty town of Khayelitsha, in the Cape Flats area of the City of Cape Town, home to roughly 1.5 million mainly Xhosa‐speaking South Africans, the architect Matthew Barac found walls “covered in catalogue pages or posters of Will Smith, Beyoncé, and Kaizer Chiefs” (Barac 2007, p. 156).

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These are “poignant” details, not just because they symbolically amplify the enormous gulf that separates conspicuous wealth from the immiseration of the global poor, but because they reveal the ubiquitous spread of a narrow band and brand of culture. We could also look to the huge refugee encampments that are currently home to thousands and thousands of refugees fleeing wars in Syria and elsewhere. Here in tents designed for relaxing holidays and adventurous voyages, refugees suffer appalling conditions as they try and maintain a domestic life fashioned out of unsuitable materials. One of the few items that allow them to practice “home” are their mobile telephones, which give them access to a scattered world of friends, families, co‐workers, and opportunities. It is a gossamer thread to a domestic life held in suspension. In Michael Aldrich’s predictions (see section 9.2) one aspect of computing he failed to foresee was the amazing miniaturization of batteries and computer components such that computing and connecting capacities that he imagined as a “command base” of the physical home could be held in the palm of a hand. Mobile phones, for many in the world, are not luxury items of convenience; they are the front‐line survival instruments for those without homes. The present refugee crisis is likely to be the tip of the iceberg. Predictions about the devastating effects of climate change, through global warming and concomitant rises in sea levels, are likely to make our current levels of homeless refugees seems relatively small in comparison. The Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees will need to be adjusted to address social justice for anticipated climate refugees and their migrations: Climate change will force millions of people to flee their homes over the coming century. Rising sea levels threaten to envelop small island states. Desertification will make swaths of currently occupied land uninhabitable. More intense storms will drive people, at least temporarily, to relocate to safer ground. Studies predict that by 2050 the number of climate change refugees may dwarf the number of traditional refugees. (Docherty and Giannini 2009, p. 494)

An international community capable of housing an exponentially growing population of displaced and migrating people will need to think what it means by “home.” For many, “home” is less a state of settlement than a place of precariousness and instability. Even in the most affluent parts of the world large proportions of the population are excluded from possessing domestic space through cost. In Britain and other affluent countries, the housing market has effectively barred an entire generation from the financial and cultural stability of home ownership (McKee 2012). Global warming is threatening to produce vast armies of homeless people from across the globe. In these circumstances what sense does it make to think about the home as a sanctuary for individual families? Domestic space will, in 50 years’ time, look very different than it

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does today. Just as we have moved from nuclear families to a larger variety of households, the future will necessitate more composite arrangements that will have to lessen the effects of an ideology of individualism (or at least mitigate some of the worst excesses of that ideology). Perhaps the “single family home,” a domestic form which fits fewer and fewer people, will have to give way to more collective ways of living. If this is to be the case, then our domestic interiors will have to change, and our image of the “good life” will need to change with it.

Note 1 Aldrich, M.J. (1984). Home: The Command Base, p. 1. Unpublished Manuscript. Michael Aldrich archive, University of Brighton, UK.

References Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer Phenomenology. Durham: Duke University Press. Aksoy, A. and Robins, K. (2003). Banal transnationalism: the difference that television makes. In: The Media of Diaspora: Mapping the Globe (ed. K.H. Karim), 89–104. London: Routledge. Allaun, F. (1972). No Place Like Home: Britain’s Housing Tragedy. London: Andre Deutsch. Banham, R. (1965). A home is not a house. Art in America 2: 70–79. Barac, M. (2007). Transit spaces: thinking urban change in South Africa. Home Cultures 4 (2): 147–176. https://doi.org/10.2752/174063107X209000. Benjamin, W. (1983[1935]). Paris  –  the capital of the nineteenth century. In: Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism, 157–176. London: Verso. Boym, S. (2001). The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books. Chambers, D. (2016). Changing Media, Homes and Households: Cultures, Technologies and Meanings. Abingdon: Routledge. Clarke, A.J. (2009). The contemporary interior: trajectories of biography and style. In: Designing the Modern Interior: From the Victorians to today (eds. P. Sparke, A. Massey, T. Keeble, and B. Martin), 261–273. Oxford: Berg. Cook, M. (2014). Queer Domesticities: Homosexuality and Home Life in Twentieth‐ Century London. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Cupers, K. (2014). The Social Project: Housing Postwar France. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Curtis, B. (1998). Archigram: a necessary irritant. In: Concerning Archigram (ed. D. Crompton), 25–79. London: Archigram Archives. Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition (1912). Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition Catalogue. London: Daily Mail.

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Docherty, B. and Giannini, T. (2009). Confronting a rising tide: a proposal for a convention on climate change refugees. Harvard Environmental Law Review 33 (2): 349–403. Friedan, B. (1965). The Feminine Mystique. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Harris, D. (2013). Little White Houses: How the Postwar Home Constructed Race in America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Highmore, B. (2014). The Great Indoors: At Home in the Modern British House. London: Profile. IKEA (2017). The Wonderful Everyday (Catalogue). Milton Keynes: IKEA. Inter IKEA Systems B.V. (2016). Franchising the IKEA way. http://franchisor. ikea.com/bringing‐the‐ikea‐concept‐worldwide (accessed 29 September 2016). Lees‐Maffei, G. (2014). Designs at Home: Domestic Advice in Britain and USA since 1945. Abingdon: Routledge. McKee, K. (2012). Young people, homeownership and future welfare. Housing Studies 27 (6): 853–862. https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2012.714463. McMillan, M. (2009). The Front Room: Migrant Aesthetics in the Home. London: Black Dog. Miller, D. (2008). The Comfort of Things. Cambridge: Polity. Potts, T. (2006). Creating ‘modern tendencies’: symbolic economics of furnishing. In: Historicizing Lifestyle: Mediating Taste, Consumption and Identity from the 1900s to 1970s (eds. D. Bell and J. Hollows), 156–172. Farnham: Ashgate. Potvin, J. (2014). Bachelors of a Different Sort: Queer Aesthetics, Material Culture and the Modern Interior in Britain. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Rosner, V. (2005). Modernism and the Architecture of Private Life. New York: Columbia University Press. Sadler, S. (2005). Archigram: Architecture without Architecture. Cambridge: MIT Press. Sennett, R. (1986[1976]). The Fall of Public Man. London: Faber and Faber.

10

Design of Contemporary Mega-Events Graeme Evans

Introduction This chapter will discuss the phenomenon of contemporary mega‐events and their design and spatial context. Drawing on their historic evolution, this chapter first considers the definitions and distinctions attached to large‐scale events, and then introduces their most high‐profile aspect, the iconic buildings and sites that these major events occupy, and in some respects create, through grand place‐making schemes. The practice of master planning is then discussed, as a new hybrid spatial and communication design process which locates these special events as urban imaginaries (Çınar and Bender 2007) through a convergence of visual and virtual culture. While icons and landscape design themes provide the prime physical experience and impact, a host of design practices are engaged in these major projects – from product design and branding, communication and “experience” design to fashion design – as well as inclusive and sustainable design, in response to the imperatives of accessibility and environmental sustainability. These design practices combine to represent a global phenomenon situated in a local context and this will be critically assessed through examples from recent EXPOs and Olympics, including a more in‐ depth case of design elements of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Defining Mega‐Events Writing over 25 years ago, Hall located the rationale for hosting what until then had been termed hallmark events within the fourth era of World’s Fairs running from the early 1960s – namely “the city of renewal” (Hall 1992, p. 29). Today’s mega‐events are no exception to this now 50 year trajectory, which has hardened in recent years toward major cities hosting and bidding for the “greatest show on earth.” National capitals such as Madrid, Paris, and Tokyo and cultural capitals Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Sydney, Rio, Istanbul, and New York vie for hosting major international events such as EXPOs and Olympics, despite their escalating cost and perennial controversies and dubious legacy effects (Evans 2011). Re‐presenting and re‐imaging major cities through these mega‐events is therefore both a competitive city strategy and a reflection of the “festivalisation of the city” (Richards and Palmer 2010). These once‐in‐a‐lifetime events also present a dualistic challenge to their hosts and commissioned designers  –  between the temporal/ephemeral nature of the event and the permanent legacy and between the “host” audience and the outside world. The latter includes visitors/tourists, global media, commercial sponsors, and institutional “brand” holders who also impose their design controls on the event organizers. Large‐scale festivals and sporting competitions make up the majority of what are considered contemporary hallmark or mega‐events. Early studies into the phenomenon tended to view them as simply “special” (i.e. not regular/annual) large‐scale events. However, subsequent studies (Hall 1989) identified short‐ term staged events, such as carnivals and festivals. Such events can be of significant economic and social importance, which may not only serve to attract visitors but also assist in the development or maintenance of community or regional identity (Getz 2012). The term “hallmark event” is not therefore confined to the large‐scale events that generally occur within cities and major towns. Community festivals and local celebrations can be described as hallmark events in relation to their regional and local significance. Such an observation highlights the importance of the economic, social, and spatial context within which hallmark events take place. However, the term “mega‐event” has far more specific application. Mega‐events, such as World’s Fairs – or “EXPOs” (Olds 1988) and the Olympic Games (Ritchie and Yangzhou 1987), are events which are expressly targeted at the international market – global media, tourists, and investors, as well as local and national participants. They also entail major capital investment in venues, facilities, and transport and drive a number of design imperatives. More recently, Müller (2015) has revisited the definitional ambiguity of the mega‐event concept which brings together the key factors which distinguish them from other hallmark or special events. In his analysis, in order to be considered as mega‐events, they: 1. attract a large number of visitors 2. have a large mediated reach



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3. come with large costs, and 4. have large impacts on the built environment and the local–regional population. Although, in the past, visitor numbers were an indication of the size of the event, in order to experience a mega‐event today it is no longer essential to travel and watch it in situ. In fact, the widespread broadcasting of events since the 1980s has meant that the vast majority of those who watch an event do so on TV or other media (Horne 2007; Sugden and Tomlinson 2012). From Montréal 1976 to the London 2012 Olympics, the value of broadcasting rights for the Summer Games has risen from $34.9 to $2569 million  –  almost 23 times in real terms. This is an indication of the evolution of the global media economy, but also of the commercialization of large events. According to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), about half of the world’s population, 3.64 billion, saw at least one minute of coverage of the 2012 Summer Games (IOC 2014). From Barcelona 1992 to London 2012, the number of accredited media personnel almost doubled to more than 24 000 – more than two media representatives per athlete (Chappelet 2014). This growth underscores the extent to which large events are nowadays mediated rather than directly experienced. This has also meant that their design focus has widened from the facilities and site itself to branding and communication design, merchandising, and sponsorship. This is not an entirely new aspect, however. In the 1851 Great Exhibition the drinks company Schweppes paid £5500 for the franchise and sold over 1 million bottles of its soft drinks. Coca Cola, which, since 1999 has owned the Schweppes brand, is one of the main franchisees of the modern Olympics, contributing £64 million to the IOC every four years. During the 17 days of the London 2012 Games, Coca‐Cola sold 18 million of its drinks at Olympic sites.

Historical Precedents The modern history of these special events therefore predates the postindustrial urban renewal and competitive city eras. Seminal points occurred within a year of one another – the inauguration of the International Art Exhibition, or Venice Biennale, in 1895, and the revived “modern Olympics” in 1896. Although a biannual art exhibition would not in itself be considered a mega‐ event as such, as the event has grown in size and importance – cultural, symbolic, economic – it has expansively evolved into a permanent spectacle, with the national pavilions of the Giardini sitting alongside the temporary exhibitions in the Arsenale dockside complex, and now spread across other venues and sites in Venice. This is not unlike the Edinburgh International Festival, established in 1947, which spawned the now larger Fringe and associated festivals (Literature, Jazz, etc.), and the Milan Design Feira, again with a larger

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off‐site fringe exhibition program. The Cities/Capitals of Culture under the European Union’s program first launched in 1984 in Athens provide another example of major competitive events used to promote, celebrate, and upgrade a city’s and region’s cultural assets and image (Evans 2011). Under UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network, Cities of Design have also been designated: first, Berlin in 2006, which built on its Design Mai (May) festival, and today a curious mix of cities – Dundee, Bilbao, Curitiba, Helsinki, and Turin – hold this status. Dundee is benefitting from £1 billion in investment in its waterfront development, a 30 year project of which a key part is the V&A Museum, which will be housed in a custom‐made building designed by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma.

Fun at the Fair The early twentieth century Olympics were treated as a sideshow to the fairground, employing them as additional but subsidiary attractions to the already established World’s Fairs. For instance, Paris 1900 treated its Olympics as an  indistinguishable component of the “Exposition Universelle,” whereas St.  Louis in 1904 followed the same formula (Gold and Gold 2010). The International EXPOs can therefore be seen as the originators of today’s mega‐ events, perhaps harking back to the 1851 Great Exhibition in London. However, even this seminal event drew heavily from the earlier imperial Great Exhibitions that had cemented the dual cultural hegemony that had been reinforced as the nineteenth century progressed, with English and French cultural production starting to dominate publishing, theater, and crafts, as early cultural globalization was fueled by expanding Empires and industrialization. The World’s Fairs had in fact originated in the French tradition of national exhibitions, which had culminated in the French imperial Industrial Exposition of 1844 held in Paris, following on from a series of great exhibitions that had begun in the seventeenth century with exhibitions of works of art (Greenhalgh 1988) – and therefore predating the first Venice Biennale by 50 years. Along with the art exhibitions were exhibitions of French‐manufactured goods, which although not international in scope were the more direct ancestors of the universal exhibitions. As Greenhalgh observed: “the importance of these for Government at the time was evident; they were no mere trade fairs or festival celebrations, they were outward manifestations of a nation attempting to flex economic, national, military, and cultural muscles” (Greenhalgh 1988, p. 6). The Great Exhibition in London had also been preceded by two smaller exhibitions that were staged by the Royal Society of Arts in 1844 and 1849: “wedding high art with mechanical skill.” The 1851 Great Exhibition was also an explicit advert for the British export industry, with the majority of exhibits coming from the Empire and predominantly Britain’s manufacturing cities; for example, Sheffield had 300 exhibits, from railway springs, vices, and anvils to newly designed fenders and kettles. As Herbert Read observed in Art and



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Industry (Read 1932): “those splendid institutions in Trafalgar Square and South Kensington, now treasure‐houses which attract pilgrims of beauty from every corner in the world, were first conceived as aids to the manufacturer in his struggle with foreign competitors. The National Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, prototypes of similar institutions all over the world, were not founded as Temples of Beauty but as cheap and accessible schools of design.” By the 1930s host nations had also started to use the Olympics as a stand‐ alone opportunity to advertise their country and regimes, notably Berlin’s “Third Reich” 1936 Games. By 1964 Tokyo was promoting its Games as an important medium for conveying Japan’s credentials as a modern country and for signifying its reemergence onto the international stage after World War II, a strategy later adopted in Seoul, Beijing, Rio, and most recently in Sochi, Russia. Versions of this international cultural diplomacy and branding exercise can also be seen in the football World Cup and other competitions hosted by developing regions such as in the Middle East (e.g. Qatar) and South Africa.

Design Icons The physical structures and infrastructures that mega‐events now demand, offer the most explicit design challenge and impact – notably the new sports stadia, festival sites, pavilions, and associated accommodation (e.g. Olympic Village) – as well as vital transport facilities and associated design and public art installations. Earlier “great exhibitions” had also produced permanent legacies of festival sites, providing examples of that much over‐used tag: “icons.” Prime examples include the Eiffel Tower in Paris, named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Constructed as the entrance to the 1889 World’s Fair, it was initially criticized by some of France’s leading artists and intellectuals for its design, but it has become a global cultural icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world. The Eiffel Tower is the most visited paid monument in the world, attracting over 7 million people each year. Other legacies from World’s Fairs include Glasgow’s Kelvingrove (1901), national stadia, and the more prosaic convention centers such as in Knoxville, USA, Brisbane and Vancouver. In London, the Festival of Britain of 1951, conceived as “a tonic for the nation,” was a self‐consciously forward‐looking event that sought to offer a break from rationing, austerity, and the landscape of a bomb‐scarred country. It sought to present a picture of the future, a mini‐expo of the aesthetics people had to look forward to. It was one of the first examples of culture‐led urban regeneration (Evans 2005). The Skylon – a symbolic if non‐functional rocket‐ shaped structure – was the icon for the festival, a dynamic symbol with a name derived from a blend of “nylon,” “pylon,” and “skyhook.” It was demolished on the orders of Winston Churchill (the Labour government‐commissioned

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Skylon was seen as a symbol of socialism). The Festival of Britain also produced its own kind of branded furniture: anatomical‐shaped tables, chairs, and plant stands: “these minimalist masterpieces were made from cheap plywood and vinyl: Britain’s effete but endearing contribution to modernism perhaps” (Heathcote 2011). The South Bank is the physical legacy of the Festival of Britain, occupying the stretch of former industrial riverside near Waterloo. It has since grown to embrace the giant Ferris wheel of the London Eye in the west all the way to the Globe Theatre and Tate Modern – now the most visited modern art museum in the world – in the east. At its heart is the Royal Festival Hall, arguably the first modernist structure to be truly adopted by a city that once seemed hyperconservative but is now apparently in love with the contemporary, and designed by the London County Council’s chief architect, Robert Matthew, who assembled a team of young architects (Heathcote 2011). Ernest Race and Robin and Lucienne Day also came to prominence during the Festival. Race created furniture, including the iconic Antelope chair and the Days were integral to the design of the interiors of the Festival Hall, with Lucienne’s textiles and wallpapers displayed alongside Robin’s steel and plywood furniture. In contrast to today’s mega‐event symbols, the Festival’s logo, designed by Abram Games – featuring Britannia adorned with red, white, and blue bunting – also became evocative of the period. Since the 1960s, contemporary mega‐events have been dominated by the permanent sports stadia, associated housing and transport, and often dubious “public art” erected to inject a sense of fun and play into these functional and impervious buildings. More temporary structures are designed for pavilions such as those that make up the national promotion at EXPOs, although host country pavilions are often the more extravagant and expensive and therefore remain as permanent legacies of the EXPO site, anchoring the subsequent site redevelopment. As questions of sustainability intensify around these hugely costly projects, the use of novel temporary structures is seen as one solution to the after‐use conundrum (with many sports facilities seriously under‐used after the event) and sustainability question. So as well as tents, toilets, and warehousing, the basketball arena for the London 2012 Olympics was designed to be fully recyclable, and was dismantled in 2013. Mooted to be sold to the 2016 Rio Olympics – it is however still pending sale for £2.5 million five years later. The formula adopted for successful host cities, since the hosting of these events is the outcome of intense competitive bidding over several years, typically focuses on the design of the main venues – in the case of the Olympics, this includes the main athletic stadium and also some of the specialist stadia such as the Aquatics Centre and Velodrome, and in the case of EXPOs the host city pavilion. In both cases the themed “village” and “park” surrounding the main venues make up the rest of the mega‐event site, served by new or upgraded transport stations and systems (e.g. light rail, metro). It is here that architectural design is used to create the prime image of the event through keynote buildings and landscapes. Although highly functional buildings, designers have sought to create signature buildings



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that provide a “wow factor” and a degree of excitement that these new sports stadia otherwise lack until actually in use. Examples include Herzog & de Meuron’s “birdsnest” stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and Zaha Hadid’s Aquatic Centre for the London 2012 Olympics. The use of starchitects (Ponzini and Nastasi 2011) therefore parallels the earlier grands projets and cultural icons built to rebrand and market a place, or an entire city (Evans 2003), as part of longer term regeneration, such as the Guggenheim Bilbao, where Frank Gehry’s art museum franchise is synonymous with the revival of this industrial port city (Plaza 2006). Over‐reliance on a single brand can also risk image decay as the brand dilutes, so as Bilbao’s Provincial president Josu Bergara said, with no hint of irony: “Other cities will have to find their own projects, not copies of the Guggenheim” (Crawford 2001, p. 2). Giddens reinforces this view: “Money and originality of design are not enough … You need many ingredients for big, emblematic projects to work, and one of the keys is the active support of local communities” (in Crawford 2001). In practice, however, the political and financial imperatives that drive these mega‐events produce a top‐down approach with local communities “consulted” (informed), but ignored in terms of location decisions, design, and after use of facilities (Evans 2015). It is no coincidence, therefore, that the same roll call of international architects feature in these mega‐event schemes, with often similar issues arising, i.e. copycat architecture, high cost and cost/time overruns, problems in building, and design faults. This is exacerbated in the case of structures whose original use is subject to change after the event. For example, the lack of a legacy plan for the London Aquatic Centre, designed by Zaha Hadid, has meant that its internal design and operation is less than ideal (and no substitute for traditional municipal pools, several of which have closed in the local area). User access to this center – best viewed from a distance – is also awkward and illegible. A blue film has had to be retrofitted to the exterior windows in order to reduce the glare that meant that lifeguards could not see swimmers underwater. The conversion of the main stadium to a football ground for the incoming West Ham FC cost the public purse an additional £272 million (after construction and design faults), as a result of a protracted adaptation not foreseen when first designed and built. Designed by stadium specialists Populous this 54 000 seat stadium will have cost over £700 million, far more than if it had been designed for this purpose. Further public money has also had to be spent at the ArcelorMittal Orbit tower, designed by artist Anish Kapoor, with a giant slide retrofitted in an attempt to make this attraction more popular – reportedly it lost £540 000 in 2014/15 from 120 000 visitors against a business plan forecast of £1.2 million profit from 350 000 visitors. The high risk associated with the overambitious stadia designs is evident in cost overruns and construction delays, leading to acrimonious disputes. For example, the late Zaha Hadid again, whose design for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic stadium saw the original budget of £707 million rise to £1.37 billion, which led to her replacement and the appointment of a Japanese design firm working with a revised budget of £843 million.

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EXPO Pavilions As Sudjic observed: “the expo is to the city what fast food is to the restaurant. It is an instant rush of sugar that delivers a massive dose of the culture of congestion and spectacle, but leaves you hungry for more” (Sudjic 1993, p. 213). In contrast to the functional and highly engineered sports stadia and infrastructure required to support sporting mega‐events, which apply façadist and wavy roof lines to mask their box‐like interiors, the international exhibitions and festivals have generated a temporary and national pavilion design which begs the question, what is their purpose? The long‐established example of this is the Venice Biennale Giardini. In a luxuriant 43 000 m2 garden facing the Venice lagoon – commissioned by the Emperor Napoleon I and designed in the typical English garden style by the Italian landscape architect Giannantonio Selva in 1807, to be completed five years later – 30 national pavilions have been built over time, with the aim of showcasing the best of each country’s art and architecture during the Biennale events. The Central building, originally the Italian pavilion, was converted into a 3500 m2 venue in 2009, and accommodates one of the two curators’ exhibitions, the other being located at the Arsenale, a disused naval base, while each national pavilion features its own art or architecture exhibition. Since 1980 Venice has held the Architecture Biennale alternating with the Art event, joining the already established Contemporary Music, Film, Theater, and now Dance festivals. The pavilions are a novel architecture exhibition in themselves, with constructions built after designs by celebrated architects, such as Josef Hoffmann (pavilion of Austria, 1934), Gerrit Rietveld (Dutch pavilion, 1953), Carlo Scarpa (sculpture garden of the Central pavilion, 1952, and pavilion of Venezuela, 1954), Alvar Aalto (pavilion of Finland, 1956), and Sverre Fehn (Nordic countries pavilion, 1962) among others. The latest pavilion built at the Giardini is that of Australia; it was completed in 2015 and converted into a swimming pool for the 2016 Biennale. International EXPOs, on the other hand, provide the opportunity for temporary national pavilions and installations which attempt to capture the essence of a country’s culture and both cultural traditions and contemporary goods, but which can degenerate into miniature tourist board theme parks. The exhibitions themselves adopt high‐minded themes and subthemes, with a strong environmental sentiment. This is ironic given their land‐hungry and unsustainable nature. For example, Aichi in Japan themed its 2005 EXPO around an eco‐city concept and a “rediscovery of Nature’s Wisdom.” Japanese attendance at these EXPO events indicates their popularity, which is not matched elsewhere – 64 million visits were made to the 1970 Osaka EXPO and 20 million to Tsukuba in 1985. Although over 70 million visits were made to the Shanghai EXPO in 2010 with the strapline of Better City, Better Life, the EXPO in Milan (2015) took a more explicit human theme: Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life,



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with nine themed zones: Bio‐Mediterranean, Arid Zones, including food chains: Fruit and Legumes, Spices, Cereals and Tubers, Coffee, Cacao, Rice. “The idea of EXPO Milano 2015 is to create an Exposition in which every project, every piece of content, every part of the program has been developed with the goal of making visitor experience the central focus. The approach also makes the themes clearly perceptible” (Vercelloni 2014, p. 5). This thematic design allowed smaller countries to be clustered by theme, rather than be marginalized by the major country pavilions. Like other mega‐events such as the Olympics and Capitals of Culture, host cities and nations foot the bill for the honor of holding these costly events, so variations are seen in the relative wealth and money spent in each case. Over 240 countries participated in the 2010 Shanghai EXPO but only 145 five years later in Milan – geopolitics is therefore a factor with presence in China more important (trade and cultural relations) than that in Italy. Countries therefore choose to be included in EXPO events, although the absence of a national pavilion signifies a lack of recognition and participation within the international milieu (Figure 10.1). Better to be seen in a minimal or low‐cost installation than not at all. In a departure from the norm, the UK opted to commission Thomas Heatherwick for the 2010 Shanghai EXPO to design not a building, but a dandelion‐shaped “seed cathedral” covered in 60 000 crystalline spines which were tipped with tiny lights to illuminate the structure. The sculpture won the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) gold award for best pavilion design. Each spine contained a different seed from Kew Garden’s Millennium Seed collection in London, an initiative that seeks to collect and conserve 25% of the world’s seeds by 2020. The seed cathedral was dismantled and the rods donated to various charities, schools, and the World EXPO Museum, which opened in 2017, another legacy from the 2010 Shanghai EXPO. EXPO site design therefore tries to respond, often too literally, to these aspirational themes, while national pavilions seek to promote their own cultural identities within these thematic priorities. The UK’s entry for the Milan 2015 EXPO was The Hive, another departure from the standard national pavilion. Reaching 17 m into the air, designed by Nottingham‐based artist Wolfgang Buttress in collaboration with engineer Tristan Simmonds and architectural practice BDP, the immersive Pavilion was manufactured and constructed by York‐based firm Stage One (Figure 10.2). The Hive was an immersive, multisensory experience inspired by research into the health of bees. This aluminum structure draws visitors into the space via a wildflower meadow, as though they were worker bees returning to the hive. The wildflower meadow sought to build understanding and appreciation of these habitats, and their significance for insect pollinators. Hundreds of glowing LED lights brought this 40 tonne lattice structure to life, while a symphony of orchestral sounds filled the air with an atmospheric undercurrent of buzzes and pulses. Triggered by vibration

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Figure 10.1  (a) Italy’s pavilion at Milan EXPO (2015). (b) China’s temporary pavilion at Milan EXPO. (c) China’s permanent pavilion at Shanghai EXPO (2010). Photos: Graeme Evans.



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Figure 10.2  The Hive, UK Pavilion, Milan EXPO 2015. Photo: Graeme Evans.

sensors within a real beehive back in the UK, the sound and light intensity within the pavilion increased as the energy levels in the living hive surged, giving visitors an insight into the ever‐moving life of a bee colony. The Hive was subsequently relocated to Kew Gardens in London.

Size Matters: Master Planning A feature of contemporary mega‐events is their growing scale. As noted already, established festivals have spread their footprint and reach in their respective cities, but it is the expansive regeneration plans and aspirations that now drive host cities and regions to use the once‐in‐a‐lifetime opportunity to create new urban villages, districts, and extensions to the city. The mega‐event thus provides a political and financial incentive to accelerate urban development as part of grand place‐making schemes to achieve growth for rising populations and for new education, cultural, and play zones for the postindustrial city (Evans 2014). This is seen in the case of Barcelona following the 1992 Olympics and the regeneration of the former industrial (textiles production) area of Poblenou into a high‐technology zone. This houses a relocated Pobra Fabra University of Art & Design, connecting the new high‐rise Extension area of commercial offices, retail malls, and apartments, in the last piece of the post‐Olympics jigsaw. London’s Olympic Park likewise will contain the Olympicopolis development, which comprises satellites of University College London and, nearby,

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Loughborough University London (housed in the former Press and Broadcast Centre), as well as the London College of Fashion; the V&A Museum and Sadler’s Wells Dance Theatre are also opening satellite facilities between 2020 and 2022. EXPO sites, with a curious legacy of abandoned sites and permanent pavilions, can also take decades before they are fully redeveloped, such as in Lisbon (1998) and the UK Garden Festival sites (e.g. Gateshead and Liverpool), while others struggle to reinvent themselves, e.g. Seville (1992) and Hanover (2000). This German EXPO presented a confused theme that resulted in a little over a half of the forecast 40 million visitors and a deficit of over $600 million. The site continues in its original form as an exhibition site although a new center of information technology, design, media, and arts has been located there. Several national pavilions were retained, but are in a state of disrepair. In design terms, the emerging practice of master planning now leads this spatial design process, within which architecture, landscape, and other design activity is situated and subservient. So while, in the past, architecture would have been the prime design profession providing the design concepts, iconic images, and reputations, it is urban design and master‐planning firms that visualize the mega‐event and major regeneration schemes worldwide. Gonzales refers to “scalar narratives” of regeneration, and the tension between the need for a “spatial fix,” on the one hand, and the reality that scales are socially constructed and therefore not fixed but “perpetually redefined, contested and restructured” (Gonzales 2006, p. 836), on the other. Master planning therefore seeks to capture spatial design and land use configurations at larger scale than traditional architectural design or even town planning. This hybrid practice –attempting to integrate architecture with planning through urban design – thus follows a hierarchical design iteration: master plan–urban design– quarterization–zoning1 and, only then, individual sites, buildings, and structures which populate the futuristic graphics and fly‐throughs used to envision and promote mega‐event sites (Evans 2015). Batty et al. (1998) consider urban design, rather than urban planning and architecture, to be more suitable for designing at scale, particularly with the advent of computer graphics and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), because, as they argue: “urban design is small‐scale enough for many users of urban environments to feel its impact. It is sufficiently broad‐based in its influence on those affected that the wider public always have some view of how it might best be carried out. It is less abstract than city planning which exists at larger scales and more populist than architectural design which is remote from those with no formal artistic and engineering training. As such, urban design has the greatest potential of any technologies or practices for involving experts and lay‐people” (Batty et al. 1998, p. 3). Cuthbert also reminds us that “urban design is not merely the art of designing cities, but the knowledge of how cities grow and change … we must go beyond abstract social science into the realm of human experience and the creative process” (Cuthbert 2006, p. 1). The argument here is that the master‐planning and graphic visualizations used



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in major regeneration and mega‐event projects provide a better communication and design platform within which complex options, trade‐offs, aesthetics, and juxtapositions of space, buildings, routes, and their inter‐relationships can be presented to the public and worked through in order to achieve an optimum, or at least most acceptable, outcome. This “virtual” design practice, relying as it does heavily on computer‐generated imagery (CGI), digital models, and futuristic imagery, also underpins the process of place‐making that now drives the urban design and branding imperatives that accompany mega‐ events. These large‐scale, expansive, and expensive projects can therefore be seen as the “stormtroopers of gentrification,” accelerating “new” housing and city extensions and the displacement of residual industry and incumbent communities. For example, Figure 10.3 shows the CGI vision projected for the year 2030 looking south toward the River Thames with the current Hopkins Architects‐ designed Velodrome bottom left, the main stadium near the middle, and to the left of which is Anish Kapoor’s ArcelorMittal structure, foregrounded by a strip of high‐rise buildings making up the Stratford Waterfront (“Olympicopolis”) cultural and education complex. In the far distance is the legacy of an earlier mega‐event, the Millennium Dome – or the O2 Arena as it has been rebranded, designed by Richard Rogers. The new housing blocks, yet to be built,

Figure 10.3  CGI of Olympic Park as visioned for 2030. Source: Evans (2015). Photo: Graeme Evans. Reproduced with permission.

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represent the private urban villages planned to literally populate this new Park, designed alongside the River Lee and canal, along with new primary schools and health centers. The primacy of the master plan thus invites some comment, since this visualizes the regeneration and legacy concepts and rationales for both the location decisions and the subsequent public investment in these mega‐projects. In the view of the professional Urban Design Group (UDG) the importance of the “new” master‐plan model is made clear: The conventional masterplanning model is dead, long live the masterplan! Reinvented as an adaptive multidisciplinary instrument closely related to the wide‐ranging complexities of contemporary life, the masterplan, with its precise deliberations and processes, has gained a fresh significance.2

Its role as a “change agent” was also seen to be of pivotal importance – the master plan as a hands‐on cultural framework which does not alienate people, responding to urban environments as organisms in continual evolution with the power to foster potentials, and a better sense of ownership, along with a new resilience in the face of multiple challenges (Evans 2015). The initial visioning process for the London 2012 Olympics relied heavily on master plans at key stages of its iteration. This commenced with the pre‐ award consultations with local residents and “stakeholders.” This task had been contracted not to an architectural practice but to the planning firm EDAW (to become part of the US AECOM conglomerate). These early plans were simplified graphic schemata to be followed by more sophisticated GIS‐based maps, CGI visions and “artist’s impressions,” showing two‐ and three‐dimensional Olympic and legacy modes. Following the award of the Olympics to London in July 2005, the same team was selected to devise a master plan for the Olympic Park, with a remit to “design” the infrastructure, including utilities, waterways, landscape, platforms for venues, roads, and bridges. The EDAW‐led consortium included engineers Buro Happold and architects Allies and Morrison, Foreign Office, and Populous. This initial master plan identified the scheme as a major catalyst for change and regeneration in east London, especially the Lea Valley, leveraging resources, spurring timely completion of already programmed infrastructure investment, and leaving a legacy to be valued by future generations, thus confirming the Olympics as the acceleration of an already‐targeted area regeneration program. In January 2008 the then lead body, the Mayor’s London Development Agency (LDA), awarded a new 17‐member consortium led again by EDAW with the addition of architecture/landscape design firms including Caruso St John, KCAP, Vogt Landscape, McDowell+Benedetti, and Haworth Tompkins to “design” the Olympic legacy master‐plan framework. This included new housing, schools, health facilities, and workspaces within the wider legacy site.



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By 2010, however, criticism of this master plan’s housing strategy led to the further commissioning of a nine‐strong team of practices, including Maccreanor Lavington, Panter Hudspith with Witherford Watson Mann, and landscape architects West 8, to draw up a revised legacy plan. The master plan for the Olympic site had provided for 10 000 homes  –  mainly one‐/two‐bedroom apartments – but in the revised 2010 plan this had been reduced to 8000, with family housing “at the center of the plan, inspired by London’s great estates such as Grosvenor and Portland.”3 However, the bland and highly cost‐engineered housing emerging in and around the Olympic Park, including the converted Athlete’s Village housing, “which looks like something thrown up for workers at a mobile phone factory in Guangzhou” (Bevan 2016), owes little to the Georgian and Regency styles of the eighteenth and nineteenth century estates in Belgravia and Soho that the master planners envisaged.

Product and Inclusive Design While the permanent white elephants of mega‐events attract both media and public attention, owing to their very high cost and unplanned after use, it is clear that these extravaganzas encompass a wide range of design disciplines and practice. In addition to architecture, urban, and landscape design, they include: • product design, e.g. medals, souvenirs, mascots, merchandise • communication design, e.g. logos, maps/programs, signage/wayfinding, media • design branding, e.g. national pavilions, banners, logos, sponsors • fashion design, e.g. costumes, uniforms, athletes’ and officials’/volunteers’ outfits • inclusive design, e.g. disability access, facilities. Several of these design elements of the London Summer Olympics are elaborated below. Although in the past the uniforms used by Olympic athletes and officials had followed standard functional design, for London 2012 Stella McCartney was commissioned to design the athletes’ uniforms, using abstract patterns of the Union Jack. For the 2016 Rio Games she adopted a similarly traditional Coat of Arms motif: “a hotch potch of British symbolism: three lions hold three fiery Olympic batons; our nations’ flowers (leek, rose, flax, thistle) appear in the center shield; and a crown composed of medals sits up top (symbolising continuity, teamwork and shared responsibility).” At the bottom, Latin script reads: “Conjoined in one” (Pithers 2016). On the other hand, the launch of the controversial London 2012 logo and the mascots for the Games, Wenlock and Mandeville, led to Stephen Bayley, founder of the Design Museum, to describe the two alien mascots as ridiculous and infantile and the logo a “puerile mess,

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an artistic flop and a commercial scandal.” International mega‐event mascots and logos struggle to avoid both any cross‐cultural insults or encroaching on existing designs, reducing them to amoebic cuddly toys, blobs and squiggles (Figure 10.4).

Inclusive and Sustainable Design The London 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics sought to create a legacy of inclusive design and accessibility. For the first time, both the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games were planned together from the outset. The highest standards of accessible and inclusive design were adopted in the London Plan 2011, and inclusivity was embedded in the building of the Olympic Park to create “the most accessible piece of city in the UK” (Firth 2012). Specifically, the legacy of inclusivity encompassed: • “the most accessible Games ever” • a Park and venues designed and built specifically for both Olympic and Paralympic sport equally • a Park and venues designed and built for people from 205 nations. Inclusive design (and the associated “universal” or “design for all”) is a key concept steadily being embraced and culturally accepted, and in a narrower sense promoted in the UK by legislation such as the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) with detailed design and accessibility guidance and practice increasingly available. In principle, it places people at the heart of the design process. As an approach that considers the widest possible audience, addressing the needs of people who have been traditionally excluded or marginalized by mainstream design practices, inclusive design means designing and building places that everyone – regardless of disability, age, gender, sexual orientation, race, or faith – can enjoy confidently and independently with choice and dignity (LLDC 2012). The following principles of inclusive design were thus promoted in the Games (Hickish 2012): • people at the heart of the design process • acknowledgment of diversity and difference • choice • flexibility in use • convenient and enjoyable for all users. In the bid, London committed that the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games would be “the most accessible ever,” and that they would be fully integrated as one. The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) developed an Inclusive Design Strategy and Inclusive Design Standards (IDS), and also employed a panel of disabled people, and another of inclusive design experts, to offer advice and guidance to ensure compliance with the IDS (LLDC 2012).



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Figure 10.4  (a) Shanghai EXPO mascot and (b) logo. (c) Milan EXPO mascot. Photos: Graeme Evans.

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As a result, the Games’ venues were built to meet the needs of a diverse community and to the highest standards of accessibility with facilities such as: faith rooms, Changing Places toilets (fully accessible toilets that provide more space and adult changing facilities), baby change facilities, and wheelchair user accessible viewing spaces. The parklands and public realm were also designed with disabled and older people in mind, with gradients kept to a minimum, regular resting places, accessible/blue badge parking, and accessible toilet facilities. In meeting the objectives of re‐imaging the city, the success of the Games was not just about the sporting events themselves; it was about the whole visitor experience from arriving at the airport to leaving at the end of the trip – or the “whole journey” (Clarkson et al. 2003). A fundamental part of the London experience during the Olympic and Paralympic Games was how visitors were welcomed. The London Ambassadors were key to this, with over 8000 volunteers located in 35 pods across the city: travel, including London airports, railway stations, and tube stations; visitor hotspots (e.g. Covent Garden, Trafalgar Square); and City Live Sites and London Media Centre. The London Ambassador team was responsible for delivering seamless information and support to the visitor. In addition, specific Web resources were provided to help businesses welcome disabled visitors, and to offer comprehensive virtual guides to over 35 000 accessible touch points around London for all visitors (Fleck 2012). The London Games also created an accessible transport legacy manifested by the Accessibility Implementation Plan, which covers London underground and overground transport. Features include lifts, induction loops, tactile paving, platform humps, wide aisles, information points, the spectator journey planner, and Access for All program (Fleck 2012). The original bid also referred to the concept of a “One Planet Olympics,” and this focused on five sustainability themes: climate change, waste, biodiversity, inclusion, and healthy living. London’s Olympic site development included “green” building measures such as water recycling, halving the carbon footprint of all construction projects, and sourcing 25% of each project’s materials from recycled sources. However, as the Games drew closer, “officials noticeably distanced themselves from their original targets, focusing on ‘reducing’ and ‘mitigating’ the carbon footprint of the Games” (Moore 2012). The government’s official Olympic Impact Study pre‐Games report using approximately 60 indicator sets had found “below average performance for the environmental outcomes indicators” as well as social outcomes indicators, with gains yet to be measured from Olympic facility life‐cycle and energy consumption analysis. While some “green” opportunities such as a wind‐powered mill and the use of canals for the transport of supplies and recycling of electricity pylons were not fully realized, steel tubes in the stadium trusses were sourced on the surplus steel market, and the View Tube facility on the Greenway was constructed from recycled shipping containers. Also, the energy center’s combined cooling, heat, and power (CCHP) plant provided heating to the Park, reducing carbon emissions by approximately 20%. Ninety percent by weight of demolition



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material was to be reused or recycled – over 98% was achieved, largely through recycling not reuse, and 80% of the excavated 1.4 m3 of treated soil was, however, reused on site with several innovative “grey” water recycling schemes installed (Hartman 2012).

Dressing Up London The design of the Games was not limited to the Olympic Park and facilities however, since, in the build‐up, a local street design program sought to raise awareness of the event with local people (Evans et al. 2013). The whole visitor experience and legacy of the Olympic and Paralympic Games are highly important in evaluating the success beyond the staging of the Games themselves. The “Look and Feel” program was designed to maximize the benefits to residents and visitors by providing an exciting environment to the Games and building a celebratory atmosphere throughout London. A budget of £32 million was allocated to deliver this program as part of the Olympic public sector funding package, funded from a rate precept on London residential council tax payers. The main objective of the Look and Feel program was to leverage and build upon the pre‐Games brand identity to create a distinct and consistent look that contributed to and enhanced the overall experience for the Olympic and Paralympic audiences: athletes, spectators, host city residents, visitors, media, and television and new media viewers.

Experience Themed Areas These were strategically important visitor areas such as Oxford Street, Regents Park, the Houses of Parliament, and Wimbledon, which had been identified and for which additional dressing and animation was supplied (GLA 2010); £300 000 per zone was provided to deliver the “Look” in these areas at a total cost of £4.8 million (GLA 2011). Each zone was master planned in the form of a journey audit considering location, purpose, environmental assets, and content/graphic images, For example, the Greenwich themed area journey would start with the Cutty Sark as an area or point of interest and performance space, with flags, banners, and official “graffiti” both reinforcing the brand and providing wayfinding, as well as key London “facts” – cultural, historical, and future.

Your London 2012 This part of the program was delivered by the Greater London Authority (GLA) with London boroughs to bring the Games experience to life in local areas for the benefit of residents and tourists. The GLA provided a grant of £50 000 to each borough to enable it to purchase “street dressing” from the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games

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(LOCOG). This sought to help boroughs “dress” their town centers, enhance their parks and green spaces, and create focal points for celebrations and local involvement. Fifteen boroughs and provincial towns outside of London also cooperated at their own expense in the general scheme, in most instances these boroughs decorated their public buildings with national flags and bunting. LOCOG, in consultation with local authorities, created the “Look Book” (previously called the “Kit of Parts” catalogue), which included the London 2012 color and planting schemes, bunting, banners, flags, and bespoke Look items. The Look Book had been designed to enable local authorities to work with their communities to select what works best locally, with formal purchasing beginning in autumn 2011.

Transport This is where the “Look and Feel” for the city was rolled out across the transport network to add to the Games experience. Tube travelers had noticed the Olympic signage going up in stations all around the network. Much of this was planned to be paid by the media and £6.5 million was estimated to be spent on this package (GLA 2011). As well as the major investment in new and upgraded rail/light rail and underground lines and stations, including special Olympics operational facilities, more than 100 walking and cycling schemes on eight routes across London – including some that link the Olympic Park – were upgraded, as well as paths linking to outer London venues. Improvements included wider paths, smoother surfaces, and better entry and access points. Providing the right walking and cycling infrastructure was designed to help London 2012 to meet its aim of 100% of spectators getting to the games by public transport, cycling, or walking. It was, however, also expected to further encourage cycling in London, which had increased by 83% since 2000 (ODA 2011).

Experiencing the Games As in previous host cities, LOCOG was responsible for producing a variety of decorative elements, in keeping with the overall “Look and Feel” of the Games. Dressing publicly accessible areas across London and hosting Games‐related events were part of spreading the London 2102 experience throughout the capital. The symbol of the Olympic Games is of course composed of five interlocking rings representing the five continents, colored blue, yellow, black, green, and red. The image, designed in 1912, was adopted in June 1914 and made its debut at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics. During June 2012, Giant Olympic rings (25 m wide and 11.5 m tall) had been installed at key landmark locations in London (Figure 10.5). Lighting of the bridges also brought the rings to life at night. After the installation of Olympic rings over the Thames on Tower Bridge, the London



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2012 chairman Sebastian Coe said: “With one month to go to the Olympic Games opening ceremony, these spectacular rings on one of London’s most famous landmarks will excite and inspire residents and visitors in the capital” (Press Association 2012). The Agitos, the symbol of the Paralympic movement, replaced the rings on these landmark locations for the Paralympic Games. Constructing iconic structures is one of the most commonly used approaches to place the city on the mental map of tourists (Holcomb 1999) and to attract them to visit the location. However, there is always the question of whether this money is worth spending. The Green Party candidate for the Mayor of London, for example, criticized the money spent on dressing up London: “the Mayor has cut programs which would have helped people find jobs and cut their energy bills, but he has found £3.2 million for this display. There were better things to have spent this money on” (Hanna 2012). Opinions therefore differed on the Olympic design imagery: I was at Westfield [shopping center] yesterday, spent the whole afternoon and the evening there, and obviously it’s exciting to go round to that area and see all the different shops and hotels and things like that. Also there are Olympics banners, logos and stuff everywhere. So actually it is community spirit and everybody’s looking forward to the Games. But all that money spent on Olympic banners, that weird mascot, you know, everywhere! Is it worth the money? Waste, waste of money really. (Evans et al. 2013)

Fun Palace It is ironic that, on the very site from which the London 2012 Olympics emerged, a more radical architectural and social design alternative was promised for the public: Cedric Price’s 1964 concept for Joan Littlewood’s “Fun Palace.” This was planned to be located on an “island” site at Mill Meads – now the site of the Aquatic Centre – based on a design model that was prescient in many ways: temporary and flexible, with: “no permanent structures … no concrete stadia stained and cracking, no legacy of noble architecture, quickly dating” (Littlewood 1964, p. 423). Price’s vision was for a “new kind of active and dynamic architecture which would permit multiple uses and which would constantly adapt to change … thinking of the Fun Palace in terms of process, as events in time rather than objects in space” (Matthews 2005, p. 79). The building would have no single entry point and divide into activity zones. Price and Littlewood had assembled a multidisciplinary team from architecture, art, theater, technology, and even situationists, with cybernetics and game theory driving the facility’s day‐to‐day behavior and performative strategies which would be stimulated through feedback from users. Price’s influential Fun Palace design,4 although adopted at the time by the Civic Trust, was never realized. This marshy site would have been expensive to reclaim – although public

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Figure 10.5  Olympic rings at (a) St Pancras station and (b) Serpentine Bridge, and (c) Agitos at Tower Bridge, London. Photos: Graeme Evans. Source: Evans, Dong and Edizel (2013). Reproduced with permission.



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funding was of course found for the bottomless finances accessed for the Olympics and ongoing legacy. The Fun Palace idea was also the victim of London’s reorganization into 33 boroughs with the London County Council transferring the open spaces to a new benign Lea Valley Park Authority, with a different perspective on fun – and design.

Conclusion Contemporary mega‐events are creating a new landscape in their respective cities. The practice and primacy of the architect has been overtaken in this field, with the urban designer and master planner creating the canvas within which building, landscape, interior, and product designers compete for attention. Design meta‐themes and styles are set at this level, which limits creative scope and individuality, but which nonetheless requires a complex response to these overarching imperatives. There is often no single client, but a range of stakeholders and hierarchy which on the one hand imposes strict design compliance (e.g. logos, color schemes, branding, naming of venues), but, on the other, demands a distinctive creative interpretation of the cultural identity which the mega‐event purports to represent. Festival sites have provided often singular legacies in the past, but the contemporary mega‐event is both more expansive and expensive  –  and, as a result, controversial and contested (Cohen 2013; Powell and Marrero‐ Guillamon 2012). This is evident in cities that have actively chosen not to bid for these extravaganzas, such as Hamburg, Toronto, and Rome, echoing cities that have resisted the Guggenheim franchise. Notwithstanding this reluctance, cities in developing regions, notably the Middle East, vie for international sporting, cultural, and trade events and satellites of national museums, biennales, and institutions. The design opportunities and challenges are high, not least because of the huge budgets involved and the global reach and coverage they can generate, but also because the legacies they produce – physical, recorded, and in collective memory – can be significant and symbolic. Mega‐events can therefore be seen as grand place‐making schemes for the twenty‐first century, drawing on their boosterist past, and further extending the hard branding of the city, “creating a form of Karaoke architecture where it is not important how well you can sing, but that you do it with verve and gusto” (Evans 2003, p. 417).

Notes 1 The process of urban quarterization and zoning was of course evident in the design of new towns and cities in the twentieth century and in the nineteenth century, notably the master plans of Haussmann’s Paris and Cerda’s Barcelona Example/Extension.

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2 www.udg.org.uk/events/london‐and‐south‐east/rebooting‐masterplan‐ part‐2, p. 1. 3 John Geoghegan, “Shifting legacy: why Olympic Park plans are changing,” Planning Resource. See https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&ei=i3qGW7 6oN8mQgAaghZS4DQ&q=Shifting+legacy%3A+why+Olympic+Park+plans+are +changing+John+Geoghegan&oq=Shifting+legacy%3A+why+Olympic+Park+pla ns+are+changing+John+Geoghegan&gs_l=psy‐ab.3...4460.4734.0.5042.2.2.0.0. 0.0.117.201.1j1.2.0....0...1c.1.64.psy‐ab..0.1.115...33i10k1.0.Mm26mqIi6eg 4 A Fun Palace network still promotes the concept and organizes events around the country, with an art and science focus (http://funpalaces.co.uk).

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Moore, R. (2012). Olympic Village review. Observer (8 January). https://www. theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/jan/08/athletes‐village‐olympics‐ 2012‐architecture. Müller, M. (2015). What makes an event a mega‐event? Definitions and sizes. Leisure Studies 34 (6): 627–642. ODA (2011). Olympic Transport Plan, 2e. London: Olympic Delivery Authority. Olds, K. (1988). Planning for the Housing Impacts of a Hallmark Event: A Case Study of Expo 86. Master thesis. School of Community and Regional Planning, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Pithers, E. (2016). Rio Olympics: Stella: “I fought for the new Olympic Coat of Arms”. Vogue (27 April). https://www.vogue.co.uk/gallery/team‐gb‐kit‐ 2016‐stella‐mccartney‐adidas Plaza, B. (2006). The return on investment of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30 (1): 452–467. Ponzini, D. and Nastasi, M. (2011). Starchitecture: Scenes, Actors and Spectacles in Contemporary Cities. Venice: Umberto Allemandi & C. S.p.a. Powell, H. and Marrero‐Guillamon, I. (eds.) (2012). The Art of Dissent. London: Marshgate Press. Press Association (2011). London 2012: giant Olympic rings installed on Tower Bridge. The Guardian (27 June). https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2011/ jun/27/olympic‐rings‐tower‐bridge‐london‐2012 Read, H. (1932). Art and Industry. London: Faber & Faber. Richards, G. and Palmer, R. (2010). Eventful Cities: Cultural Management and Urban Revitalisation. London: Butterworth. Ritchie, J.R.B. and Yangzhou, J. (1987). The role and impact of mega‐events and attractions on national and regional tourism: a conceptual and methodological overview. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Congress of the International Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism (AIEST) (ed. AIEST), Calgary (23–29 August 1987). St. Gallen: AIEST. Sudjic, D. (1993). The 100 Mile City. London: Flamingo. Sugden, J. and Tomlinson, A. (eds.) (2012). Watching the Olympics: Politics, Power, and Representation. London: Routledge. Vercelloni, M. (2014). Cluster Pavilions EXPO Milano 2015. Milan: Internigo.

Part IV

Object

11

The Vibrant Object Alexa Griffith Winton

Introduction: Objects and the Material and Spatial Turns As he spoke, he whipped a tape measure and a large round magnifying glass from his pocket. With these two implements he trotted noiselessly about the room, sometimes stopping, occasionally kneeling, and once lying flat on his face. (Doyle 1887) Objects – sacred and profane – define the physical world and the ways in which humans navigate through it. They give matter and shape to the everyday, and can signify power, prestige, and agency. Artists, designers, writers, historians, and philosophers all seek to apprehend objects, to imbue them with power and to decode this power. The complexity of the materialized realm of objects is reflected in the language and taxonomies used to define and organize them. Objects, things, stuff: all signify items of significance to the human world, but each denotes a distinct relationship, approach, and definition of these human–material encounters. The field of object‐oriented ontology is vast and crosses many disciplines and methodologies; the research presented here is intended to provoke practitioners, historians, and students of design to continue to interrogate the significance of objects in this period of rapid cultural, political, economic, and ecological change. As the philosopher Jean Baudrillard noted in System of Objects, we often use objects – and collections of objects – as a means of constructing self (Baudrillard 2005). Writers use this apparatus to construct fictional characters. For example, A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Sherlock Holmes, the fictional detective, is seemingly never without his pipe, tape measure, or his magnifying glass, and in fact these objects stand to represent him even in his absence. These objects, synonymous with the detective and his superhuman powers of concentration, observation, assessment, and analysis, quite literally embody his powerful mental abilities and his empirical and logical means of apprehending the physical world around in him in his relentless pursuit of clues and their meaning. Architectural historian and theorist Beatriz Colomina has proposed that the interior itself is a detective story waiting to be decoded, and the role of objects in these stories – in the form of furniture, decorative objects, everyday utensils, clothing, books, or family heirlooms – illuminates these mysteries (Colomina 1994, p. 233). This chapter seeks to explore the shifting significance of objects and their relationships to the humans who create, use, trade, worship, and eventually discard them. It will look at individual objects as well as collections of items drawn together, as they are collected and displayed in museums, or used and cherished in domestic interiors. Drawing on studies of material culture, thing theory, post‐ humanism, theories of technology, and the theory and practice of design, this chapter will analyze the implications of these different approaches to naming and claiming objects and things, whether practically, philosophically, or ritually, while looking at the “liminality between human and non‐human” (Boscagli 2014, p. 11). It will outline several primary methodologies for analyzing and ­interpreting objects from the Early Modern period to the present, and it will present a selection of post‐1945 case studies, including exhibitions, specific designed objects, technologies, and publications, as a means of elucidating how the relationship between subject and object has shifted and continues to evolve. The study of objects is extradisciplinary, which renders it potentially unwieldy and confusing (Plotz 2012, p. 118). While this chapter considers works from philosophy and literary theory, it is primarily intended for those studying design and its allied subjects. The aim is not to propose a seamless taxonomy of methodologies, nor a representative collection of objects. Rather, the goal is to provide both the designer and design historian with tools and suggestions for the further study and expansion of this rich and complex subject matter, which is currently in a state of rapid change. The methodologies for the study of objects vary greatly depending on discipline, and indeed this range in approaches is represented in the etymology of the primary language we use in discussing these material traces. Object, as a noun, originally referred to something that was “a material thing that can be seen and touched” (Oxford English Dictionary 2018). Now it is more broadly interpreted as something that can be seen and/or touched. A further OED definition posits an object in opposition to the subject or the self: “thing which is perceived, thought of, known, which is external or distinct from the apprehending subject, or self” (Oxford English Dictionary 2018). The concept of the thing, as explored through thing theory, is a somewhat more ontologically fraught word. There are countless publications dedicated



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to decoding what defines a thing, and the disciplines of philosophy and ­literary theory engage with the teasing apart of an object’s “thingness” from its mere objecthood, expanding upon what Brown calls “the audacious ambiguity” of the word things (Brown 2001, p. 4). Martin Heidegger’s meditations on das ding and the notion of ding‐ness is the best known and most influential. In general, most studies of things, theories of things, and thingness investigate the liminality between human and object (or simply non‐human); Bill Brown’s thing theory, in particular, seeks to exploit the distance between person and thing, and in so doing has opened up broad new categories of enquiry for design and design studies. Bill Brown’s highly influential essay “Thing theory” is an extended exploration of the problem of teasing apart the language of the thing, both in relation to the object and as it relates to the subject (Brown 2001). For Brown, the questions raised through the interrogation of the thing, by seeking a theory of things, are both unanswerable, and incredibly potent. Recently, scholars of design ­theory have turned their attention to thing theory and the issues and possibilities it raises in relation specifically to the design process, and to designed objects. This is the territory covered by Leslie Atzmon and Prasad Boradkar in “A design encounter with thing theory” (Atzmon and Boradkar 2015), while Peter Hall takes up Brown’s assertion that things emerge where objects fail in “When objects fail: unconcealing things in design writing and criticism” (Hall 2015). Networked objects and the ways in which they ­ are  challenging conventional object/subject relationships, and potentially positing a posthuman world, are considered by Teodor Mitew (2014) and Katherine Hayles (1999, 2009).

Vibrant Objects and Animate Things: Objects and Their Cultural Contexts The study of everyday things gained momentum in the mid‐twentieth century, notably in the work of historians such as Fernand Braudel, as part of a scholarly turn away from grand, homogenizing narratives and towards the particular rhythms and details of everyday people and the objects that populate their lives. Histories of material culture draw on these methodological approaches. Thus, an almost encyclopedic picture emerges of the types and quantities of rags and other textiles, clothing, eating utensils, books, writing supplies, and myriad other material possessions owned by French citizens and families all over the country, providing a much more compelling narrative. More recently, historian Anne Gerritsen describes the emergence of the “material turn” in history as a reaction against the conventional “grand narrative” approach, which inherently privileged textual evidence, hence the stories of those with the power to read, write, and disseminate information via the archive and the printed word. The move towards material evidence implicitly

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acknowledged the power of the everyday, and the lives of the vast majority of populations outside the aristocratic and religious elite. In the introduction to their anthology Writing Material Culture History, Gerristen and Giorgio Riello outline the emergence of the disciplines of material culture, its scholarly origins, its strengths, and its weaknesses as an approach to history. As they argue, material culture studies are diverse in approach because material culture is defined distinctly by the disciplinary context in which the term is used. “Objects have meanings for the people who produce and own, purchase and gift, use and consume them. Material culture is therefore not merely the study of ‘things,’ but of the meanings these things hold for people.” Gerritsen and Riello are careful to point out that these meanings are complex, and that material objects are active participants in the creation of history. They note that objects are not “simple props of history, but are tools through which people shape their lives” (Gerristen and Riello 2014, p. 2). Historians, by expanding their definition of the archive and embracing the importance of objects and contending with them as vital and active participants in the creation of history, have embraced new methods of enquiry, including the histories of taste, emotion, and “even the ways in which they related to the imagined and real world that surrounded them” (Gerritsen and Riello 2014, p. 3). As a multidisciplinary field of study, there is no single methodological approach to the writing of the history of material culture. “Objects from the past appear to us both in their material form and in textual records where our imagination conjures their form,” and historians must learn to take both historical presences into account (Gerritsen and Riello 2014, p. 6). Gerritsen and Riello also observe that objects have their own biographies and narratives, citing the example of a Ming vase, which was experienced very differently when it was created in sixteenth century Ming Dynasty China than when it was ­preserved, archived, and collected in subsequent centuries. The twenty‐first century historian or collector may never truly know the significance of the vase to its original maker or owner, but by carefully constructing a rich historical context she may develop a more precise idea. It is through the awareness and cultivation of these biographies, in part, that these objects develop their agency. Gerritsen adds a reflection on the importance of the consideration of space and the “spatial turn” in history to this argument in her essay “From long‐­ distance trade to the global lives of things.” Gerritsen observes that “space is not a static, given condition but a contingent construction. Moreover, the spatial turn urges us to see space as having agency; humans not only shape the environment in which they act, but space is also a major actor in the historical field” (Gerritsen 2016, p. 531). The spatial turn, according to Gerritsen, emerged simultaneously with the linguistic turn, in response to the decreased emphasis on the grand historical narrative – based on written sources typically produced and preserved by the ruling elite – in favor of more diverse sources of evidence. The study of objects necessitated a completely revised methodology; objects, especially luxury goods, were traded, and tracing their biographies meant



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tracing their journeys, from raw material to the elaborate trade routes that distributed, for example, Chinese porcelain to Istanbul or Persian silks to Venice. Gerritsen points out the current scholarly debate over the degree to which objects assume their own identities versus gaining meaning through processes such as trade, consumption, collection, and display. “Objects gain biographies; earlier meanings of objects are never erased but reshaped and translated to new circumstances” (Gerritsen 2016, p. 541). The shifting monetary and social values attributed to an object are what sociologist Arjun Appadurai has termed the “regime of values” (Appadurai 1986). This notion of the laying down of meaning onto or even into objects is addressed by historian Peter Miller in his essay “How objects speak.” Miller notes the reemergence of objects not only within the more arcane debates about historiography and academic methods, but also in the wider context of popular culture. He cites the urgent cataloguing of daily life, concealed in milk jugs and buried in the Warsaw ghetto, as evidence of the speaking power of things: “between things and names, there is all” (Miller 2014). Miller notes the popularity of artist and writer Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with the Amber Eye, in which the author recounts the dramatically shifting fortunes of his Russian Jewish family by tracing the collecting and subsequent inheritance of a large collection of Japanese netsuke, ultimately ending up with de Waal (De Waal 2010; Miller 2014). The book traces the biography of this collection, from its origins with his wealthy ancestors in fin de siècle Paris, thence to Vienna, following their history through World War II (when most of his Continental family was entirely stripped of its fortune and property) to the moment when he himself inherited the objects. For de Waal, this collection of small, handmade objects, created to be used and touched on a daily basis, allows him to access his family history; it is a physical manifestation of their many catastrophic losses, but also the strength of their family ties across time and space. Miller (2014) also traces the emergent scholarly significance of objects in academia, citing the example of Yale’s revamped art history survey – traditionally structured around the grand historical narratives via artistic production commissioned by and for the ruling elite – as a history told through individual objects, their creation, and their global interactions. Similar object‐based surveys have been adopted as part of the first‐year curriculum at Parsons, across all disciplines, as a way of introducing future designers to the broad implications of the realm of objects which they study to design and create. This object‐ based approach to history is likewise embraced in Neil MacGregor’s popular book A History of the World in 100 Objects, in which the former director of the British Museum constructs a global historical narrative using representative objects from the museum’s encyclopedic collection (MacGregor 2011). Historian Frank Trentmann’s work on the history of consumption is of great value to the study of objects and their significance, both personal and in the wider context of societies (Trentmann 2016). Trentmann’s methods embrace

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Gerritsen’s call for interdisciplinarity and a focus on global networks and systems of trade and consumption, rather than solely on the consumer or collector of one particular type of object, such as the history of ceramics or dress. In his 2016 history of consumption, Empire of Things: How we Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty‐First, Trentmann provides a complex series of case studies, looking at the ways in which goods were valued, traded, collected, and interpreted through the lens of geopolitics. For Trentmann, the rise of consumption must be looked at historically and thematically, and the book employs both methods. Likewise, Trentmann argues, the issues of consumer culture, its history, and its implications for the future cannot be separated from larger, economic, and social developments, a blind spot he perceived in mid‐twentieth century histories of the everyday as found in the work of historians such as Fernand Braudel. Trentmann also considers the critical role of spaces of consumption (for example, department stores) and shifting means of consumption (the impact of credit cards on patterns of shopping and attitudes towards consuming). Treating daily life, the market and politics as separate spheres made it all but impossible to follow the interplay between them. This made the approach particularly cumbersome for modern history, broadly the period from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, when the spheres became ever more entangled … with the standard of living, housing and eating, leisure time, shopping and waste establishing themselves as core elements of public concern and policy. (Trentmann 2016, p. 28)

Trentmann presents three case studies documenting the rise of the age of consumerism in the Early Modern period: Renaissance Italy, Ming Dynasty China, and the northern European, primarily Protestant cultures of seventeenth century England and the Dutch Republic. In the Italian Renaissance, aristocratic families such as the Strozzi and their ilk began to express their status not through possessing large household staffs and retainers, but through the collecting and display of magnificent objects. The commissioning of public works of art and architecture were one of the primary ways in which these powerful families demonstrated their “devotion to public good,” and how – as Trentmann argues – we can distinguish this early culture of consumption from owning a luxury car or yacht today (Trentmann 2016, p. 33). Elsewhere across northern Europe at this time, excessive consumption was perceived as morally and politically dangerous, and sumptuary laws and other means of controlling the purchase and display of luxury goods functioned as a “social and institutional straightjacket which kept desire and spending in check” (Trentmann 2016, p. 43). Ming Dynasty China also experienced a rapid increase in the consumption of  luxury goods as well as concomitant anxieties wrought by shifting social structures. In response, wealthy member of the gentry Wen Zhenheng wrote



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Treatise on Superfluous Things (1615–1620), which offered advice on tasteful collecting and display of luxury objects (for further information see Clunas 2004). Zhenheng discouraged indiscriminate consumption of novelties, emphasizing instead the cultural and aesthetic value of antiques and the power they exhibited when displayed properly in a tasteful interior (Trentmann 2016, p. 50). This emphasis on revering the antique, and exhibiting a refined and restrained sense of display in one’s clothing and one’s home, exhibited by the ruling elite, kept a thriving consumer culture from taking hold, despite the increasingly conspicuous consumption of the wealthy merchant class (Trentmann 2016, p. 52). Material culture and consumption studies extend beyond the consideration of objects, but they provide essential, qualitative information about how and why objects can take on such significant cultural, social, and economic significance. In practical terms, these studies isolate important materials and goods, and map their networks of distribution, affirming – as in the example of the Ming vase  –  that the understanding and importance of objects is constantly shifting, depending on where they are in time and space. In this way, objects obtain their own biographies over time; as Trentmann argues, we can never truly understand the meaning of the Ming vase to its original Chinese owner or any of its subsequent caretakers down the centuries, but by examining the wider context of the vase across time, we can start to assemble its narrative and its identity. Networks of creation and distribution are dynamic, and force multicultural and extradisciplinary consideration. By looking at how and why certain objects are revered, collected, traded – and especially proscribed – their role in narratives of moral and social orders emerges, as seen in European sumptuary laws in the Early Modern period. Material and cultural studies also teach us that objects have the ability to speak – their language is material and expresses systems of value and remembrance that extend far beyond mere economic exchange values. As Peter Miller describes, the milk cans buried in the Warsaw ghetto quite literally contained the essence of the inhabitants’ daily lives.

Thing Theory In studies of material culture and consumption, objects are rendered sharply articulate and illuminating, and reveal much about the diversity of humanity that comes into contact with them as they move across time and space. What these modes of enquiry do not indicate, however, is whether objects themselves can have agency beyond their attachment to the people who use and possess them. For these questions, we turn to thing theory. As Bill Brown surmised, “Things lie beyond the grid of intelligibility the way mere things lie outside the grid of museal exhibition, outside the order of objects” (Brown 2001, p. 5).

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Thing theory is one of the most influential methods of addressing the role and significance of objects and their materiality, and was first set out in Bill Brown’s (2001) eponymous essay “Thing theory.” This essay, published as part of a special issue of Critical Inquiry devoted to the exploration of objects, argues that the relationship between objects and humans is not simply a binary structure of subject/object, but rather a rich yet unstable territory of ambiguous exchanges of power and agency. According to Brown, things lie in a fertile yet unknowable netherland between subject and object; he states: “We begin to confront the thingness of objects when they stop working for us … when their flow within the circuits of production and distribution, consumption and exhibition, has been arrested, however momentarily” (Brown 2001, p. 4). Brown further expands upon thing theory in his 2015 book Other Things, claiming that it sits “somewhere between the registers of history and literature, criticism and theory, convinced that to think meaningfully about objects, things, and thingness necessitates thinking not only about the ­surrealist assemblage, but about plastics and leather, about buildings and toys, and indeed about production, distribution, and consumption” (Brown 2015, p. 10). Thus, thing theory is a necessarily postdisciplinary exploration of material presence that includes not only the conceptually driven creations of the avant‐garde art world, but also the tools and detritus of everyday life. In emphasizing the reach of objects’ influence in all aspects of modern life, Brown structures his arguments about thing theory through a series of conceptual case studies, encompassing the worlds of surrealist art, modern literature, technology, consumerism, racist memorabilia, and 9/11 disaster kitsch. He describes the endeavor as “a materialist explication that marshals historical fragments” in search of the role and conditions of things in modern life (Brown 2015, p. 9). In these last two examples, Brown brings the inherent ambiguity of things and the potentially catalytic relationship between subject and object inherent in thingness to demonstrate how from time to time things articulate historical conditions where sometimes words cannot: the unresolved and deeply painful history of slavery and by definition the objectification of the African American body in the USA materialized via Negro Memorabilia, and the incomprehensible shock of the terrorist attacks as manifest through the proliferation of 9/11 tourist tchotchkes almost immediately after the attacks took place. In defining vibrant slippage between objects and those who make and use them, Brown uses the example of Achilles’ shield – that most splendid literary object, forged by the god Hephaestus for the half divine/half human Achilles as depicted in Homer’s Iliad. The shield itself, made of bronze, silver, and gold, is embodied with animated narratives drawn from Homer’s epic itself, literally figuring the stories across its gleaming surface. The poem repeatedly clarifies that Achilles’ shield is at once a static object and a living thing, just as it marks and celebrates the phantasmagoric oscillation among forms and materials … Homer’s distribution of vitality extends beyond the



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immortal and the mortal – to the artefactual. The “wonder of the artist’s craft” would seem to insist, then, on a kind of indeterminate ontology, in which the being of the object world cannot so readily be distinguished from the being of animals, say, or the being we call human being. (Brown 2015, p. 2)

Historian Bruno Latour “insists that we think beyond (or more precisely, before) the distinction between subject and object, human and nonhuman … to the point where a subject‐object world comes to life, like the Shield, vivified by the human aspiration, frustration, and aggression it has gathered” (Brown 2015, p. 6).

The Body, Clothing, and Furniture as Objects The connection between bodies and objects is an essential avenue of exploration for critical studies of the interior, and the body is itself arguably an object, simultaneously creating and actively shaping its environment. As the phenomenologist Merleau‐Ponty posited, “Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it is one of them. It is caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of the thing” (Merleau‐Ponty 1964, p. 163). Of all the everyday objects that construct the biography of the subject via the body, clothing is perhaps the most potent. As Peter Stallybrass observes, “clothes receive the human imprint” (Stallybrass 1993, p. 37). The complex relationship between subjects, objects, and things is laid bare when examining the relationship of bodies to things. In these encounters, the full power of things to conjure inanimate qualities of personhood – and even of state – become clear. This is particularly evident in Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass’s studies of clothing in the European Renaissance. In “Fetishizing the glove in Renaissance Europe,” Jones and Stallybrass use the curious emergence of the single gloved hand in a range of Renaissance portraits as a means of exploring the power of the glove to “trouble the conceptual opposition of person and thing” with the means to materialize the “power of people to be condensed and absorbed into things and of things to become persons” (Stallybrass and Jones 2001, p. 116). Clothing, as they argue, is quite literally a habit and connotes a way of life. They quote sociologist Daniel Defert on the history of the monastic habit: “The garment is a rule of conduct and the memory of this rule for the wearer as well as for others” (Defert 1984, p. 27). The exchange of gloves was not restricted to the aristocracy, and the giving and receiving of gloves was practiced as an “embodied form of social acts” across many social strata. For the ruling classes, however, gloves served to emphasize hands free from evidence of labor, hence a power derived from land ownership: “The function of these gloves – for both men and women – was to occupy the hands in the manufacture of the immaterial. They thus materialize a paradox: they draw attention to the hands while making the hands useless …” (Stallybrass and Jones 2001, p. 118). Jones and Stallybrass note the

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significance of the single glove as a “material memory of Elizabeth’s favor” in Nicholas Hilliard’s portrait of George Clifford, third Earl of Cumberland. In this miniature painting, Clifford wears a single embroidered and jeweled glove on his hat; this glove serves as a conspicuous materialization of both the Queen and her publicly expressed regard for its recipient. Social and cultural constructs are deeply connected to domestic environments. Virginia Rosner has identified the central role of women’s bodies to the Victorian home, “which both produced and was partly produced by the home and its special atmosphere of domesticity, characterized by family life, cozy intimacy, and a sense of comfort and well‐being, a middle class ideal that affected all social groups” (Rosner 2008, p. 128). In this example, the woman’s body and its domestic environs are symbiotic entities, dependent on each other to define one another. This type of nuanced analysis can extend our understanding of all the aspects of living in the Victorian home, and by extension the significance of the domestic interior. While the identification of women and their bodies with domestic life is long established, furniture – its design, its function, and its placement –  inscribes many roles in the domestic environment. It conveys hierarchies of formal, ­technological, aesthetic, cultural, and symbolic information. Philosophers and historians of material culture have long been interested in the study of domestic furniture as a means of apprehending value systems and modes of living. This emphasis on the critique of everyday objects as an essential tool in decoding wider social and cultural practices is articulated in Jean Baudrillard’s System of Objects, in which he suggests that the composition and arrangement of domestic furniture actually reflects the social structures of a given historical period. Thus, for Baudrillard, the decoration and furnishing of the French postwar bourgeois home – his primary focus – is fundamentally patriarchal in nature. Rather than perform a decorative or aesthetic function, the primary objective of the arrangement of this interior, according to Baudrillard, is symbolic; the role of the furniture is to “personify human relationships, to fill the space they share between them … They have as little autonomy in this space as the various family members enjoy in society” (Baudrillard 2005, p. 43). The ways in which objects – in particular furniture – can animate the social realm are explored in Mimi Hellman’s essay “Furniture, sociability, and the work of leisure in eighteenth‐century France.” Here Hellman dissects the ways in which furniture in the eighteenth century became increasingly specialized in terms of the social functions it was designed to facilitate. As Hellman notes, the concept of furniture as a social actor was so potent that a number of well‐ known and controversial writers deployed sentient, even speaking furnishings in their works of fiction. Tables, chairs, and other decorative objects were social actors that both facilitated and, in a sense, monitored the leisure acts of privileged society. Through strategically designed aspects of form and function, furniture appeared to accommodate



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and flatter its users as they pursued such activities as reading, writing, conversing, eating, dressing, and game playing. Through the same design qualities, however, furniture also structured and delimited the behavior and appearance of individuals according to culturally specific codes of social conduct. These individuals, in turn, cultivated a repertoire of visual, corporeal, and social practices and values that was both required for and further refined by their engagement with furniture. (Hellman 1999, p. 416)

If Early Modern furniture was responding to rapidly changing and multiplying social encounters, mid‐century furniture addressed the cultural unease of Cold War prosperity, as well as the growing acceptance of psychology, especially in the USA. Furniture designers rapidly adapted new materials and techniques, many of which were developed as part of the war effort, to create forms that responded to and in some case encased the body. The architect and designer Eero Saarinen’s Womb Chair, designed for Knoll between 1946 and 1948, comprises a biomorphic fiberglass shell resting on a stainless‐steel base. Interior designer Florence Knoll commissioned the chair from Saarinen, asking for a design that was “like a big basket of pillows I could curl up in” (McAtee 2012). As McAtee argues, the chair, with its womb‐like, padded fiberglass frame, can be read as a direct response to both the increasing tensions and anxieties of postwar life in the USA, as well as Saarinen’s own personal anxieties and fears. The Womb Chair emerged in the immediate postwar period, right around the same time that tranquilizers became widely prescribed to treat anxiety, and psychiatric therapy was increasingly common place. The USA was experiencing a period of unheralded prosperity, but the rapid cultural changes (hastened by the exploding consumer economy) contributed to an increased state of stress for many Americans. While Saarinen’s chair is – in its material and its form – a product of this postwar culture, the notion of furniture as a treatment for physical or psychological ailments has numerous precedents. As McAtee notes, the chair is indebted to the chaise longue, an earlier typology developed in part to address mental and physical ailments. The Womb Chair differs from these antecedents, however, in its frank acknowledgment of mental disquiet and its refusal to promise a cure from it. It instead provides a temporary respite, an auxiliary shelter within the shelter of the domestic realm. More recently, the Squeeze Chair, a collaborative project between Temple Grandin and Wendy Jacob sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998, extends this notion of the agency of furniture and establishes its ability to address neurological and mental conditions directly via body/object contact, and thereby to respond to and even to shape human sensory response (Figure 11.1). Jacob is an artist, designer, and founder of the Autism Studio within MIT’s Visual Arts Program. Grandin is an artist, designer, and autism advocate often credited with introducing the autistic experience to a general audience through her publications and speaking engagements. The blocky, thickly cushioned Squeeze Chair is nearly a solid cube, with only a

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Figure 11.1  Wendy Jacob, Squeeze Chair (Grouped), 2007. Source: © Wendy Jacob. Image courtesy of Wendy Jacob.

narrow bifurcation down the center, just wide enough to accommodate the human body. The chair features an inflatable membrane activated by a foot pump. The seated body experiences alternating pressure and release created by the inflated membrane. The idea for the Squeeze Chair evolved from Grandin’s Squeeze Machine, a device she invented as an 18‐year‐old in response to her sensory sensitivity, a common characteristic of people on the autistic spectrum. For Grandin, experiencing the pressure exerted by the machine for short periods several times a day aided in easing her anxiety, helped her recognize and develop empathy, and helped her to begin to overcome her hypersensitivity issues (Grandin 1992). The Squeeze Chair is an object that emerged from both Grandin’s experience, meticulous observations, and rigorous self‐experiments and Jacob’s role as a designer committed to investigating how the material world can shape the experience of autistic individuals. The body/object relationship is essential to its conception and function.

Objects, Thing Theory, and the Designer Leslie Atzmon and Prasad Boradkar connect recent scholarship on things and thing theory to design and design studies (Atzmon and Boradkar 2015). As  they argue, most design scholarship has sidestepped the more existential



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question of things and their agency, focusing instead on the more tangible aspects of their production and consumption. In order for scholarship to be able to “produce comprehensive cultural biographies of things,” Atzmon and Boradkar make the case for combining conventional design history methods with those of thing theory, yielding an interdisciplinary apparatus capable of connecting the humanities, social sciences, and design studies (Atzmon and Boradkar 2014, p. 144). Atzmon and Boradkar cite design’s central cultural role in constructing the reciprocal relationship between people and things as driving recent interdisciplinary studies of things and thing theory, stating “If doing design is a form of making things (typefaces, books, products, buildings, etc.), then it clearly participates actively in shaping agency” (Atzmon and Boradkar 2014, p. 145). They state further, “Theories of things generated in close conversation with design studies can complement and build upon those in the humanities and social sciences, further advancing the increasing engagement between all ­disciplines engaged in the examination of matter” (Atzmon and Boradkar 2014 p. 151). Peter Hall argues that thing theory is most useful in encountering things that refuse to be succinctly named and classified in his essay “When objects fail: unconcealing things in design writing and criticism.” Hall argues that research and criticism about design can lack necessary criticality when they focus only on commercially or culturally successful iterations of an object, which is typically presented without context, writing “the currency of design discourse remains, for the most part, the photograph of the object frozen in time or exhibited in a gallery in eye‐popping color on a white pedestal against a white background” (Hall 2014, p. 154). To Hall – like Brown – it is when the object has failed that it recovers its thingness.

Objects on Display Collections and, by extension, exhibitions of objects offer powerful means of reinforcing their meaning and status, whether displayed in the context of a World’s Fair, museum of science, historic house, or art gallery. As Tony Bennett has argued, the system of exhibiting developed from the privately amassed and displayed aristocratic collections into a complex network of institutions comprising the “exhibitionary complex,” which in turn: were involved in the transfer of objects and bodies from the enclosed and private domains in which they had previously been displayed (but to a restricted public) into progressively more open and public arenas where, through the representations to which they were subjected, they formed vehicles for inscribing and broadcasting the messages of power (but of a different type) throughout society. (Bennett 1988, p. 90)

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The framework of the exhibitionary complex and its spatial manifestation – the modern museum – provide concomitant public fora for contextualizing objects and collections within highly structured narratives of visual regimes of power and display. In this case, nineteenth century museums of science and technology used their collections of objects to create narratives of progress and of the superiority of technology, while museums active in the postwar period, such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in Manhattan, exploited blurred boundaries between the museum, government, and industry, allowing for “creative experimentation, provocative exhibitions and installations, and unabashed commerce and publicity” (Staniszewski 1998, p. 174). In its Good Design exhibitions of postwar modern domestic design, MoMA exploited the exhibitionary complex to simultaneously educate visitors about modern design using curatorial strategies that often imitated domestic environments, and to codify taste during a moment of social and cultural instability in the USA. The domestic furniture, textiles, and other household objects displayed in these exhibitions performed a highly particular narrative of modern life, one the MoMA, as potentially the most influential arbiter of avant‐garde taste, promoted on behalf of itself and a wide array of public and commercial interests. The evocative power of objects  –  to incite, to provoke, to educate, to inspire – has been taken up in several recent museum exhibitions, each of which celebrates objects, while pushing the concept of their exhibition far beyond the explication of material history. These exhibitions demonstrate a desire to disrupt traditional museum tactics of display, exhibiting objects thematically rather than by medium and/or chronology, so that anthropological material is shown alongside oil paintings and sculpture, and protest pamphlets together with conceptual art. Objects and their classification were a preoccupation throughout the Early Modern period and into the nineteenth century, as the aristocratic wunderkammer transformed into what we know as the public museum. The desire to identify and create taxonomies of classification that extend far beyond modern disciplinary boundaries is the subject of the Philosophy Chamber, an exhibition organized at Harvard University in 2017. Inspired by the university’s original Philosophy Chamber, an elaborate space full of vastly diverse objects, both scientific and artistic, which was assembled between 1770 and 1820 so that Harvard scholars could explore natural philosophy, “a cornerstone of the Enlightenment‐era curriculum that wove together astronomy, mathematics, physics, and other sciences in an attempt to explain natural objects and physical phenomena.”1 The collection consisted of natural specimens, indigenous American works of art, scientific instruments, and contemporary paintings and sculpture. The collection was dispersed after 1820 as part of a library renovation, and a concomitant move towards greater disciplinary specificity in research and education, particularly in the sciences. The collection was redistributed throughout the university at this time, and the Philosophy Chamber exhibition



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marked the first time these objects had been reunited since the early nineteenth century. The unusual juxtaposition of objects, and the intentional mixture of ordinary objects, scientific specimens, and works of art presented in this exhibition begin to articulate the unique context in which they were perceived in the original Philosophy Chamber, evoking their early biographies while extending their narratives into the present day, and illuminating the value of cross‐disciplinary conceptualization of objects and the complex web of ideas that connects them. Another recent exhibition that used the tropes of Enlightenment empiricism and thirst for knowledge as a means of highlighting the abstract communicative power of objects is The Learned Society of Extraordinary Objects, curated by Danny Clarke and Clark Clerkin and held at Somerset House in London in summer 2017. This exhibition likewise highlights the institution’s legacy as a locus of experimental and multidisciplinary thought centered around objects, and the evocative possibilities of these objects, by commissioning designers to create new everyday items inspired by members of the fictional Learned Society of Extraordinary Objects. This imaginary society alludes to the very real ones whose members congregated at Somerset House in the eighteenth century, avidly sharing and discussing the material world and its implications through the examination of a wide array of objects. Some of the objects selected for display have invented provenances, some are actual objects with real biographies, and some – like British furniture designer and co‐curator Carl Clerkin’s “Broom” (2013), an ordinary bristle broom whose typical straight handle has been replaced with a circular, hooped handle  –  are presented as provocative manipulations of everyday objects, items which seize upon familiarity, ubiquity, and ordinariness in order to conjure more fanciful and imaginative narratives. This new variant of broom has disrupted the conventional object by replacing the linear handle – designed for maximum functionality – with a continuous loop, inviting the hand while simultaneously challenging the user to figure out how it might be used. Similarly, Scottish–Indian artist Jasleen Kaur’s “Fathers shoes” (2009) are a hybrid creation of bright blue rubber flip‐flops commonly worn in India and traditional British brown leather brogues, suggesting a narrative of multiple cultures, times, and places collapsed into this single ­ object (Figure 11.2). These are ordinary household or personal items whose conventional function has been altered or subverted, thereby transporting them into Brown’s powerful and ambiguous territory of theoretical things. Like the Philosophy Chamber, The Learned Society of Extraordinary Objects interrogates Early Modern desires to document and describe the material world through objects. The potential of objects to exert agency and directly challenge dominant regimes of power is the subject of Disobedient Objects, curated by Catherine Flood and Gavin Grindon at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2014. This exhibition explored objects created in the process of enacting social change from the late 1970s to the present, including graphic designs for protest, such

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Figure 11.2  Jasleen Kaur, Fathers Shoes, 2009. Source: Image courtesy of the artist.

as the Silence = Death poster created by the AIDS activist organization Act Up in 1987; an inflatable general assembly space for impromptu political or social actions; and a battered and deformed pot lid used as a noisemaker in the massive 2001 demonstrations in Buenos Aires held to protest against increasing crime, corruption, and economic instability. During these large‐scale national protests, citizens banged pots and pans – everyday objects found in kitchens regardless of wealth or status – to register an overwhelming and cacophonous sonic expression of civil protest. The items presented in the Disobedient Objects exhibition pose provocative questions about both the history and mission of the Victoria and Albert Museum. They were not created as timeless works of art meant to be collected and displayed, or even as examples of design for consumption. They were all conceived as action objects intended to facilitate activism on various scales. Exhibition materials for Disobedient Objects included take‐home DIY (do it yourself) guides to creating several objects used in recent political activism, including a makeshift gas mask and a bike bloc, first used to fuse disused bikes together to create an improvised physical barrier during the mass civil disobedience against the COP15 Climate Summit (Figure 11.3). As the exhibition’s website stated, “social change is about making as much as breaking. Sometimes designing a new object creates a new way to disobey”.2 This concept of objects, their creation, and their ultimate purpose is in direct opposition to the objectives of the conventional museum exhibition and the framework of the exhibitionary complex. These objects were created expressly to facilitate actions. The Victoria and Albert Museum was founded as a working collection of exemplary



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Figure 11.3  How to Guides – Bike Bloc. Illustration by Marwan Kaabour, Barnbrook, 2014. Source: Image courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum.

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objects from around the world made accessible to the public  –  specifically designers  –  with the goal of improving the quality of British goods. With Disobedient Objects, the curators present a challenge to viewers to apprehend the immense social and political potential of objects with little or no intrinsic material or monetary value. The ability of objects to contain and express collective memories and to lend authenticity to even fictional characters is the subject of Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk’s 2009 novel set in Istanbul in the 1970s, The Museum of Innocence. In this novel, the main character, Kemal, obsessively collects objects related to his lost lover. The objects Kemal assembled include a range of items his lover used in her daily life, including hairpins, tableware, and even cigarette butts. Following the success of the novel, Pamuk developed the narrative of this imaginary collection into an actual museum – a materialization of the imaginary world conjured through Kemal’s highly detailed assemblage of the material remnants of the life he lost when his lover left him. As demonstrated by both the fictional museum and Pamuk’s realized version, one’s desired image can be located directly in one’s individual possessions and the environment they create. In this sense, these functional objects themselves no longer serve their traditional purpose, but are instead rendered symbolic in nature.

We Are All Cyborgs Now: Sociable Objects and  the Internet of Things In her 1991 text “A cyborg manifesto,” Donna Haraway provided a provocative and prescient portrait of the hybrid nature of subjectivity in the posthuman context, writing “We are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs” (Haraway 1991). The recent emergence of sociable objects and the Internet of Things – a complex, rapidly changing web of networked objects at scales ranging from nanomedical devices implanted in the body to the large‐scale systems constituting the smart city  –  provides a direct challenge to the conventional anthropocentric subject/object relationship, and recall Haraway’s concept of the human–machine hybrid. The Internet of Things has wide‐reaching implications for the domestic environment, with the development of networked appliances such as refrigerators, thermostats, and toasters as well as virtual assistant devices such as Amazon’s Echo or Google’s Home, which link directly to mediated networks of shopping and information. Author and interface designer Adam Greenfield notes these devices  –  promoted as providing time savings and convenience – rely on algorithms that are both opaque to the user and designed in service of the company that created them (Greenfield 2017). These animated objects also collect vast amounts of data about their users, and over which the user has no agency. Greenfield also observes that these voice‐driven “virtual assistants” are almost always imbued with female voices, and even names,



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in the case of Amazon’s Alexa (Greenfield 2017). In their domestic contexts, therefore, these “female” assistants reinforce conventional gender stereotypes despite the ostensibly neutral forms of the objects themselves, and further embed notions of the feminine into the concept of the home. The full implications of the gendering of technology‐based objects are outside the framework of this chapter, however Greenfield’s observation expands upon technology historian Ann Gray’s studies on how men tend to retain “control” of some domestic technologies, notably those designed for leisure, such as the remote control (Gray 1992). Sociable objects contribute to the growing potential of non‐human objects to possess both agency and independence. A sociable object is defined as an object (phone, virtual assistant, digital pet) that possesses its own network address, has the capacity to sense and respond to environmental stimuli, stores and processes information, and can actuate an independent response to this input (Mitew 2012). Given their ability to collect and process data, to edit and shape patterns of information via algorithms such as search engines, and to actuate without human instruction, sociable objects directly challenge the conventional relationship between subject and object. As technology scholar Teodor Mitew notes: The notion of sociable objects attempts to capture the heteroclite identity shift occurring when mute objects ranging from toasters to thermostats acquire the agencies to spill semantically distinct traces onto the material world, and detour their human interlocutors into an object‐mediated entanglement. (Mitew 2014, p. 7)

Katherine Hayles, whose research investigates the relationships between humans and objects in the context of networked data, artificial intelligence, and the subject/object relationship, observes that the profusion and normalization of sociable objects and other data‐transmitting devices have “changed perceptions of human subjectivity in relation to a world of objects that are no longer passive and inert” (Hayles 2009, p. 48). Designer and theorist Betti Marenko suggests that sociable objects constitute a form of “designed animism,” enchanting the user, and operating as a “trusted friend, with its own presence, voice, and distinct personality” (Marenko 2014, p. 221). The ability of the smart phone or digital assistant to cast a spell over its user through its ability to respond and react to input is evidence of a larger phenomenon in which the relationship between subject and object is being negotiated and redefined. Marenko argues that our increasingly entangled relationships with interconnected systems of networked objects, which she defines as the object‐scape, is redefining how we understand the world, creating a new form of animism: “A neo‐animist paradigm accounts for new forms of cognition – embodied, sensorial, contextual, and distributed – that are  produced by ambient intelligence through mapping, tagging, and date gathering” (Marenko 2014, p. 222).

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It is in the relationship of things – to other things and to people – where their agency is located, according to Marenko. It is not, she argues, something that things have; rather, it is something that things are. The more ubiquitous sociable objects become, the more seamlessly they are embedded into everyday routines of daily life, and the more pervasive their impact on daily life. “Fascination and magical thinking, triggered in great part by the fact that we typically do not know how these devices work, are meshed with intense somatic and sensorial activity” (Marenko 2014, p. 235). The increasingly enmeshed nature of people and sociable objects, and the potential for these objects to receive information and actuate correspondingly, points to a larger, more fundamental issue. This new meeting (merging?) between object and person suggests we are moving into a new, posthuman era in which humans are no longer centered, but rather must contend with the realm of the machine on near equal footing: “In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanisms and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals” (Hayles 1999, p. 3).

Conclusion: Object Lessons Just as in a detective story, the narratives of daily life  –  both large and small – often hinge upon the agency of objects. They serve as our motives as well as act as our clues; the ways in which we encounter them  –  and they us – are constantly evolving. In so doing, they map critical social, economic, and epistemological shifts. For example, the poet W.H. Auden replaced Achilles’ shield, which in Homer’s recounting is populated by lively dramas drawn from daily life, with grim scenes of postwar life, rife with violence and melancholy. Auden describes this world as “an artificial wilderness” in his 1952 poem The Shield of Achilles (Auden 1955). As Bill Brown noted, “being of the object world cannot so readily be distinguished from the being of animals, say, or the being we call human being” (Brown 2015, p. 2). Just as the technological and material advancements, rapid expansion of global trade routes, and increased patronage and consumption marked a critical moment in the relationship between object and self in the Early Modern period, the current historical moment is likewise one of dramatic and significant changes in the object/subject relationship. The Elizabethan (dis)embodied glove served as a potent substitute for an important person in absentia; a networked device such as a smartphone – another object held in the hand and in constant, intimate contact with the human body – promises infinite modes of connection, constant access to data, and the means to shape and construct our outward identities. Sociable objects actively react and respond to our inputs and reflect a highly scripted and edited image of ourselves and the world around us; we now may ask, is Achille’s mythic shield, and its animations of daily life,



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refigured once again, now as a constantly shifting and engaging stream of images and data? The increasingly rapid pace of technological development has thrown conventional assumptions about the connections between humans and objects into question. The ultimate implications of these changes are as yet unknown, yet designers and consumers are constantly and actively participating in this radical refashioning. It is imperative that those of us working with objects – as historians, designers, theorists, and consumers – continue to probe and challenge our connection to the realm of objects, to engage with objects in acts of resistance where necessary, while embracing their power to shape human behavior and figure the material world.

Notes 1 See https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/visit/exhibitions/4916/the‐ philosophy‐chamber‐art‐and‐science‐in‐harvards‐teaching‐cabinet‐1766‐ 1820. 2 See www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/disobedient‐objects/how‐to‐guides.

References Appadurai, A. (1986). The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Atzmon, L. and Boradkar, P. (2014). A design encounter with thing theory. Design and Culture 6 (2): 141–152. Auden, W.H. (1955). “The Shield of Achilles,” in The Shield of Achilles, 35. London: Faber and Faber. Baudrillard, J. (2005). The System of Objects (trans. James Benedict). London: Verso. Bennet, T. (1988). The exhibitionary complex. New Formations 4: 73–101. Boscagli, M. (2014). Stuff Theory: Everyday Objects, Radical Materialism. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Brown, B. (2001). Thing Theory. Critical Inquiry 28 (1): 1–22. Brown, B. (2015). Other Things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Colomina, B. (1994). Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media. Cambridge: MIT Press. Clunas, C. (2004). Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press. De Waal, E. (2010). The Hare with the Amber Eyes. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Defert, D. (1984). Un genre ethnographique profane au XVIe: les livres d’habits (essai d’ethno‐iconogrpahie). In: Histoires de l’Anthropologie (XVIe‐XIXe siècles) (ed. B. Rupp‐Eisenreich), 25–41. Paris: Klincksieck.

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Doyle, A.C. (1887). A Study in Scarlet. Beeton’s Christmas Annual 28: 1–95. Gerritsen, A. and Riello, G. (eds.) (2014). Writing Material Culture History. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Gerritsen, A. (2016). From long‐distance trade to the global lives of things: ­writing the history of early modern trade and material culture. Journal of Early Modern History 20: 526–544. Grandin, T. (1992). Calming effects of deep touch pressure in patients with ­autistic disorder, college students, and animals. Journal of Child and Adolescent Pharmacology 2: 1. Gray, A. (1992). Video Playtime: The Gendering of Leisure Technology. London: Routledge. Greenfield, A. (2017). Rise of the machines: who is the internet of things good for? The Guardian (6 June). https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/ jun/06/internet‐of‐things‐smart‐home‐smart‐city (accessed 15 August 2018). Hall, P. (2014). When objects fail: unconcealing things in design writing and criticism. Design and Culture 6 (2): 153–168. Haraway, D. (1991). A cyborg manifesto. In: Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, 149–181. New York: Routledge Press. Hayles, K. (1999). How We Became Posthuman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hayles, K. (2009). RFID: human agency and meaning in information intensive environments. Theory, Culture, and Society 26 (2–3): 48. Hellman, M. (1999). Furniture, sociability, and the work of leisure in eighteenth‐ century France. Eighteenth‐Century Studies 32 (4): 415–445. MacGregor, N. (2011). A History of the World in 100 Objects. London: Penguin Books. Marenko, B. (2014). Neo‐animism and design: a new paradigm in object theory. Design and Culture 6 (2): 219–242. McAtee, C. (2012). Taking comfort in the age of anxiety: Eero Saarinen’s womb chair. In: Atomic Dwelling: Anxiety, Domesticity, and Postwar Architecture (ed. R. Schuldenfrei), 3–25. New York: Routledge Press. Merleau‐Ponty, M. (1964). Eye and mind. In: The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on the Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History, and Politics (trans J.M. Edie et al.) (ed. C. Dallery), 159–190. Evanston, Il: Edie. Miller, P. (2014). How objects speak. Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www. chronicle.com/article/How‐Objects‐Speak/148177 (accessed 16 August 2018). Mitew, T. (2012). From the internet of things to sociable objects. Proceedings of the IADIS International Conference on Internet Technologies and Society, Perth, Australia (28–30 November 2012). Lisbon: IADIS. Mitew, T. (2014). Do objects dream of an internet of things. The Fibreculture Journal 23: 3–26. Oxford English Dictionary (2018). object, n. OED Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press http://www.oed.com.i.ezproxy.nypl.org/view/Entry/129613? rskey=RChBds&result=1&isAdvanced=false (accessed 16 August 2018.



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Pamuk, O. (2009). The Museum of Innocence (trans. M. Freely). New York: Random House Books. Rosner, V. (2008). Modernism and the Architecture of Private Life. New York: Columbia University Press. Stallybrass, P. (1993). Worn worlds: clothes, mourning, and the life of things. Yale Review 81 (2): 35–50. Stallybrass, P. and Jones, A.R. (2001). Fetishizing the glove in Renaissance Europe. New Enquiry 28 (1): 114–132. Staniszewski, M.A. (1998). The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art. Cambridge: MIT Press. Trentmann, F. (2016). Empire of Things: How we Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty‐First. New York: Harper Perennial.

12

The Consumed Object Jonathan Bean

What is Consumption? What is an Object? It is both a strength and a weakness that studies of designed objects and how they are consumed are split over so many different fields and approaches. For one, the problem is practical. It is difficult if not impossible to track all of the different research and perspectives on a particular category of consumed object. This is an appropriate place to out myself as a proud interdisciplinary scholar and note that the perspective I bring to this chapter is contingent and necessarily incomplete. I am aware that I am echoing calls for interdisciplinary work that have been made at least since Clive Dilnot’s (1984a, b) essays on design history were published, and since, including in a recent and well‐articulated call for collaboration between design history and environmental history (Fallan and Jørgensen 2017). As a scholar focused on contemporary taste practices and sustainability, I do not possess an encyclopedic knowledge of design history, so the examples that I engage with in this chapter are the ones known to me at the time of writing and should be regarded as such, not taken as indicative of a comprehensive comparison of the literature between fields. That would be a useful scholarly task, as would a comparative literature review, but both of these aims are beyond the scope of this chapter. Instead, what I wish to highlight is the potential for hybridization and collaboration between scholars in different disciplines. Putting aside the distinctions between transdisciplinarity

A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.



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and interdisciplinarity, this is a plea for scholars to cross disciplinary boundaries with the express intent of working with others from outside one’s own field. These collaborations would quickly expose an ontological problem that is too easily swept under the rug when we are writing within the safe confines of an existing or emergent discipline. The concepts that we use to frame our analyses are fraught with assumptions. This is not a criticism or a weakness; it is the very point of theory to provide us with a simplified model that allows the attribution of causality to complex phenomena. Yet it is difficult to imagine choices with further‐reaching consequences to our analyses than (i) how we conceptualize an object and (ii) what we hold to be consumption. These choices have enormous ramifications for the results of our analyses. This may seem like an incidental disciplinary skirmish, but objects—and the ways they are consumed—have immediate consequence to the social order and to the globe, which is the original source and ultimate repository for objects before, during, and after the cycles of production, consumption, and use. As others have observed (Fry 2008; Huppatz and Lees‐Maffei 2013), it seems likely that the environmental imperative of sustainability has much to do with the growing popular interest in objects and consumption. The shared awareness that the things which we are drowning in – and which threaten to drown us – are in turn leading scholars to reconsider how we think about the mutually ­constitutive relationship between objects and consumption. As asserted above, objects and consumption seem simple, but these two categories prove difficult to consistently operationalize in research. First, let us consider consumption. Consumption, as Alan Warde (2005) reminds us, is not an end state; it is a moment in practice. Though it can be defined as the point that a financial exchange is made or matter is transformed – money is paid, the cheeseburger is chewed – consumption is a concept that remains difficult to pin down. David Graeber criticizes the slipperiness of the term “consumption” and, following Richard Wilk (2004), the metaphor of eating on which it is based. “Why,” Graeber asks, “is it that when we see someone buying refrigerator magnets and someone else putting on eyeliner or cooking dinner or singing at a karaoke bar or just sitting around watching television, we assume that they are on some level doing the same thing, that it can be described as ‘consumption’ or ‘consumer behavior,’ and that these are all in some way analogous to eating food?” (Graeber 2011, p. 489). That we think of these activities as consumption, Graeber claims, reflects a bias toward an artificial division between the spheres of consumption and production and a bias toward neo‐liberal ideology. This is apparent in the false opposition reflected in “the assumption that the main thing people do when they are not working is ‘consuming’ things” (Graeber 2011, p. 491). It is worth examining because taking this approach to the analysis of consumption “represents a political choice: it means we align ourselves with one body of writing and research – in this case, the one most closely aligned with the language and interests of the corporate world and not with others” (Graeber 2011, pp. 500–501).

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Second, the category of object is equally slippery. Following the turn to object‐oriented ontologies, any analytical attempt to fix the meaning of a designed object as static, inert, or subordinate is open to challenge. This is especially problematic since what constitutes an object seems easy to define using common sense. The cup of coffee, pen, telephone, computer, and stapled articles scattered on my desk are objects, as is the desk itself. But push harder to find or create a theoretically sound definition of the term “object” and the task becomes difficult quickly. Why are the stapled articles a singular object when they consist of individual sheets of paper, a bent piece of metal wire, and fused particles of toner? The coffee cup has a removable lid, itself made of two parts; the computer, a universe of parts concealed behind sleek aluminum and glass. Is my office an object? What about the concrete, glass, and steel that form the building in which it is located? Considering the boundaries of an object must be one of the fastest ways down the rabbit hole of ontology (Figure 12.1). Yet we must be clear about how we define objects for the same reasons we must be clear about using consumption and production as a lens for understanding general phenomena. What objects are tells us about what objects can do. This makes particularly exciting the turn in social science to the material properties of things. While there are many influences and points of departure for this turn, Bruno Latour’s actor–network theory has been perhaps the most influential, in

Figure 12.1  Desk and objects, or looking down the rabbit hole of ontology. Photo: Jonathan Bean.



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part because of its orientation toward objects. This perspective has been advocated by design historians, most forcefully by Fallan (2008, 2010; also see Chapter 13). For a scholar new to the subject, perhaps the most spirited example into this literature is provided by Latour channeling an invented and plain‐ spoken American sociologist named Jim Johnson. He explains that what seems like a simple object, a hinged door, can be thought of as a complex social achievement that represents human labor and social relations: So, to size up the work done by hinges, you simply have to imagine that every time you want to get in or out of the building you have to do the same work as a prisoner trying to escape or a gangster trying to rob a bank, plus the work  of those who rebuild either the prison’s or the bank’s walls. (Latour 1988, p. 299)

Seen this way, the work that we would otherwise have to do to go from inside to outside is, to use Latour’s term, “delegated” to the work of the hinges. We push on the door gently rather than use a pickaxe when we need to leave a room (Latour 1988, p. 299). This is a transformative view of objects, for it lets us see how they are imbued with agency and helps us resist the technologically deterministic narrative that modernization always equals progress (Latour 1993). For example, one past function of administrative roles in academic departments was to typeset hand‐written manuscripts. The computer on my desk, in conjunction with the expectation of typing skills, has obviated this function, much to the chagrin of my colleagues who still hunt‐and‐peck, or for whom writing is a task performed with pen and paper rather at the hub of distraction our computers have become. The coffee, or perhaps its warmth, or the caffeine it contains, or the 10 minute walk it prompts, is instrumental in achieving a material reconfiguration of my body that is (sometimes) conducive to writing. The bound sheaves of paper coated with particles of toner in a particular pattern delegate what used to be a long walk to the library to retrieve journal articles from microfiche machines to a trivial process of search, click, and print. As Prasad Boradkar argues, “things are under‐theorized in design and their critical cultural examination could be a fruitful area of inquiry” (Boradkar 2010, p. 17). To illustrate the potentials and challenges brought to bear by these expansive perspectives on objects and consumption I turn to examples of how these two concepts have been conceptualized in CCT. Before this, however, I present a brief history of the emergence of what Graeber (2011) termed the “synthetic discipline” of CCT.

Studying Consumption in Consumer Culture Theory Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) is usually referred to by its members and those in the academic field of marketing with the acronym CCT. It has the unusual distinction of being explicitly conceptualized as an “academic brand”

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by two academics in the field of marketing who applied the label through a retrospective, qualitative meta‐analysis of  20 years of work in the Journal of Consumer Research (JCR) (Arnould and Thompson 2005). While most of the work published in JCR is positivist and experimental in nature, a subgroup of papers proved to be influential in shifting academic discussions in marketing (Deighton et al. 2010). Arnould and Thompson identified four areas of focus within the emergent field of CCT. These are briefly explained here with examples of representative papers provided. First, the category of consumer identity projects “concerns the coconstitutive, coproductive ways in which consumers, working with marketer‐generated materials, forge a coherent if diversified and often fragmented sense of self.” Central to this area of focus is Russ Belk’s (1988) article titled “Possessions and the extended self,” which draws from psychological theory to account for how consumers use goods to augment and enlarge the sense of self. Second, marketplace cultures focuses on how consumers’ work produces culture. A significant body of this work draws from other academic discourses, such as that on globalization, to investigate oppositional cultures, such as the hipsters studied by Zeynep Arsel and Craig Thompson (2011) or consumers and coffee shops that define themselves in opposition to Starbucks (Thompson and Arsel 2004). Third is the sociohistoric patterning of consumption, which considers institutional and social structures such as race, class, and gender. Doug Allen’s (2002) article “Toward a theory of consumer choice as sociohistorically shaped practical experience: the fits‐like‐a‐glove (FLAG) framework” exemplifies this category by drawing from sociological theory to account for tacit preferences that perpetuate class divisions. Fourth is the category of mass‐mediated marketplace ideologies and consumers’ interpretive strategies, which investigates how consumer ideology, and, implicitly, consumer agency, is shaped to conform with societal power structures. Work in this category is often aligned with critical theory or cultural studies and focused explicitly on the question of advancing change, such as Jeff Murray and Julie Ozanne’s (1991) article “The critical imagination: emancipatory interests in consumer research.” Of note since our focus is on both objects and consumption is the inclusion in this category of a body of work on servicescapes. This term was originally defined by Mary Jo Bitner with the intention of drawing marketers’ attention to the importance of the “built environment (i.e., the man‐made, physical surroundings as opposed to the natural or social environment)” (Bitner 1992, p. 58). While it may be difficult to imagine for a reader predisposed to design as a topic, the question of how the constructed and experienced environment impacted consumer behavior had not been systematically investigated within the field of marketing. Researchers working in CCT picked up this thread by analyzing how, in addition to their ability to physically constrain consumers’ movement in space, “servicescapes have a narrative design that also directs the course of consumers’ mental attention, experiences, and related practices” (Arnould and Thompson 2005, p. 875). Exemplary work in  this category includes Arnould and Price’s (1993) article “River magic:



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extraordinary experience and the extended service encounter,” which extends the servicescape concept to the natural environment. As the above examples make clear, the singular Consumer Culture Theory is a misnomer. Arnould and Thompson addressed this in a follow‐up to their 2005 piece, explaining that, while “theoretics” might be a more accurate term, the choice of the singular “theory” was intentional and reflected a need to cement a body of divergent approaches into an “accessible brand name” (Arnould and Thompson 2007, p. 4) that could successfully compete with the dominant approaches in consumer research: behavioral decision theory and econometric modeling, both of which are commonly understood as singular bodies of work. This was an intentional strategy meant to permanently inscribe a place for CCT researchers in academia, in particular in schools of business, and one that was meant to benefit doctoral students who had struggled in the job market. As Graeber (2011) observes, the articulation of CCT as an academic discipline occurred concurrently with an explosion of interest from industry on qualitative and ethnographic research methods. Writing for the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference, which also emerged in parallel with the field of CCT, Sarah Wilner reflects on the disjunction between this emergent demand for interpretive research and an academy that “overwhelmingly taught [marketing] as a qualitative topic … with an epistemologically positivist orientation” (2008, p. 291). In sum, the way that CCT emerged was both opportunist and pragmatic. It seized on broader cultural changes in marketing and industry, but those who named CCT also sought to increase its influence at the institutional scale. This intention for the self‐advancement of the field of CCT and its members has made it vulnerable to critique as an instrument of neo‐liberalism. Indeed, it is easy to see how CCT’s four areas of focus, which all place the consumer at center stage, are not in opposition to the dominant marketing frameworks, but rather further a “shared belief in the importance of consumption as the foundation in personal, social, economic and cultural life, the centrality of the consumer as an active subject (agent) and the notion that the market offers a legitimate (if not the most legitimate) context through which individuals should seek to explore, identify, and experience the world around them” (Fitchett et al. 2014, p. 497). In this view, CCT, in positioning the consumer as its hero, represents “what future neo‐liberal sociology might look like” (Fitchett et al. 2014, p. 500). According to this point of view, it is especially indicative that much of CCT’s institutional identity draws from an origin myth that stresses its oppositional quality: the Consumer Behavior Odyssey. As described by Harold Kassarjian (1987), this project, sparked by Russ Belk and organized by many who are still central figures in the field, including Melanie Wallendorf, John Sherry, and Tom O’Guinn, was born out of a desire to bring academic “researchers back to reality” (source not paginated). The Odyssey – a road trip in a rented RV – led to the collection of a wealth of data, some of which informed later academic publications such as “The sacred and the profane in consumer behavior:

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theodicy on the Odyssey” (Belk et al. 1989). But it also reproduced a well‐recognized mythic trope: setting off into the American West in search of new frontiers (Fitchett et al. 2014, p. 501). When Arnould and Thompson (2007) reference the misconception that CCT research is “context‐bound and a‐theoretical” and “only investigates entertaining esoterica (i.e. the wild and wacky worlds of consumer oddballs)” (Arnould and Thompson 2007, p. 4; see also Bode and Østergaard 2013), the alliance between neo‐liberal ideology and the need to define what CCT is not (conventional experimental marketing research) comes into focus. In response, Søren Askegaard (2014), defending the critical tradition with CCT and pointing to a body of work on “the anthropological, sociological and critical debunking of central mythologies of the political economy,” acknowledges that the field of CCT is “too much rarely good at making this absolutely crystal clear in our writings.” Askegaard goes on to suggest that “around the time when the research community adopts the name CCT for itself, it discovers that its real domain of interest is actually how different institutionalizations of the marketplace shape individual and collective practices and so whether these practices may or may not be meaningfully qualified as ‘consumption’ is of less importance” (Askegaard 2014, p. 510). This interest in how marketplace institutions shape individual and collective practices is the domain of market studies, as will be discussed in a later section in some detail; but what is relevant here is that the two flagship journals pursued by CCT‐ affiliated scholars, Journal of Consumer Research and Journal of Marketing, rarely publish CCT work that is not grounded in a deep well of qualitative, consumer‐level data. The review process for these journals enforces norms that require authors to include “participant verbatims” (otherwise known as quotes), excerpts from fieldnotes, and quantitative counts of essentially qualitative data, most likely as a consequence of the need to defend the value and rigor of qualitative analysis in journals that mostly publish positivist research. The effect is that the majority of work in these two leading journals, even when it purports to describe institutional‐level change, reinforces the central importance of the consumer (important exceptions are Humphreys (2010a, b)). In summary, it is fair to say that, in the case of the field named Consumer Culture Theory, the use of “consumer” and “theory” has been both roundly questioned and protested. If we drop these two words from the name of the field we are left with the study of Culture. Indeed, Arnould and Thompson (2005) define CCT as “the very fabric of experience, meaning, and action,” echoing Clifford Geertz’s (1973) definition. Rather than a problematic reflection of some lack of integrity within the field, I suggest that these challenges reflect the impossibility of inserting a concept as big as culture  –  let  alone consumption – into existing disciplinary frameworks. I have gone into this level of detail on the emergence, definition, and contestation of CCT with the hope that a more nuanced understanding of the field’s construction and constitution can inform the design historian aiming to make sense of a wide and divergent body of research. Furthermore, the debate



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over the role of neo‐liberal ideology in CCT sheds light on why the object– consumption dyad causes so much trouble. I will return to this idea shortly, but first will reflect on a few structural parallels between CCT and design history. As noted above, CCT defined itself in opposition to the dominant modes of marketing research. One parallel to this is apparent in the initial emergence of design history against the background of what has been described as an art historical tradition of arbiters of taste practicing connoisseurship and defending an established canon (Fallan 2010; Huppatz and Lees‐Maffei 2013). Clive Dilnot’s 1984 articles, then, served a similar institutional function to Arnould and Thompson’s declaration of CCT as an academic brand. From my perspective, the framework provided by Dilnot’s articles continues to structure the analysis of the field of design, which, like consumer culture, has become ever‐more pervasive, culturally relevant, and convoluted (Brown 2017). A second parallel is apparent in the dispute between the fields of design studies and design history. The field of Transformative Consumer Research, or TCR (Mick et al. 2012), differs from CCT largely in its normative outlook. Whereas much CCT work aims to advance the theoretical understanding of consumption‐related processes, those working in the field of TCR have declared an intention for marketing scholarship to cause change through direct engagement on causes of concern such as hunger, addiction, and poverty. While not an exact mirror of the debates between design history and design studies, what is striking in both cases is the force of institutional structures. Despite TCR’s central intention to change and improve the world through interventionist research and the overlap of a significant number of researchers who claim an affiliation with both TCR and CCT, the venues for publication in top‐tier journals are limited, which is cause for significant status competition. This competition, in turn, decreases the incentive to collaborate and has led to a fracture between two fields that both claim an intention to restructure the dominant logic in the field of marketing. A third parallel exists in the way design history and CCT are associated with other disciplines. Whereas CCT orients itself toward anthropology and sociology (for example, Eric Arnould, who co‐authored the article defining CCT, holds a PhD in anthropology, and several CCT researchers are members of the Consumers and Consumption section of the American Sociological Association), design history appears to be increasingly aligned with cultural studies and material culture studies. A recent syllabus for a CCT course in “Canonical social theory” displays a preference for French thought. The course included mandatory readings by Marcel Mauss, David Graeber, Bruno Latour, Phillipe Descola, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Paul Ricoeur, Gilles Deluze, and Felix Guattari, but does not mention the work of Daniel Miller or Stuart Hall (women were not represented in the supplemental further readings, either, for that matter). These orientations – and the gender exclusion implicit – matter in terms of the cross‐disciplinary collaborations that become more or less likely. These effects are amplified by institutional structures such as the UK‐based Research Excellence Framework and university tenure and promotion procedures in

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which collaborative work is approached with confusion or suspicion. The structures of the fields of design history and CCT also serve to mask and reinforce divergent assumptions about the object of study.

Why Objects are Overlooked when Consumption is the Object of Study Arnould and Thompson claim that CCT research “is organized around a core set of theoretical questions related to the relationships among consumers’ personal and collective identities; the cultures created and embodied in the lived worlds of consumers; underlying experiences, processes and structures; and the nature and dynamics of the sociological categories through and across which these consumer culture dynamics are enacted and inflected” (Arnould and Thompson 2005, p. 870). Object‐oriented ontologies such as actor–network theory trouble this consumer‐centric approach (Bajde 2013). With a few exceptions (Bettany and Kerrane 2011; Canniford and Bajde 2015), objects tend not be considered on equivalent terms in CCT studies when the focus of the study is, respectively, on identity, lived experience, or abstract categories. Conversely, in studies of design in which an object often is the object of study, the instruction to treat as equal in the analysis the potential for all objects and humans in an actor–network to exercise agency decenters the object from the analysis. This may be a desirable goal, but it is a tricky one to navigate while retaining a clear focus, especially when the expected scholarly output is a short journal article. Actor–network theory tells us that interesting stuff happens at the point of connection between the human and/or non‐human actors in an actor–network (Latour 2005, p. 136). This seemingly simple instruction troubles the premise of much of the work of CCT because there is a power dynamic between production and consumption; even when CCT scholars show that consumers have challenged their expected role, the dynamic is reinforced. If one strays too far from consumption as the dominant frame of analysis, one ends up in a different field of study. For CCT, actor–network theory troubles the analytical aim of understanding “how consumers actively rework and transform symbolic meanings encoded in advertisements, brands, retail settings, or material goods to manifest their particular personal and social circumstances and further their identity and lifestyle goals” (Arnould and Thompson 2005, p. 871) because it implies that there is a recursive process at play between the consumers and the material objects and settings that carry symbolic meanings (Bean 2018). For design history, ANT is of particular trouble to the tradition of connoisseurship, for it focuses attention on the question of what things do in culture (Fallan 2010). Yet this perspective is so different from the disciplinary traditions of design history that some suggest this approach may belong instead to the realm of cultural studies (Gorman 2011). In summary, ANT’s insistence on the



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agentic framing of objects troubles any frame of analysis that relies on an implicit or explicit division between production and consumption. What, then, is a reasonable path forward if the question is to understand the relationship between objects and consumption? I must admit that when I started writing this chapter my intention was to further develop an argument I made in a (2017) review of The Routledge Companion to Design Studies (Sparke and Fisher 2016). There, I argued that more connections between the field of CCT and design studies could “highlight the potential of considering design and consumption as inseparable manifestations of a single phenomenon” (Bean 2017, p. 244). There remains an intuitive appeal to this suggestion: take a field that is largely focused on objects, add to it a field that is largely focused on consumption, and bam! we would have what we need to understand objects as they are consumed. But the trickiness of objects combined with the dispersed nature of consumption can lead to a slippery slope of research that celebrates both the individual consumer and the individual object, reproducing structural failures for which both design history and CCT have been rightly criticized. What is a reasonable path forward if we wish not to further this “future neo‐ liberal sociology,” as Fitchett et al. (2014, p. 497) call it?

Rethinking Material Agency One solution to the object–consumption conundrum is to think more carefully about material agency. Cameron Tonkinwise (2017) suggests that the epistemological interest in agency is anticipatory. By this he means that the role of objects in our shared culture is shifting such that we need new theoretical tools for thinking about how objects shape and influence our lives. This is an exciting proposition for research that spans the domains of design history and consumption, especially because it gives an indication of how we might approach the role of objects in an expanding field. By tying together Latour’s concept of material agency with ideas from practice theory, Tonkinwise pushes back against the semiotic metaphors that structure much of actor–network theory. Objects, according to Tonkinwise, relate to agency in three distinct ways. First, objects animate the agency of the designer. Design, in this formulation, is not a profit‐driven response to the capitalist project. Instead, Tonkinwise claims that, following Elaine Scarry (1985), design is a humane impulse to make the world more comfortable and convenient for the people who live in it. Agency is visible in material objects in touches large and small – the handle on the coffee cup that keeps it from burning its user; the spring‐loaded mechanism in my stapler that makes it easy to bind thick manuscripts; automatic braking systems on automobiles that prevent or reduce the severity of crashes. Designed objects are animated by this impulse toward care. Could we say the same about consumption? Surely no small amount of object consumption is motivated by care for one’s self or for others: the cup of coffee for a colleague having a rough day;

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the mortgage payment that provides a warm, dry, and healthy place to live; the indulgence that makes a child smile. Indeed, the phenomenon of gifting is a primary area of concern in studies of consumption and in CCT in particular. However, the focus tends to be not on the object that is given, but instead on the social processes underlying the exchange. When it comes to the object itself, material culture studies has illuminated an alternative approach to understanding object biographies and life cycles in order to address the specificities of a particular object as well as its role in broader social and economic history (Dannehl 2009). This is an area where there is much to be gained through reciprocal exchange between design history, consumption studies, and other fields: what is it about the material qualities of particular objects that makes them suitable animating agents for care and consumption? To answer this question, I turn to the second relationship between objects and agency outlined by Tonkinwise (2017). Agency, referencing Elizabeth Shove’s (2003) book Comfort, Cleanliness, and Convenience, is achieved when objects are integrated into practice. This specific idea of material agency is related to but different than Latour’s, and it is worth differentiating. Latour’s explanation of material agency tends toward technological devices such as the door closer, gun (Latour 1994), or hotel room key1 (Latour 1991), insisting on a flat ontology where the agency exerted by these devices is considered symmetrically with the agency of other devices, humans, and various kinds of associations between these two categories as a way to account for the configuration of agency in specific situations. On the other hand, the version of practice theory articulated by Shove, Theodore Schatzki, and others puts systems that are largely seen to be self‐perpetuating at the center of analysis. Practices can be either integrative or dispersed, but it is the integrative practices such as car driving, coffee drinking, or a cultural preference for living in detached structures such as the single‐family home that are of special interest. These are culturally dispersed phenomena that stem from – and perpetuate – specific alignments of objects, meanings, and doings. For example, the dispersed practice of using chopsticks is part of a culturally specific practice of eating with variable meanings and skills. Chopsticks are the default utensil for millions, but they become part of an entirely different practice when they are integrated into a macrobiotic diet and charged with agency to slow the flow of food into a user newly mindful of a manipulative skill. My own work on taste regimes (Arsel and Bean 2013) takes up this perspective, as does recent work that extends the idea to show how individuals train themselves to recognize novel arrangements of objects, meanings, and doings in a process of taste engineering (Maciel and Wallendorf 2017). Whereas actor–network theory’s insistence on flattening analysis and “following the actors” can overwhelm a researcher new to a scene, practice theory provides a useful heuristic for understanding the process through which objects gain agency. In this perspective, the most agentic object is one that has attained the status of an essential convenience because it is so integrated with daily routines (doings) and shared understandings (meanings) that its removal is cause for



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crisis. From this perspective, hot water, gasoline, disposable diapers, and paper cups could all be subjects of design history. This helps us answer Graeber’s (2011) critique by identifying a category of designed objects that are, without question, consumed in the sense of being used up. Squaring this against Warde’s (2005) claim that consumption is but a moment in practice suggests the opportunity for design historians and those in consumption studies to complement existing analyses with a focused understanding of how objects can exercise agency and perpetuate social arrangements. Work on the practice of redlining, for example, which kept African American families out of white neighborhoods (Rothstein 2017), would be enriched by further consideration on the relationship between American building practices, durability (or lack thereof), and capital accumulation. Like actor–network theory, practice theory reminds us that material agency is inseparable from its social effects. Finally, Tonkinwise suggests that we consider the gravity of material agency. This word, he explains, is intentionally chosen to jolt us away from the semiotic metaphors that have underpinned much of the application and development of actor–network theory. From Tonkinwise’s perspective, it is understandable why people are perplexed when objects are said to configure or script the action of us sovereign humans. When these metaphors are understood not as metaphors, heuristics, or tools for thinking, analyses that employ them come off as nonsensically deterministic. The point of using gravity as a metaphor is to understand the ways in which certain material objects pull us in ways subtle or obvious. One readily apparent example of object gravity is the force exerted by smartphones. Our collective inability to resist the pull of these objects has led to all sorts of handwringing about addiction, not to mention novel practice arrangements such as the no‐phone restaurant and the social media fast. But this term also invites us to think more carefully about the embodied experience of objects and consumption. Gravity, for example, becomes a new and different experience when one switches from driving to bicycling, and becomes a force to be grappled with when this practice intersects with grocery shopping. Gravity is likely to weigh on one’s opinion on the value of lightweight plastic versus heavy recyclable glass bottles differently if one’s primary transportation practice involves a bicycle or an automobile. These three perspectives on material agency suggest that we consider how consumption animates objects, how practices stabilize networks of objects and consumption, and how the gravity of certain objects makes some forms of consumption more or less likely. Hold this in mind through the next section, which introduces an integrative perspective on material agency, objects, and consumption.

Objects and Consumption as Agencing and Agencement Some working in the field of economic sociology have turned their attention to objects – or, rather, the capacity of objects to structure the social relations that we call the market. Despite Askegaard’s claim that CCT’s “real domain of

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interest is actually how different institutionalizations of the marketplace shape individual and collective practices” (Askegaard 2014, p. 510), this perspective has not found much purchase within the field of CCT, perhaps for the reasons I outline above: there is not much room for objects in a field where the object of study is the consumer. Instead, I turn to a field where objects are the object of study. This chapter does not permit a broad philosophical overview of the broad field of economic sociology or the comparatively focused but still broad concept of market devices, so I refer the interested reader to a review by Muniesa et  al. (2007). Here, I give examples from the work of the French sociologist Franck Cochoy to illustrate the potential of connecting studies of objects with studies of consumption. Cochoy focuses on the ways in which material objects constitute a particular kind of consumer. One stream of research focuses on the quotidian grocery store. Considering the shopping cart, Cochoy (2008) shows how its shape – relatively deep and low – works in concert with the spatial arrangement of a large, self‐serve store. It is fairly apparent that a shopping cart allows one to carry much more than one would be able to manage unassisted or with a small bag or handbasket. But a consumer using a shopping cart becomes a different consumer. For one, when the user of a shopping cart puts an object in the cart and continues shopping, the items that follow it into the cart make it increasingly difficult to extract the objects placed there earlier. Returning to Tonkinwise’s gravity metaphor, the sedimentation2 of objects in a shopping cart exerts a material force that transforms the shopping cart from a mere conveyor of convenience to become what in market studies is known as a calculative device. Putting an object in the cart represents a commitment to purchase, but it also makes it physically more difficult to shift that commitment. Here we have an example of how studying objects and consumption together gives us a more complete picture. In an article in Organization, Cochoy (2009) works his way through the psychological and behavioral approaches to marketing and consumer research, ending with a citation of Arnould and Thompson’s (2005) CCT branding article. Cochoy concludes with a critique of what is usually regarded within the field of marketing as a beneficial focus on the consumer, writing that “consumption is all about the relationship between humans and products … but this discipline focuses quite exclusively on the first terms, i.e. on the consumer’s heart and mind.” The problem with this, according to Cochoy, is that “consumer research neglects half the picture it pretends to study” (Cochoy 2009, p. 32). Going “deeper and deeper into the consumer psyche” carries the danger of ignoring “the material entities which should yet be considered as part of the explanation” (Cochoy 2009 p. 33). Central to Cochoy’s application and expansion of actor–network theory to market studies is Michel Callon’s concept of agencement. This French word does not translate neatly into English. This is a virtue. Agencement can be both noun and gerund, which is important because “organizational and economic processes are aimed at ‘agencing’ the world … this means both arranging it



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(agencing as producing specific arrangements) and putting it in motion (agencing as ‘giving agency’, i.e. converting some people, non‐human entities, or ‘hybrid collectifs’ (Callon and Law 1995) into agents, or rather actors)” (Cochoy 2014, p. 117). This formulation is valuable for scholars of design history and consumption alike. When applied to design history, the gerund form of agencement – agencing – draws our attention to the groups of consumers who gain or lose in agency through the design of objects. A person receiving a designed prosthesis seems a fairly clear example of one who gains agency, but other examples make clear that agencing is a complex and collective process. The concept is equally helpful when we look at shifting patterns of consumption behavior. For example, the rise of so‐called car‐sharing services such as Uber make this clear, as sexism and racism intersect with new possibilities of mobility and outcomes are unequally distributed (Bean 2016). The noun form – and here English speakers are stuck with the clunky agencement – reminds design historians that objects can never be considered as inert things that can be isolated from their past, present, or future networks. This is not to say that the scope of any project of design history needs to spin limitlessly across all time, but rather to indicate the value of identifying and addressing these networks when they are relevant to the agencement. David Brody’s book Housekeeping by Design: Hotels and Labor is an excellent example of this approach not only because Brody reflects on his perspective on the topic, but also because one aim of the book is to unbundle the agencement of a luxury hotel stay. That is, in describing how things and humans are related, his analysis turns to the question of how hotel housekeepers might be given more agency. Though it does not invoke actor–network theory explicitly, Sam Dodd’s (2015) work on the National Association of Home Builders’ Parade of Homes takes a similar approach, exploring the agencing of the mid‐century builder and the agencement of model homes in constituting a market of home shoppers. In studies of consumption, the agencement concept is powerful because it requires that we think of the consumer not as an inert, stand‐alone category that can be studied in isolation – as in Belgian consumers of eyeliner, American consumers of gasoline, or Japanese consumers of pancakes – but rather an entity that is, to use a precious but useful phrase of science and technology studies, always already a hybrid. Put another way, this means that consumers are constituted not only by the culture in which they are situated, but also by their relationships to the material objects, other humans, and other human–material hybrids in the specific context at hand. I am a different entity when I am in Japan eating pancakes than when I am in America using gasoline and different again if I were to become an eyeliner‐wearing Belgian. This may seem to underscore Graeber’s (2011) point about the futility of the term consumption. But the larger process of neo‐liberalism has efficiently turned most activities into acts of consumption (Harvey 2005), and, equally importantly, neo‐liberalism continues to actively reconfigure what being human means in terms compatible with capitalist logic (Giesler and Veresiu 2014). Since eating pancakes, using

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gasoline, and wearing eyeliner are all considered forms of consumer practice, the concept of agencement gives us a useful leg up on unpacking the complexity of this term. The agencement perspective means looking at the consumer as a network. This is because “any consumption experience involves the consumer, of course, but also a wider actor‐network made up of other people and things attached to its unfolding, such as friends or relatives, but also market professionals (e.g. vendors, marketers, and advertisers) as well as a huge array of other entities like retail shelves, price tags, product packaging, shopping bags, cars, and so on … the success of the consumption experience depends on the successful articulation of all the actor‐network’s constituencies” (Cochoy et al. 2016, p. 5). From the perspective of actor–network theory, the category of “consumer”  –  and any analytical category  –  is only a problem when it is taken for granted and ossified rather than understood as a performed entity that is nearly always in the process of transformation. As Fallan and Jørgensen put it, “this change in perspective is necessary; rather than thinking about the world as once whole, but now broken, we should consider it always‐already broken … we should take breakdown, dissolution, and change as our starting point” (Fallan and Jørgensen 2017, p. 117). Cochoy, Pascale Trompette, and Luis Araujo offer us a useful definition of objects in the landscape of consumption: “devices laden with their own capacity to act and interact – see, for example, price tags, product packaging, loyalty cards, shopping carts, plastic bags, or computer screens in trading rooms. All these artifacts are not static backdrops to action; they partake in action” (Cochoy et al. 2016, p. 5).

Connecting the Dots between Different Fields This analytical perspective suggests that a unified vocabulary would be useful. It is tempting to call for a syncretic new field of study with a central focus on understanding the recursive relationship that unfolds as objects are consumed. Whether or not that is possible or desirable remains to be seen. Such a project would well complement the chart atlas of contemporary practice, or CACP, that Elizabeth Shove (2009) called for. Presented tongue‐in‐cheek, the idea is that the CACP would represent the totality of contemporary practices, that is practice‐time profiles. The CACP, which represents the totality of contemporary practices in terms of related injunctions or compulsions, minutes of attention required, and associated features of sequence and timing, can also be used to plot the social‐spatial distribution of specific practices. The CACP can, for example, reveal all those social groups and societies in which extremely time‐hungry sports like golf are established and in which they exist as something that people routinely do. (Shove 2009, p. 29)

Human activity would be impossible to quantify at this broader scale, but this suggests that a first step toward understanding the relationship between objects



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and consumption is a thorough understanding not only of the practices in which they are involved, but also those they displace. The reality of time means that spending all that time playing golf, for example, means that certain other practices simply do not happen. What gets displaced? This question can help us see the agencing process in action as it works to realign the generic consumer (whatever that is) from one set of practices to another. When and if we witness stability – when identifiable forms of golf playing emerge as a practice – we can describe the achievement of agencement. Considering these methodological concerns and returning to the question of unifying disparate fields of study, market studies could be a valuable meeting point for scholars of design history and scholars of consumption. It offers a territory that privileges neither an abstract and problematic conception of consumers or consumption nor a difficult‐to‐pin‐down or overly expansive definition of design. Yet market studies is founded on Callon’s interest in “organizing processes, i.e. in activities aimed at selecting, sorting, framing, shaping, formatting, stabilizing, and planning the world” (Cochoy 2014, p. 114). Is this not what design, in all its forms, is? What is most exciting is that, in this way of understanding the world, consumers are an entity that is designed – and subject to continual redesign! Work in market studies shows us how to consider in parallel objects and consumption – as devices that exert an agencing force that reorganizes relationships between people and matter and as agencements, durable collectives that perpetuate particular forms of sociomaterial arrangement.

Notes 1 Lambros Malafouris (2013) has an excellent description and extension of Latour’s concept. 2 I am using the word “sedimentation” here with a nod to the cultural geographer Alan Pred’s (1984) poetic use of the term to describe the way that the built environment reflects the process of structuration.

References Allen, D.E. (2002). Toward a theory of consumer choice as sociohistorically shaped practical experience: the fits‐like‐a‐glove (FLAG) framework. Journal of Consumer Research 28 (4): 515–532. Arnould, E. and Thompson, C. (2007). Consumer culture theory (and we really mean theoretics). Consumer Culture Theory 11: 3–22. doi: https://doi. org/10.1016/S0885‐2111(06)11001‐7. Arnould, E.J. and Price, L.L. (1993). River magic: extraordinary experience and the extended service encounter. Journal of Consumer Research 20 (1): 24.

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The Object of Design History Lessons for the Environment Kjetil Fallan

The most important design education in the world is not the education of designers – it is the education of us all in matters of design. Many design historians do contribute to the education of designers, but, as a field of scholarly endeavor, the object of design history is much broader. As curators and critics, and as academics, design historians are actively interpreting and shaping design culture, and thus engage in educating the public in understanding design and its roles in society. This perspective on the educative aspects of design history is in line with Maya Oppenheimer’s (2016, pp. 4–5) assertion that examinations of design pedagogy “should extend outside higher education to continuing education, public benefit and collections‐based institutions, as well as to younger generations.” Because design is not just a profession, a practice, and an activity, but an absolutely integral aspect of societies and cultures across the world and throughout time, there are good reasons to take a comprehensive view of the purpose of design history. I have elsewhere warned against the potential ramifications of design history being pigeonholed as “a tool for better design,” arguing that such instrumentalism is detrimental to design history’s wider relevance and influence and recommending instead we cultivate the discipline’s position in the broader field of the humanities (Fallan 2013). Similarly, while emphasizing the value of its role in the education of designers, D.J. Huppatz and Grace Lees‐Maffei (2013, p. 325) concluded that design history needs to overcome the limitations posed by the reputation as a “service” subject in order to strengthen its recognition as a research discipline in its own right. “However,” they continue, “there is a case A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.



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to be made for the wider relevance of design history beyond design, into something of relevance to all humanities scholars, and beyond that into something of interest to the general public” (Huppatz and Lees‐Maffei 2013, p. 325). Given the prominence of visual and material culture in contemporary society, the relevance of design history should not be hard to sell. The fact remains, though, that design history, in the larger scheme of things, is not a term on everybody’s lips, so it is worth taking stock of how design history can speak to a broader audience – or, rather, to a greater societal significance. The ambition, then, is to suggest an object  –  understood both as purpose and as subject matter  –  of design history that embodies the potential for such an extension of the field. In 2009 Victor Margolin lamented that design historians remain on the margins of the broader field of historical research, with little or no influence on fellow historians of different denominations or impact on society at large. He challenged design historians “to make a persuasive case for the relevance of their knowledge to fora outside of their field” (Margolin 2009, p. 104). His ongoing magisterial project for a World History of Design (Margolin 2015)1 might be considered Margolin’s own response to this call, but, as I will attempt to exemplify in the following, there are many other, less daunting, strategies for making design history relevant beyond its own congregation. First, the educative potential of design history is directly dependent on the conception of historical scholarship in general. History used to be educational in the broader sense, exactly as I am arguing for here, and, interestingly, there are signs of a renaissance for the public function of historical scholarship: Until history became professionalised as an academic discipline, with departments, journals, accrediting associations, and all the other formal trappings of a profession, its mission had been primarily educative, even reformative. History explained communities to themselves. It helped rulers to orient their exercise of power and in turn advised their advisors how to influence their superiors. And it provided citizens more generally with the coordinates by which they could understand the present and direct their actions towards the future. The mission for history as a guide to life never entirely lapsed. Increasing professionalism, and the explosion of scholarly publishing by historians within universities, obscured and at times occluded its purpose. But now it is returning along with the longue durée and the expansion of possibilities  –  for new research and novel public engagement – that accompanies it. (Guldi and Armitage 2014, pp. 9–10)

Second, the educative potential of design history relies on our approaches. Because if the objective of design history should be to “explain communities to themselves,” and to be “reformative,” we run the risk of returning to a problem all too familiar in the historiography of design: besserwisserei. How can we avoid replicating the deep trenches of moralism dug again and again throughout the history of design reform? Can there be non‐moralizing design reform? A good strategy, presumably, would be to opt for discursive rather than didactic modes of intervention.

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Third, the educative potential of design history is related to our subject matter. Connoisseurial analyses of eighteenth century crystal are unlikely to be perceived as critical to, and relevant for, a broader academic and public discourse. In order to aspire to the educative mission and public engagement that Guldi and Armitage, and Margolin call for, design history needs to tackle issues of great societal significance. There is no shortage of such issues which design history potentially could speak to, spanning from international migration, via the digital revolution, to mental health (Fallan 2019). In the present context, though, I will focus on a topic I consider to comprise perhaps the most pressing challenge for design history: accounting for the essential, but ambiguous, agency that design holds in the blurred borderlands of nature and culture and  at the intricate intersections between the built/made and the natural environment. We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in design discourse. The dominant cultural imperative is shifting from “thou shall be modern” to “thou shall be sustainable.” Clearly, this shift needs to be reflected also in design education – not just in the sense of the education of designers, but, perhaps more importantly, in the sense of the education of citizens and consumers, in short: all of us; the collective; society. David Orr provides a simple example of why the public educative role matters in his book The Nature of Design: [P]roblems posed by [ecological] limits, whether parking lots or the management of global carbon dioxide emissions, represent opportunities for civic education. Discussions about the Kyoto Protocol, for example, should not be confined to legislatures and government halls around the planet. Such agreements ought to be debated in every city, town, and village around the world. Only in this way will we come to regard self‐governance as part of the living and common heritage of humankind. … It is also an opportunity to debate what kind of communities we want to create and get on with the job of building them. What better educational opportunity could there be? (Orr 2002, pp. 122–123)

How, then, does design history figure in this mission? Given the premise, as discussed above, that design history can play a more prominent public educative role than is currently the case, the answer should be fairly evident. After all, design is a crucial part of the problem of environmental destruction, but equally a crucial part of any solution. It is important, though, to learn from historiography. As sustainability substitutes modernity as the dominant imperative of our time, we should be wary of substituting the modernist moralism of yore with an equivalently biased agenda. Even if the object of design history is geared more towards issues of environmental impact, it will need to be more than a design history of, or for, sustainability. Acknowledging the full implications of the Anthropocene will, according to Dipesh Chakrabarty (2009, p. 201), “spell the collapse of the age‐old humanist distinction between natural history and human history,” and thus



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have massive ramifications for historical scholarship of all kinds. As humans have taken the step from biological to geological agents, he argues, historians can no longer treat nature as a foil for human activities, but need to consider the reciprocity implied in this recasting of human agency and the consequences it has for our understanding of key tropes of historical development, such as modernity, globalization, capitalism, etc. (Chakrabarty 2009, 2016). In a critical assessment of the Anthropocene hype Helmuth Trischler (2016, p. 318) warns of the dangers of treating it as a buzz‐word, but maintains that it has great significance as a cultural concept because “it blurs established boundaries on many different levels between science and the public as well as between the sciences and the humanities.” For the scholarly practices of historians more specifically, he observes, “it opens up the possibility of freeing ourselves from traditional dichotomies such as ‘nature’ vs. ‘culture’ and redefining the relationship between environment and society as inextricably intertwined.” Herein lie significant opportunities for extending the object of design history to explore these hybrid entities and arenas. Despite the fact that design ever since its inception – whenever that is taken to be – has exercised considerable impact on the natural environment and, conversely, environmental factors are key to any design project, design features as inconspicuously in environmental history as do environmental issues in design history. Environmental historians are becoming more interested in how technology and material culture affects environmental change, but rarely acknowledge design explicitly. Similarly, design historians are keenly aware of design’s deep ecological entanglements, but have been surprisingly reticent about integrating these perspectives in their work. It is therefore high time design history engage more consistently with issues of environmental controversies and sustainable development – not least in order to strengthen the field’s societal significance (Fallan and Jørgensen 2017). As an object of design history, then, a sustained engagement with environmental issues holds the potential to make design history eminently relevant and educative in a broader sense.

The Nature of/in Design Reform Much of the work needed to grow this new area of design history research clearly must venture into unchartered waters, adding to the empirical scope of the field. Nevertheless, we also need to look afresh at types of material already familiar to design historians. As the latter strategy may provide a lower threshold, it is an efficient and productive way of showcasing what design history can contribute both to the rapidly expanding domain of the environmental humanities and to the contemporary discourse on sustainability and design. In their reply to Tony Fry’s (2009, p. 120) harsh critique of design history as irrelevant and failing to address consequential issues such as sustainability, Anne Massey and Paul Micklethwaite (2009, p. 123) argued precisely for a “thrifty recycling” of items

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from “the wardrobe of Design History,” with special reference to the Arts and Crafts movement and the British Utility Scheme as familiar design historical episodes with obvious relevance and which are ripe for reassessment. Identifying environmental challenges such as climate change as a particularly fertile and important area for historical scholarship, Guldi and Armitage argue that historical case studies “from the deep or recent past alike can point to alternative traditions in governance, collecting and describing the fringe movements of the past that are bearing useful fruit today” (Guldi and Armitage 2014, p. 68). From a design history perspective, their claim chimes exceedingly well with the field’s longstanding engagement with precisely such traditions and movements, the full value of which often have been appreciated only significantly later. These types of historical narratives, they continue, “perform an important role: they are energising of new movements; they give scientists and policy‐makers on the ground a sense of where to look for possible futures” (Guldi and Armitage 2014, p. 68). In this manner, by studying past examples of actors, events, and movements working to – explicitly or implicitly – reduce, mitigate, or revert environmental problems, design history can contribute to the forging of more resilient futures. Design reform movements have long formed a staple of design historical research, and none more so than the Arts and Crafts movement. These histories tend to be tales of artists and craftsmen who – revolting against the social, cultural, ethical, and aesthetic corollaries of industrialization – moved from the city to the country to set up collective workshops where life and work would be one, and produce quality artistic goods inspired by premodern communal practices and the beauty of nature. As such, established design historical narratives of the Arts and Crafts movement have largely cast its relationship with nature and the environment as one of creative inspiration and social critique rather than in ecological terms (Fallan and Jørgensen 2017). However, there is, as Massey and Micklethwaite (2009, p. 123) point out, much about the Arts and Crafts movement that could warrant a re‐reading of its ideological underpinnings in the light of subsequently escalating concerns for design’s more troublesome entanglements with nature and the environment. Key figures wrote at length, and with ardor, about their observations of the defilement of nature caused by industrial manufacture and urbanization. In John Ruskin’s writings on the topic, the unholy greed of the capitalist logic is in constant conflict with his natural theology, “as the endless metonymies of modern civilization are superimposed upon the precise metaphors of Eden, and the precious pastoral composition is decomposed before our eyes” (Carroll 1995, p. 75). A particularly vivid example can be found in an 1880 essay describing his return to a childhood pastoral idyll: [N]o existing terms of language known to me are enough to describe the forms of filth, and modes of ruin, that varied themselves along the course of Croxted Lane. … mixed dust of every unclean thing that can crumble in draught, and mildew of every unclean thing that can rot or rust in damp: ashes and rags,



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beer‐bottles and old shoes, battered pans, smashed crockery, shreds of nameless clothes, door‐sweepings, floor‐sweepings, kitchen garbage, back‐garden sewage, old iron, rotten timber jagged with out‐torn nails, cigar‐ends, pipe‐bowls, ­cinders, bones, and ordure, indescribable; and, variously kneaded into, sticking to, or fluttering foully here and there over all these, remnants, broadcast, of every manner of newspaper, advertisement or big‐lettered bill, festering and flaunting out their last publicity in the pits of stinking dust and mortal slime. (Ruskin 1908a[1880], p. 266)

Ruskin did not limit his castigation of industrial society to its pollution of the environment and defilement of natural beauty by way of its end products; he was equally eager to point out the detrimental effects of modern manufacturing processes in terms of the depletion of natural, material, and human resources alike: For observe the method and circumstance of their manufacture. You dig a pit for ironstone, and heap a mass of refuse on fruitful land; you blacken your God‐given sky, and consume your God‐given fuel, to melt the iron; you bind your labourer to the Egyptian toil of its castings and forgings; then, to refine his mind you send him to study Raphael at Kensington; and with all this cost, filth, time, and misery, you at last produce  –  the devil’s tail for your sustenance, instead of an honest three‐legged stool. (Ruskin 1908b[1875], pp. 303–304)

Similarly, William Morris, too, took a broad view of the environmental ramifications of the industrial society. This is particularly evident in his fiction writing, and nowhere as poignantly as in his 1890 novel News from Nowhere, a utopian tale of a future (twenty‐first century) society where all the ills of capitalism have been healed and industrialization has been reversed (Figure 13.1). Often considered an early example of “eco‐fiction,” the book depicts a pastoral paradise where all labor is of love; profit and private property are unknown concepts; and all pollution, from production and products alike, is a thing of the past, as people live in symbiotic harmony with nature. Rivers, fields, and forests were pristine and opulent, yet considered “gardens” for human recreation and consumption. Industrial cities like Manchester had disappeared without a trace: “no sacrifice would have seemed too great a price to pay for getting rid of the ‘manufacturing districts,’ as they used to be called” (Morris 1970[1890], p. 59). Morris’s aversion to dirty factories, cheap trinkets, speculative capitalism, and other trappings of industrialism is of course well known and also duly noted in design history. Surprisingly, though, design historians have been slow to relate these aspects of Arts and Crafts ideology explicitly to issues of ecology and environmentalism (see Coleing 1999 for a rare exception). To the extent that these connections have been discussed, it has been in the realm of literary studies, where both Ruskin and Morris feature as prominently as they do in design history. This overlap in terms of subject matter also entails that literary studies and its more established concept of eco‐criticism might provide useful inspiration

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Figure 13.1  Kelmscott Manor depicted in the frontispiece to the 1893 Kelmscott Press edition of William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1893). Source: https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kelmscott_Manor_News_from_Nowhere.jpg. Public Domain.

for design historians interested in narratives about design and/in nature (Coupe 2000; Love 2003; Smith and Hughes 2013). It is not just literary scholars who have taken an interest in the “green” strand of Arts and Crafts ideology, however. This focus is reflected also in the fact that environmentalists are embracing these Victorian design reformers as pioneers and kindred spirits. An early and highly evocative example of this infatuation is Nicholas Gould’s feature on Morris, chosen as the cover story of the July 1974 issue of The Ecologist – the environmentalist movement’s premier periodical. The cover design included both his portrait as well as one of his characteristic floral patterns. The article claimed that “his voice was one of the first to be raised against the environmental effects of industrialization” and



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quoted forceful statements by Morris such as “we must turn this land from the grimy back‐yard of a workshop into a garden.” The Ecologist clearly found Morris’s environmentalist concerns to be even more pressing in the 1970s than they had been in his own time: “The rape of the English countryside has advanced so far since Morris’ day that it comes as a surprise to find how often he echoes our own complaints.” Ultimately, though, Morris was to be lauded for practicing what he preached, wrote Gould, finding in his example the proof that it is possible to be a pragmatic idealist (Gould 1974, pp. 210–212). Casting Morris as a proto‐environmentalist is not entirely unproblematic, though. Our understanding today of questions related to co‐existence of lifeforms, nature versus culture, etc., differs significantly from that of Victorian natural conservationists and social reformers. As Sara Wills (2003, p. 92) has argued, “we need to be aware … of the ways in which his thought was a product of his age and primarily concerned with problems of the life processes of humanity.” She goes on to elaborate how “Morris’s fully developed political priorities were not with nature per se, but with ‘decent surroundings’ and nature as an object and subject of human work. His avowedly socialist writings of the 1880s elicit a concern for nature as part of a broader agenda for social change, but it is the concept of ‘livelihood’ that emerges as a key concern” (Wills 2003, pp. 75–76). In other words, Wills sees in Morris an anthropocentric rather than an anthropocenic conception of nature. This case is a good reminder of Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s (2009, p. 225) warning that “nostalgia is a trap for historians” because it may impede our ability to fully appreciate the situations and experiences of the historical actors we study. Nevertheless, even Wills finds that there is something to be learned from Morris’s ecological thought: “it is in his combination of concerns, in the linked ideas of nature and human labour, that Morris’ thinking is most useful today.” In a cautious acknowledgment of his relevance for the values of today Wills argues that “By transcending the capitalist emphasis upon production for profit, and subduing the Marxian emphasis upon the subjugation of nature, Morris developed a culture of nature which allowed space for both culture and nature” (Wills 2003, pp. 91–92). The century that followed the publication of News from Nowhere (Morris 1970[1890]) saw both the rise and fall of communism as well as the unabated devastations caused by capitalism. The question, then, is where  –  if anywhere – we can establish today that “third space” envisioned by Morris. If we are to succeed in designing a more sustainable world of tomorrow, Morris’s “nowhere” – the base meaning of the word utopia – needs to be rescued from the romantic paralysis of nostalgia. Flipping Cowen’s warning, I would suggest that historical scholarship is an efficient antidote to nostalgia, which is defined as a personal sentiment (Johannisson 2001, pp. 10–11). History  –  ideally, at least – takes stock also of the details and the dirt wished away by nostalgia, and thus produces a valuable knowledge base for present and future decision‐ making. Although we should we wary of the seductive powers of nostalgia, there is a lot to be learnt from Nowhere – and from elsewhere in history.

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Waste Not, Want Not Design is rubbish. Or, perhaps more precisely, design generates rubbish  – inconceivable amounts of rubbish. It might take a while before your heirloom silverware or your treasured easy chair ends up on the landfill, but they will eventually. “Waste is every object, plus time” (Thill 2015, p. 8). The real impact, however, comes from the vast majority of objects, from plastic cups to cars, which are discarded and replaced at such pace and in such quantities that the environmental degradation caused by their production, distribution, consumption, and disposal can only be marginally mitigated by shifting to more benign materials and processes (Figure  13.2). Across all scales and levels of abstraction, design is implicit in the creation of waste. From the nuclear or coal‐fired power plants that feed our endless appetite for energy, via the economic systems and infrastructures that make your new hairbrush cross half the world on an oil‐burning ship to reach you, to the communication platforms that mediate our desire for ever more things, design is involved every step of the way. But even though, in the words of Ben Highmore (2009, p. 1), “it is hard not to see global warming and climate change as a consequence of a

Figure 13.2  Landfill operation is conducted by the city of New York on the marshlands of Jamaica Bay. Pollution hazards and ecological damage have called out strong opposition. Photograph by Arthur Tress (1940–) as part of DOCUMERICA: The Environmental Protection Agency’s Program to Photographically Document Subjects of Environmental Concern. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA record: 1100153). Public domain.



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variety of design processes, design values and design products,” these problematic aspects of design are rarely made the object of design history. If design historians have been reluctant to treat design as rubbish, this ­corollary to the usual gospel of design as a beneficial force underpins some interesting developments in the realm of design theory and methodology. But true to the problem‐solving ethos of the profession, the focus has largely been to develop models and methods for how design can contribute to leaner production and cleaner consumption. The best‐known exponent for this type of thinking, the Cradle to Cradle (C2C) framework developed  –  and trademarked – by William McDonough and Michael Braungart (2002), is a prime example of the positivistic approach to design as a technofix capable of solving environmental problems caused by conventional manufacturing. Waste and wastefulness can be designed away, they argue, ever since the framework’s inception as The Hannover Principles drafted in 1991: “‘Eliminate the concept of waste’  –  not reduce, minimize, or avoid waste, as environmentalists were then propounding, but eliminate the very concept, by design” (McDonough and Braungart 2002, p. 15). According to this logic, where the waste of one product/process becomes the “food” of another, there are, at least in theory, no limits to growth. One can easily understand the appeal this bright outlook has to industry, especially after C2C also became a certification system providing commercial actors with an economic incentive to distinguish products as “eco‐friendly.” Recently, however, C2C has been criticized, e.g. for its blind faith in growth and for ignoring key aspects of products’ environmental impact, especially during use and transportation (Liorach‐Massana et  al. 2015; Toxopeus et al. 2015). If there are good reasons for the (utopian) attempts at eliminating waste from (and by) design practice, there are equally good reasons for not eliminating waste from design history. First, histories of “dirty design” are needed to balance out the bias towards an understanding of design as intrinsically “good” in most current scholarship (Fallan 2015). To fully grasp the environmental impact of design – past, present, and future – requires us to acknowledge that the history of design is, perhaps more than anything, a history of waste and wastefulness, of unsustainability (Dilnot 2015). Second, rethinking the history of design in this way will strengthen the knowledge base for the type of re‐ directive initiatives exemplified by C2C, allowing such necessarily flawed attempts to “fail better” in the future. Design histories of waste and wastefulness – and of their corollaries, resources and resourcefulness – are promising, but still nascent fields. As often, though, there is much to gain from looking to neighboring fields for relevant resources. Of all scholarly fields of endeavor, none is more familiar with waste than archeology. In fact, one could argue that the discipline is more or less built on the waste and/or ruins of past societies. This alone testifies to the value of waste as an object of study and source of knowledge, but recent developments in the field of historical archeology, in which discarded objects are not consulted out

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of necessity as the only surviving record of ancient human settlements, have made it even more pertinent to design history. This type of archeology of modern ruins considers their decay, dereliction, and debris evocative evidence of the escalating changes to object ecologies in our (post‐)industrial society (Olsen and Pétursdóttir 2014). In this perspective, the landfill is as revealing a design historical collection as is the museum. A remarkably perceptive rendering of this prospect can be found in Douglas Coupland’s 1993 novel Shampoo Planet, where the protagonist, 20‐year‐old hotel management student Tyler, conceives of his big project idea: to turn waste sites into edutainment facilities. Pitching the concept to his role model, the CEO of the (fictitious) industrial conglomerate Bechtol, the young prospective entrepreneur writes: I suggest, Mr. Miller, that Bechtol develop a nationwide chain of theme parks called History World™ in which visitors (wearing respirators and outfits furnished by Bechtol’s military division) dig through landfill sites abandoned decades ago (and purchased by Bechtol for next to nothing) in search of historical objects like pop bottles, old telephones, and furniture. The deeper visitors dig, the further visitors travel back in time, and hence the more money they would pay. History World™’s motto: INSTANT HISTORY. (Coupland 1993, p. 187)

Few things are more prone to becoming “instant history” than consumer electronics. The increasing awareness of how these products generate vast amounts of environmentally hazardous waste in all phases of their existence is a poignant reminder that the immaterial reputation of the digital revolution is greatly exaggerated (Gabrys 2011). As part of his study of the various afterlives of one such technology, video games, Raiford Guins (2014, pp. 207–235) examines the rich history of a veritable legend of popular culture: the mythical dumping of surplus stock from the failing video games company Atari at a landfill in New Mexico in 1983. The landfill was subsequently sealed as the site was abandoned a decade later, but has recently become something of an ad hoc realization of Coupland’s meta‐fictional theme parks, as the Atari dump site was subjected to an archeological excavation on the occasion of a documentary film production aimed at the retro‐gaming community and financed by Microsoft (Kohler 2014). After the dig, 900 unearthed game cartridges were auctioned off on eBay, fetching US$108 000 (Kreps 2015). History World could not have concocted a better scheme. As the above example makes patently clear, the value of waste is a complex issue. In her classic study, Mary Douglas (1966) demonstrated that what is considered unclean is socially and culturally contingent – and the same applies to waste. Michael Thompson (1979) added a temporal dimension to the shifting status of artifacts, exploring how their value increases and decreases at different stages, ending up as relics or rubbish. The diachronic approach to objects and their lifespans also characterizes Igor Kopytoff’s (1986) “cultural biography of things,” which has prompted design historians to increasingly consider



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the social and cultural significance of design beyond its commodity stage. Rarely, however, have these studies extended to the post‐discarding phase of the lives of products. Following Douglas, though, design historians can profit from thinking about waste as a construction, combined with the acknowledgment that one man’s waste is another man’s (or other being’s) resource. From Richard Buckminster Fuller’s “comprehensive design science” via the Brundtland Report’s definition of “sustainable development” to today’s eco‐ modernism, the belief that “scientific and technological progress will entail environmental benefits through increased resource efficiency” (Höhler 2015, p. 146) has paired environmental concerns with an emphasis on design for efficient use of resources. Whether waste is considered residual, something unwanted to be reduced/eliminated through clever designs and manufacturing processes, or something of potential/intrinsic value that can be reused, repurposed, or recycled, the moral economy of waste constitutes an important, albeit underexplored, topic in the history of design. The broader public awareness of basic ecological principles and the onset of the environmental movement from the 1960s and 1970s on led to a significant change in the perception of waste and garbage, at least in the affluent parts of the world, with large‐scale investments in increased and improved recycling systems and containment technologies (Eriksen 2011, p. 77). Granted, even the most advanced and successful recycling systems today are nowhere near closing the loop of our manufacturing and consumption infrastructures – but that does not mean the efforts are in vain. Although comprehensive, governmentally controlled recycling systems explicitly motivated by environmental concerns are a relatively recent phenomenon; practices of recycling, repurposing, and reuse of course have a much longer history. Recent scholarship in design history and related fields has begun documenting these practices, the relevance of which to contemporary concerns over resource depletion should be evident to any student of design culture. The recent surge of interest in the history of recycling practices is clearly motivated by contemporary challenges of environmental protection. Yet this scholarship shows that there is much to gain from examining cultural practices that might have been driven by motivations  –  usually economic or pragmatic – differing from our own but that nevertheless constitute part of “the heritage of design intelligence evident in many places, times and cultures prior to our own” that can function as “the starting point for ecological design” (Orr 2002, p. 5). Taking a long view on the business of scrap recycling, Carl Zimring (2005) shows how feeding discarded materials back into manufacturing processes is not only an integral part of the history of industrial production in the USA, but has been part of everyday life for many people in rural and urban societies alike. This emphasis on the mundane settings of salvage and recycling practices is crucial also to Ruth Oldenziel’s and Mikael Hård’s (2013, pp. 238–262) inclusion of these oft‐neglected activities in their positioning of consumers and users as “the people who shaped Europe,” and to related work

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on “how old technologies became sustainable” (Oldenziel and Trischler 2016, p. 1). Similarly, it is the quotidian acts of more or less environmentally conscious, or simply guilt‐ridden, consumers that make up what Finn Arne Jørgensen (2011, pp. 6–7) terms “everyday environmentalism” – a type of environmentalism that is comfortably situated within the existing structures of capitalist production and distribution systems and also deeply intertwined with designed objects, images, systems, and services (Brunnström and Wagner 2015; Dunaway 2016; Klingle 2014; Parr 2009). Practices of waste reduction through reuse and repurposing that are bottom‐ up rather than top‐down in nature are readily seen as having a creative streak, and have thus attracted the interest of scholars of design culture. In such scholarship, these activities become acts of design in themselves, and are often interpreted, explicitly or implicitly, as examples of bricolage (Lévi‐Strauss 1966). David Lucsko shows how even in the most emblematic of all manifestations of rampant consumerism – US car culture – there are strong forces and alternative practices running counter to the throwaway mentality with which it is normally associated. “For if nothing else, gearhead activities like customization, street rodding, and restoration clearly suggest that bricolage, which Douglas Harper, Susan Strasser, and others have lamented is a dying art, is and has been alive and well within the automotive realm” (Lucsko 2016, pp. 10–11). The similar, remarkable creative energy and resource economy that goes into securing old US cars a new lease on life in post‐revolutionary Cuba was the focus on Viviana Narotzky’s study of this extreme case of make‐do‐and‐mend design culture: “The American cacharros require endless tinkering, are held together with chicken wire and mechanical ingenuity. These monumental objects never die in Cuba: they become part of an endless life cycle, a vortex of use, re‐use, transformation, appropriation and reconstruction” (Narotzky 2002, p. 174). As these two cases demonstrate, there is a rich and diverse history of product afterlives that is of great value in exploring how use and users matter in constructing understandings and practices of waste(−fullness) and resource(−fullness) in design culture. As crucial as the practices of use and users are in understanding the design cultures of waste, recycling, and reuse, the latter cannot be fully grasped without also considering its structural traits, which often result from top‐down initiatives. The more extreme cases of such governmentally enforced waste reduction and control over resource allocation can be found in wartime manufacturing, as emergency situations justify emergency measures – even in societies normally characterized by a high degree of liberal market dynamics and individual freedom. Perhaps most famously and comprehensively in modern history, World War II saw the proliferation of elaborate systems for rationing of materials and goods as well as direct state intervention in design and production. Since the demand for many, if not most, materials was virtually endless in manufacturing for the war effort, efficient and intelligent use of resources was crucial. This speaks to the centrality of design in these endeavors, but also



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highlights the extreme attention to frugality in use and post‐use – particularly in the form of salvage and recycling of materials of high strategic value for the munitions and supply industry (Thorsheim 2015). In the field of design history, the most well‐known example of such governmentally imposed restrictions on resource allocation and design is the Utility Scheme introduced in the UK by the Board of Trade from 1941/1942 regulating the output of “civilian” industries such as clothing, furniture, and ceramics. The objective of the scheme was to secure rational production and fair distribution of essential consumer products and durables without compromising the munitions industry and preventing profiteering. This was to be achieved “using as little power, labour and material as possible” (Reynolds 1999, p. 125) by imposing strict regulations on which materials and products were to be used and even fixing profit margins and retail prices. Although in the design history literature on the Utility Scheme the focus has often been on how the restrictions put on design resulted in paired‐back, unornamented products interpreted as modernism‐by‐decree, strong arguments have also been made that this episode may hold lessons for the environment today as well. Judy Attfield (1999, p. 7) argues that while “the distinctiveness of the historical period in which the Utility Scheme arose is quite specific … there are nevertheless certain broad parallels that can be drawn with current concerns for an ethical design practice.” More specifically, she continues, “the economic management, use and consumption of materials has echoes in current global concerns over the depletion of natural resources expressed in a growing ‘green’ consciousness” (Attfield 1999, p. 7). Anne Massey and Paul Micklethwaite (2009, p. 131) emphasize the scheme’s strict regulation of resources and its localized nature of both production and consumption as potential lessons for contemporary design challenges: “This model of production and consumption now appeals to us in terms of its efficient materials cycle and low‐energy manufacture and distribution.” While recognizing the shared attention to “economy of means and attention to resources,” Nigel Whiteley (1999, p. 199) qualifies the comparison between Utility and “green” design by pointing to the latter’s rejection of the “aesthetico‐moral principles” of modernism. Despite its renewed relevance, it is important to acknowledge that the Utility Scheme is no panacea for sustainable design. Its legitimacy rested entirely on the command economy of wartime production and reconstruction shortages, and not much love was lost on Utility designs by British consumers or manufacturers. In peacetime, this level of state control over design and production is only paralleled in socialist plan economies. Perhaps the most striking example is the East German Central Institute of Design, which, when subsumed under the German Office for Measurement and Product Testing in 1965, effectively was given veto power over the output of the nation’s manufacturing industry. From 1973, its control became total, as all factories now were required by law to let the Central Institute’s staff designers do the actual industrial design work for them, rather than simply submit their proposals for approval (Rubin 2006,

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p. 161). Although the German Democratic Republic design community at the time engaged in an elaborate debate over product durability versus planned obsolescence (Oropallo 2017, pp. 110–132; Pfützner 2018, pp. 111–138), there is little evidence to suggest that ecological sustainability was a prominent concern in the Central Institute’s dictatorial design work. Nevertheless, such totalitarian scenarios could of course be conceived as potentially providing a more efficient strategy for a rapid and wholesale transition to sustainable design practices than does insular practices of profit‐driven design in a free market economy – but its political viability seems limited in the current age of neo‐­ liberalism, and its undemocratic disposition is decidedly unsavory. Whether seen through the lens of bottom‐up cultural practices or top‐down political structures, material ecologies have preoccupied historians of design for some time now. Increasingly, these accounts are also focusing specifically on the environmental performance and impact of materials. In his comprehensive cultural history of plastics, Jeffrey Meikle (1997) devoted a full chapter to the complex process in which plastics went from being a miracle material promising a bright and shiny future to becoming an environmental problem of massive proportions (Meikle 1997, pp. 242–276). Other key materials of modern design have also been subjected to ecological scrutiny. Writing on the industrial applications of aluminum after World War II, Carl Zimring (2017) focuses on the material’s unique properties for recycling, especially in its most advanced form, the “upcycling” represented by designing and manufacturing high‐grade products from scrap aluminum. Operating with a much wider time frame, Tony Fry and Anne‐Marie Willis (2015) assess the environmental performance of steel from the mine to the mall, observing that “the recyclability of steel needs to be seen as a double‐edged sword. Yes, it means saving on the mining of new ore, but also the ease of its recyclability accelerates obsolescence” (Fry and Willis 2015, p. 200). Recent research has shown that a natural material like wood also has rather complex environmental histories of design, ranging from its prevalent position in the portrayal of national identity in the nineteenth century (Rezende 2017) to the intricacies of integrating sustainable forestry practices with the cultural inertia of design (Martinez‐Reyes 2015). Such accounts of the waste and want of materials are of great value in forging a type of design history that improves our understanding of how design practice and design culture shapes the use of resources and thus how this can be reshaped for a more sustainable future.

Counterculture and Design Activism As mentioned above, the latter half of the 1960s saw a rising public awareness of ecological principles along with the rapid expansion of the environmentalist movement’s reach and role in public discourse. This coincided with a development in design culture that profoundly questioned design’s integration with



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Figure 13.3  American designer and activist Victor Papanek (front, left) and Swedish chemist and environmentalist Hans Palmstierna (center, seated) in a group discussion with Scandinavian design students during The Industrial, Environment and Product Design Seminar on the island of Suomenlinna outside Helsinki in July 1968. Lecturing at the seminar were also fellow notaries of US countercultural design, Richard Buckminster Fuller and Christopher Alexander. Photo: Kristian Runeberg. Reproduced with the permission of The Finnish Museum of Photography.

capitalism, industrial production, and consumer society, resulting in the emergence of related responses such as anti‐design, eco‐design, and design activism (Figure  13.3). A common denominator for both of these trajectories is the broader notion of counterculture, which encompassed a broad spectrum of insurgent ideologies and activities, yet coherent enough to make up a significant social and political force. Historians of technology, environment, and design alike are taking an interest in this countercultural moment/movement, where established knowledge, structures, and practices were challenged and sought replaced with alternative models. It is proving particularly promising as a nexus for what might be called “environmental histories of design” (Fallan and Jørgensen 2017), which can benefit from this dual (or multiple) attention to partially or completely overlapping material. The Whole Earth Catalog and its originator, Stewart Brand, is often cited as the epicenter of the (US) countercultural movement, and can serve as an example of the disciplinary coalescence at work here. In its very essence, ­

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as  revealed by the Catalog’s subtitle, the project was about giving people “access to tools” – both intellectual and practical. Andrew Kirk (2007) offers a comprehensive reading of the Catalog in its various iterations, focusing on how it conceived and promulgated a brand of environmentalism that was less about conservation of nature, anti‐industrialism, or political lobbying, and more about harnessing technology for creative, subversive, sustainable use and living. This type of hands‐on attitude can be seen as a variety of design activism in its own right, but Kirk goes further, showing how Brand and his associates were instrumental in propagating the alternative technology movement in the USA, as well as in formulating what would soon be known as ecological design. Following a different, but equally fascinating, strand within the material that makes up the Whole Earth universe, Fred Turner (2010) identifies a trajectory running from the counterculturalists’ interest in systems theory, information technology, and network thinking to the cybernetics and computer revolution that brought about the Internet and our digital culture. From a more specifically design historical perspective, Caroline Maniaque‐Benton (2016) has added to the growing literature on the Catalog and its influence by compiling The Whole Earth Field Guide, presenting a broad selection of texts cited as “suggested reading” in the original publications. Speaking to the centrality of the endeavor, Brand and the Whole Earth project features prominently also in work with a broader/related focus. Felicity Scott’s history of experimental architecture “after modernism” casts the Catalog as a key actor in the countercultural design epitomized by (but not limited to) the dome‐shaped structures found at any self‐respecting commune (Scott 2007, pp. 166–180). As part of her more recent study of how architecture engaged with human unsettlement in an age of environmental and geopolitical transformations, Scott documents in great detail the peculiar transatlantic activism of Brand and the Hog Farm collective during the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in June 1972 (Scott 2016, pp. 115–166). For Michelle Labrague’s (2017) analysis of the ecologically sensitive “slow thinking” emerging through the design and identity work conducted in the formative phase of the outdoor equipment company Patagonia, it is highly significant that the company’s products were espoused by Brand and featured in the Catalog, as this added considerable countercultural cachet – and access – to the “tools.” The considerable attention bestowed upon this specific nexus of actors, institutions, and events, by both contemporary commentators and later historians, is instructive of how the design culture of discontent seems to have a particular allure attracting multidisciplinary interest to which design history can cater with considerable success. The considerable interest in the design culture of discontent is reflected in two recent museum exhibitions of comparable scope and ambition: the Victoria and Albert Museum’s You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966–1970 (Broackes and Marsh 2016) and the Walker Art Center’s Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia (Blauvelt 2015). The Victoria and



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Albert Museum’s show was perhaps as much about the commercial harnessing of the (alleged) revolution and rebels into best‐selling records as it was about the countercultural content, but it did also feature examinations of the emergence of the underground scenes in the US and the UK, the rise of anti‐consumerism and social responsibility in design discourse, and the coupling of computers and communalism. Although there is a certain thematic overlap between the two exhibitions, the Walker project had a tighter focus on the utopian streaks of counterculture and its manifestations in design ideology and activism. Events like these and the renewed general interest in this historical episode can function as a stimulus for further scholarship on design and counterculture, especially explorations of how it may hold lessons for the environment. What makes the counterculture of the late 1960s and 1970s such fruitful material for design historians looking for an objective – a societal purpose – for their work is the strong expression of discontent, the palpable sense of urgency, and the remarkable capacity for imagining and experimenting with alternative modes of thinking, acting, and organizing. At the risk of stating the obvious, these ideas and values have not diminished in relevance. Studying their history and how they materialized in activist practices of design might serve to revitalize them at a time witnessing the emergence of a new design culture of discontent. Design historical scholarship on counterculture and design activism is patchy, but growing. Alastair Fuad‐Luke’s (2009) book on design activism contains a brief historical background to the phenomenon, but remains largely interventionist and future‐oriented in scope. Brash, “heroic” champions of design‐led action like Richard Buckminster Fuller and Victor Papanek have long figured in design history literature, but recent scholarship has made important contributions by way of nuancing and contextualizing the conventional understanding of these figures. This new work has demonstrated how Fuller’s and Papanek’s place in the design history of counterculture should be seen less as renegade enfants terribles and more as conditioned by the environments, networks, and ideological climates within which they operated (Anker 2007; Clarke 2013, 2016; Lie 2016; Scott 2009; Turner 2009). Another mainstay of 1970s design history, Italian Radical Design, has also recently been recast, emphasizing the role of anthropological thought in catalyzing an environmental sensitivity in the activist practices of collectives such as Gruppo 9999 and Superstudio (Clarke 2011; Rossi 2014). Pursuing the conversations between Italian design discourse and environmental discourse even further, Elena Formia (2017) has mapped the brief, but vibrant convergence of the two movements in the first half of the 1970s, and Simon Sadler (2013) and Gabriele Oropallo (2017, pp. 58–79) have contributed much‐needed reexaminations of Tomás Maldonado’s (1970) important, but undervalued, treatise on the potential for ecological design. These are all examples of what design history might look like when nature matters and design has ecological agency. It will do and it will have even more so in the future.

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Conclusion What I have tried to show with the examples outlined above is that design history is, or at least can be, a history of both sustainment and unsustainment, and that this type of knowledge can in fact provide important lessons for the environment. This is not to argue for an instrumentalist understanding of design history. Rather, I second Gabriele Oropallo’s (2017, p. 6) ambition of writing “a cultural history of sustainable design in which the ‘sustainability project’ is treated less as a teleologically incremental undertaking than a dynamic and constantly shapeshifting cultural trope.” Nevertheless, a new future requires a new past, “searching it for yet undiscovered formations, assemblages and possibilities that will energize and sustain the wished for transformation” (Otto 2016, p. 68). Therefore, design history can become the most influential design education there is. If design history has taught us anything, it is that the future is in constant dialogue with the past. Acknowledging this provides enormous potential for doing something genuinely valuable with our expertise. As David Orr (2002, p. 5) explains, “we have a heritage of ecological design intelligence a­ vailable to us if we are willing to draw on it.” History cannot predict the future. But the kind of design historical object and objective I have outlined here can, I believe, provide instructive and highly relevant lessons for  society’s decision‐makers, from governments and multinational corporations to designers and consumers, so that they – we – can help shape a more sustainable future.

Note 1 Two volumes were published in 2015, a third and final volume is in preparation.

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The Fashionable Object Christopher Breward

I generally advise students that the practice of starting an essay with a dictionary definition is a bad idea, but in this chapter I am ignoring my own advice and reaching for the Oxford English Dictionary. It tells me that fashion is “the current popular custom or style,” especially in dress. It is “a manner of doing something,” finding its roots in the Latin facere: to do or make. To be fashionable is to find oneself “following, suited to, or influenced by the current fashion” and is a property “characteristic of or favored by those who are leaders of social fashion” (OED 1996). Its association with the definition of “object” might be conceived of in two different ways: as a characteristic of the “material thing that can be seen or touched,” or, equally, as “a person or thing to which [such an] action or feeling is directed.” For the purposes of this chapter, a clear opening definition is crucial, because, although I have been thinking and writing about fashion for almost 30 years, I have yet to pin its properties down satisfactorily. It is always shifting, as I suppose is its nature. A noun and a verb, extended to an adjective, it is one of the most fluxive ­concepts in the lexicon of design. As a cultural historian I find this airiness in fashion’s character to be its most useful and interesting characteristic. Like other, time‐based popular cultural phenomena, including performance, music, and film, its potential as a significant cultural force is formidable, and it is no coincidence that a sizeable

A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.



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literature has grown up focusing on its agency and value in society. The fashionable object has been cited several times as a paradigm of modernity itself. In the postwar period authors as various as the art historian Quentin Bell (1947), the semiotician Roland Barthes (1967), and the sociologist Elizabeth Wilson (1985) have offered influential accounts of its role in shaping taste and style, signifying meaning and reflecting society. And aside from its place in academic discourse, the fashionable object has increasingly come to play a central role in defining contemporary sensibilities, as a marker of identity, a mainstay of popular culture and a driver of economies  –  in its material and virtual forms. As I have remarked elsewhere, the fashionable object is, then, much more than a superficial symptom of contemporary mores (Breward 2004, p. 11). It is, rather, an active agent of change. It is a bounded thing, fixed and experienced in space – an amalgamation of textiles and seams, an interface between the body and its environment. It is a practice, a fulcrum for the display and contestation of taste, opinion and status, a site for the production and consumption of matter, values and beliefs; and it is an event, both spectacular or routine, cyclical in an adherence to the natural and commercial seasons, innovatory in its bursts of avant‐gardism, and sequential in its guise as a palimpsest of memories and traditions and a harbinger of future trends (a characteristic some have compared to Walter Benjamin’s notion of the tiger’s leap) (Evans 2003, pp. 34–35). These qualities endow the “fashioned thing” with a vital energy, particular to the constitution of societies and the competitive and creative imperative in human nature. However, while recent scholarship has argued for an understanding of the fashionable object that situates its presence throughout the anthropocene, from prehistory onwards and across the globe, its significance in the postwar era is rooted in the very particular circumstances relating to the social, economic, and geopolitical contexts of modernity, a modernity that finds its origins in the urban and court cultures of Europe in the fourteenth century and much earlier in Asia, but also drew on the emerging transnational networks of trade, cultural and diplomatic relations, conquest, and colonization through which both universalizing and highly localized concepts of “fashion” gained traction (Riello and McNeil 2010). By the end of the nineteenth century factors including the expansion of trading and metropolitan civilizations, a growing dependence on mechanization, and the reorganization of labor in industrial manufacturing provided a context within which innovation and profit could thrive. Enhanced transport and communication technologies, increasing levels of textual and visual literacy, rising living standards, and a proliferation of new suppliers meant that consumers across a range of social classes and locales could recognize and gain access to a turnover of fashionable objects whose proliferation was undreamed of by their forbears (Breward 2003, p. 23).

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Modern Fashion Cycles The middle years of the twentieth century marked something of a watershed in the shifting idea and experience of fashion in modernity (Figure 14.1). In reading the ever‐expanding academic literature on fashion I often find myself coming back to a fine example used by sociologist Fred Davis to illustrate both the demise of the “classic” fashion system that had grown out of industrialization, imperialism, and aristocratic hegemony and the emergence of a new, seemingly more “democratic,” even faster moving model of fashionability that would dominate culture for the next 50 years. Davis quotes from the diary of an American traveler returning home from a visit to the Far East in 1947. This was the year in which French couturier Christian Dior launched his influential

Figure 14.1  Design by Victor Stiebel (1907–1976) for a belted, velvet evening dress worn off the shoulder with gloves and heels. Source: Mary Evans Picture Library/Adrian Woodhouse (Picture No. 10196998/ADW). Reproduced with permission.



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New Look, a collection which offered a provocative departure from the material restrictions of postwar austerity in Europe, set a benchmark for the international branding of high fashion as an accessible luxury, and appeared to reset attitudes towards the role of women in society. For the traveler in question, his “revolution” effected a swift, orderly impact on the dress of her fellow voyagers, and on her sense of self: At every airport where we stopped on the way back from China I started watching the women coming the other way. At Calcutta the first long skirt and unpadded shoulders looked like something out of a masquerade party. At the American installations in Frankfurt (also in Vienna) a lot of the newer arrivals were converted and were catching everyone’s attention. At the airport in Shannon I had a long wait; I got into conversation with a lady en route to Europe. She was from San Francisco, and told me that they hadn’t been completely won over; just as many were wearing the long skirts as not. But as she flew East, she found that just about everybody in New York had gone in for new styles and she was happy she wasn’t staying or her wardrobe would have been dated. By the time I took the train from New York for home, my short skirts felt conspicuous and my shoulders seemed awfully wide! Two weeks now and I am letting down hems, trying to figure out which of all my China‐made clothes can be salvaged, and going on a buying spree! (Davis 1992, p. 151)

The diarist has provided a perfect example of the way in which new fashionable objects demonstrated their powerful agency in mid‐twentieth century cultures. Suffering from a version of sartorial jet lag in which the clock rushes on before her eyes, she faces an incoming tide of novelty, not unlike the spooling newspaper headlines that signify important events and passing days in Hollywood films of the period. Meanwhile, her own wardrobe lingers in another, less contemporary time zone, bespeaking a sense of shame and outmodedness. She knows that she must soon adapt or be overtaken. Fashion, in Dior’s version, is omnipotent. It would be difficult to re‐enact this scenario in the second decade of the twenty‐first century, though multiple trends still impact on a shared consciousness of fashionability across the world. The speed and complexity of contemporary digital and social communication, the globalization of the media and fashion industries, and the demise, “post‐modernism,” of a singular creative vision which might once have “led” fashion have helped to compress the sensation of a linear development in the formation of taste (Entwistle 2009; Vinken 2005). Janus‐like, Dior sat on the cusp: secure in his nostalgic rhetoric; introducing new, highly controlled models of mediation for the fashionable object; and anticipating the more dispersed and democratic contexts in which late twentieth century fashion would have to survive. The twenty‐first century consumer experiences fashion as a more fragmented, competitive, simultaneous, personal, and chaotic cultural phenomenon, one which could be likened, rather apocalyptically, to the spreading of a virus.

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It is this idea of infection (or cycle, or wave, to use less emotive terms) that has imbued fashion, as process and thing, with a continuing prescience in contemporary design journalism, criticism, and theory – though not necessarily in a positive sense (where once fashion was something to be aspired to or celebrated, it is now more likely to figure as an exemplar of moral vacuity). In order to understand the material world, however, it is still useful to look to fashion’s literatures and history, unpacking its status as a culture industry, which incorporates the whole gamut of economic, sociological, psychological, and aesthetic experiences. Here under the rubric of marketing and publicity, production and consumption are knitted together in such a profound relationship that, according to some critiques, the mundane and often inequitable circumstances of manufacture become subsumed in a mirage of desires where all human values are commodified and devalued (Seabrook 2015). It is little wonder then that many writers over time have been driven to equate the nature of fashion’s dissemination not just with the selling of clothing, but as a powerful, sometimes negative, metaphor for the mercenary and materialistic state of society and culture in general (Breward and Evans 2005; Lipovetsky 1994; Loschek 2009). My own view is perhaps more positive and less utilitarian, if a little old‐fashioned in its framing. While accepting that damage has been done, sociologically, environmentally, and ethically by the “fashionable turn,” I still believe that the rich culture of fashion also offers creative, aesthetic, and intellectual inspiration. As a locus for the formation of identity and an expression of culture, the fashionable object, through the powerful discourse of style, opens up the potential for contestation and renewal. In the remainder of this chapter I should like to focus on some exemplars of fashion’s more generative possibilities.

Civic and Commercial Contexts The middle decades of the twentieth century, from the late 1940s to the mid‐ 1980s, were fertile years for the systematic design of the fashionable object in the major cities of Europe and North America. In many ways fashion featured as a metaphor for the re‐emergence of industrial, economic, social, and cultural activity amid the ruins of recent war; a planned vehicle for national renewal. This sartorial resurgence is closely bound up with the resurgence of particular city sites (or fashion cities) as the focus for experimentation and display (Breward and Gilbert 2006). These were spaces that overlapped with a longer historical trajectory of fashionable living that established key urban centers with their shops, galleries, theaters, streets, squares, arcades, and promenades as a locus for fashionability since the Renaissance. Such sites had been developing in the old political and trading centers of Europe (first in the low countries and Italy) for generations, and by the early twentieth century the most notable “modern” examples were located in Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Vienna, London, New York, and Chicago.



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Several of these cities were linked through the financial and symbolic ties of colonialism, which ensured that the ordering of the fashion system was shaped around international networks of diplomacy, trade, and labor, rather than older models of courtly patronage. This coincided with the circulation of stylistic codes for the luxurious and exotic, which placed fashion capitals at the center of a dispersed and spectacular geography of consumer desire, where the fashionable goods on show or in use conformed to widely recognized hierarchies of taste. These values could be seen at play in the ostentatious uses made of orientalist displays in department stores, or the manner in which the crafted perfection and visual impact of elite metropolitan fashions were accorded a superior status akin to that of art in magazine journalism and exhibition curation. Such distinctions were useful for maintaining imperialist ideas of “civilization” shored up by the concept of “fashion.” In a related vein, the immigrant communities whose presence was an important aspect of the modern fashion city, or those who resided at a remove from the metropole in the colonies of European empires, were generally exploited in sweatshops, producing the fashionable object, or were co‐opted as sources of inspiration for the latest lucrative trends. Deriving from this same mobilization of a capitalist, imperialist, and evolutionary rhetoric, contemporary fashion thus established itself as a currency by which modern cities distinguished themselves and competed against each other. A celebration of consumerist values and luxury goods shared a platform with the promotion of state‐sponsored architecture, urban development, and organized tourism. By the 1950s the influence of a North American engagement with European fashion via the instruments of mass culture had also become a defining factor in forging a popular understanding of the fashion object’s meaning. In this conflation of influences, Hollywood film directors and Fifth Avenue editors imposed an enduring image of an eternally feminine and elegant Paris on Western consumer consciousness, while the idea of a thrusting, dynamic New York developed as a particularly intense example of the promotion of the city as a spectacle of modern commercial culture. Through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s Florence and then Milan emerged as sites of ­quality craft traditions, bolstered by the local spirit of “sprezzatura,” and in this international vision of fashion’s complementary capitals old London featured either as a bastion of tradition and conservatism or, latterly, as the more edgy, sublime home to high fashion’s “other.” Until fairly recently this symbolic ordering of fashion cities had a profound effect on the ways in which fashionable objects were interpreted and understood in the media. It underpinned the tendency in fashion journalism and representation to conflate urban culture in the West with the production, consumption, and experience of fashion. For Paris, London, New York, or Milan the rhetoric was sometimes one of novelty and dynamism, but more often it was closer to “an almost organic sense of fashionability growing out of the rich culture of metropolitan life” (Gilbert 2000, p. 20). This tension between

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longer histories and future projections, situated in fashion’s status as a marker of the present, is what lends the fashionable object such value as a measure of distinct cultures (in this case metropolitan cultures) that are also assumed to be in constant flux. On a more negative note, fashion’s symbolic clout has led the fashion industry and its privileged consumers to fetishize the decay and danger endemic in city life through a reification of the signifiers of urban chic. As recent critics have noted, such spectacular representations ignore the real inequalities that arise from the global management of fashion’s material and visual production (Zukin 2011). The international ubiquity of the branded training shoe, marketed through association with the glamour of gang culture in the ghettos of New York and Los Angeles, and reliant on the cheap labor of the developing world for its manufacture would be one late twentieth century example. Hipster‐driven gentrification of inner‐city neighborhoods from Shoreditch to Williamsburg to Kreuzberg, with its attendant imposition of sartorial and other trappings that are universalizing, profit‐driven, and ultimately destructive of a distinctive idea of place, offers another twenty‐first century moral tale. Indeed, perhaps the story of the fashionable object in the Late Modern period has been one in which its anchoring in real space and time, in a pattern of fashion cities organized to facilitate its production and consumption, has ceded to different structures, formed through the technological and cultural shifts hastened by globalization and the digital economy. The “Paris, New York, Milan” mantra has given way to something more “virtual,” “value‐driven,” and contingent.

Style, Identity, and (Sub)Culture Nothing is so contingent as the concept of “identity” and it is into the fluid realm of identity politics that the fashionable object has migrated over the past 50 years. In the drift towards alienation and anonymity that followed the rise of industrial capitalism through the nineteenth century, the communicative power of the fashionable object, evoked especially through clothing, emerged as an important tool, both for guaranteeing a sense of belonging and as an aid to identification. It also enabled the creation of a language of resistance to the status quo that was almost entirely sartorial. By the 1950s and 1960s the new discipline of sociology provided a lens through which such languages could be decoded and analyzed. Subcultural theory in particular aimed to explain the clothing and leisure choices of the young in Europe and North America through noting the deliberate ways in which like‐minded groups marked their difference from the dominant culture and their peers by utilizing the props of material and commercial culture, especially those associated with music and fashion. Such differences might pivot around questions of age, class, political affiliation, gender, religion, and race, but in general the social articulation of taste and style as a matter of intense self‐demarcation thrived by its disruptive



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potential until eventually it was co‐opted by the mainstream and fed back into the cycle of trends associated with Western consumer capitalism. This in turn has led to a succession of street‐based styles (from rock and roll, to mod, to hippy, to punk, to reggae, rap and soul, to rave, to indie, to a resoundingly subversive norm‐core) whose uneasy dialogue with the profit‐based concerns of the organized fashion industry has arguably had more effect on the direction of fashionable taste over the past six decades than any other influence (Hall and Jefferson 1977; Hebdige 1979; McRobbie 1991; Muggleton 2000; Polhemus 1994). In the present, the authenticity of historical subcultures seems a quaint reminder of pre‐Internet days and, through the hindsight of a million fashion blogs, online communities, and Instagram feeds, it is possible to argue that punk (or any one of a dozen similar late twentieth century styles) opened up a scenario at once utopian and troubling. Although explicit self‐expression through dress and music has become the norm – indeed almost a civil rights issue among a generation for whom identity politics are a defining issue – injustices relating to gender, sexuality, and race that subcultural movements including hippy and punk had promised to undermine continue to multiply unchecked, most ironically in the very fashion‐based industries that have grown out of punk’s wake (Figure 14.2). This has led both to the unsettling blandness and commercial opportunism of digital‐era global‐style cultures, where all sartorial communication is premised on narcissistic pleasure rather than political challenge (the alienating curse of the “selfie”), and to the fractured proliferation of countless subcultural identities, often virtual, that are ever more ephemeral and ambivalent in their meanings (Thornton 1995). A good transitional example of the ways in which the fashionable object morphed into something more complex as a nascent technology‐enabled social media took hold is provided by the material culture of British dance music in the 1990s. Followers of the rave scene celebrated the right to party en masse in a uniform of T‐shirts, jeans, and “old school” sportswear of a formless bagginess and a fluorescent or blanched‐out spectrum that suggested either an infantile regression into Ecstasy‐fueled escapism or a revolutionary rejection of “straight” responsibilities. Their revels were acted out in derelict warehouses or in rural locations against a background of inner‐city decay, rising unemployment, and increasingly authoritarian legislation. The enduring symbol of the movement was appropriated from the care‐free lapel badges of the early 1970s, later utilized by European anti‐nuclear activists: a yellow “smiley face.” This generic, but still rather provoking, image of politicized hedonism, which infuriated a reactionary tabloid press, morphed as the decade progressed into a succession of commodified and apolitical fancy‐dress ensembles. These latter versions were costumes to be worn in the context of a now industrialized club scene, which famously extended to the Spanish party island of Ibiza and beyond. Their eroticized forms (sometimes constructed at home in the spirit of do‐it‐yourself) were derived from disparate sources including

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Figure 14.2  Two Punk Rocker teenagers in leather jackets, with spiky hair, drinking cans of beer in Cornmarket Street, Oxford. Source: Mary Evans Picture Library/ David Kirby (Picture no. 10149596/KI4). Reproduced with permission.

beachwear, sadomasochistic role play, science fiction, and black rap culture. Rather than connote a specific allegiance to the sexual or ethnic identities suggested by the symbolism of their parts, such costumes (often including body modification such as piercing and tattoos) were deliberately tailored and promoted by manufacturers and consumers to fit with the clientele and theme of particular club nights, and were generally discarded or disguised for the purposes of everyday life. Their late post‐modern variety (still surviving in the form of early twenty‐first century hipsterdom) has been likened to a supermarket of styles – the epitome of a consumerist “lifestyle” attitude that seeks no sense of allegiance, no explanation or justification, and by extension carries no profound implications. As Punk’s most influential interpreter Dick Hebdige so prophetically stated at the moment when Punk itself began to implode: “The key to punk style remains elusive. Instead of arriving at the point where we can begin to make sense of the style, we have reached the very place where meaning itself evaporates.” As Dior’s New Look marked a turning point



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in the ecology of fashion, so the classic era of subcultural style signified a shift at its end. In this context, the fashionable object had become an empty vessel (Hebdige 1979, p. 117).

The End of Fashion If late postmodernism, digital technology, and the era of identity politics exhausted the social agency of the fashionable object, its development as a material and cultural idea did not diminish. In the early twenty‐first century fashion continues to enjoy an enhanced status, notably as a focus of academic discourse, creative experimentation, and the curatorial turn. The paradoxical position of the subcultural revolutionary was one shared by a new fashion design avant‐garde in emergent fashion cities like London and New York but also including Antwerp and Tokyo, which from the mid‐1980s reinterpreted the energetic street idiom and challenging creative questions of Punk for a contemporary commercial scenario, magnified by the attention of public institutions including museums, universities, and publishing houses. In this fascinating development the unpredictable social and political messages that were central to the meaning of subcultural objects have arguably been undermined by the antithetical concerns of the global luxury fashion, tourism, and culture industries whose sights are set primarily on the profits to be garnered from spectacle and manufactured provocation. From the perspective of a generation of designers coming to maturity in the late twentieth century, often having enjoyed an education in art and design schools whose curriculum had benefitted from cross‐disciplinary renewal, and for whom economic entrepreneurism went hand in hand with creative experimentation, such contradictions were not important. But it is clear that where once the cultural and economic function of the fashionable object was either to lead aesthetic change, or in the case of the middle market to respond to its effects, in the early twenty‐first century the self‐constructed role of what some have termed “radical” fashion design seems to be to present a privileged commentary on the properties and vicissitudes of contemporary taste and aesthetics (Wilcox 2001). To some critics this is often an insular critique that bears little relationship to the immediate concerns of mainstream clothing manufacturers and consumers, but has everything to do with internal academic fashion world debates about genre, hierarchy, presentation, and style, and more pragmatically (from the perspective of the luxury industry) with capturing maximum media and market attention (McNeil and Riello 2016). In this sense the natural home of the elite and directional fashionable object now resides in the fashion gallery, the scholarly journal, the art film, the color supplement, and glossy monograph, rather than in the wardrobe, the shop, or the street. Such products often seemed destined to be showcased rather than sold, and their visual and material qualities are artefactual in the purest sense,

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embodying a level of crafted perfection and narrative power that lies beyond simple understandings of clothing as commodity. Indeed designers, curators, and fashion writers often stress affinity with the working practices of artists, architects, and philosophers, deliberately eschewing any direct reference to commerce in the practice of avant‐garde fashion. Unsurprisingly, for some critics this elevation of the fashionable object to “art” is an effete nonsense; a symptom of crippling intellectual and moral decadence (Griffiths 1999, pp. 69–70). Yet its haunting imagery has undoubtedly captured the popular imagination. Exhibitions such as Alexander McQueen at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, of 2011 and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, of 2015 were judged great successes, attracting record attendances, and the concomitant surge of interest in the fashionable object as an exhibitionary and cultural medium has become a global phenomenon (Melchior and Svensson 2014). In this latest iteration of fashion’s cultural status we have thus seen its potency as a focus for debate and dissent increase while, paradoxically, its former power as a medium for social change and control has atrophied. The implications are unsettling, and several commentators have identified a sense of crisis in the field. In the spring of 2015 for example, as McQueen earned plaudits in South Kensington, the practice and culture of fashion received one of those periodic frontal attacks from an industry insider. Lidewij Edelkoort, the most celebrated proponent of trend forecasting, engineered optimum exposure for her own brand through the publication of her manifesto “Anti_Fashion [sic]: Ten Reasons why the fashion system is obsolete” (Edelkoort 2015). A call to arms, her document critiqued the educational model in which – as she saw it – fashion students across the world are encouraged to believe in the delusional mirage of star designers, the catwalk show, and the luxury brand. It berated the narcissistic cult of celebrity that places individualism above community. It bemoaned the loss of skill and an understanding of the value of craft that has destroyed the  European textile industry, and it damned the exploitation of labor and natural resources in low‐wage regions. “Anti_Fashion” challenged a consumerist understanding of value, where low price and ephemeral modishness trump quality and pleasure. It ridiculed the limited imaginations and historical amnesia of creatives within the industry. It dismissed the timidity and defensiveness of both the corporate face of fashion and its media reflection, damning standards of journalism and the pervasiveness of press relations. And, finally, it welcomed the emergence of the new, informed, anti‐fashion consumer, ­ emboldened by alternative networks, excited by independence, and driven to seek uniqueness. Setting aside the question of complicity (Edelkoort’s own trend prediction and brand consultancy work had arguably encouraged precisely those attitudes which she aimed to critique), “Anti_Fashion” nevertheless captured the spirit of the times and suggested that the concept of the fashionable object, as it had existed for decades, was ripe for reconstruction. Many of its points are hard to



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disagree with, though any historian of fashion worth their salt would argue that such debates are not new, and that anxieties around the moral worth of fashion culture or the ethical implications of sweated labor and global trade are as old as the first presentation of clothes designed for form as much as function, for extrinsic as much as for intrinsic value (Johnson et  al. 2003). That said, Edelkoort certainly gave students of fashion and design something to work with or against, and showed her readers why an informed and critical apparatus for the study of historical and contemporary fashion is more important now than ever. “Anti_Fashion” also provoked reflection on the manner in which fashion discourse has diverged since the turn of the twenty‐first century. While innovation and standards have seemingly atrophied in the world of fashion business, critique and commentary have blossomed in academia, cultural institutions, and in the free university that constitutes the blogosphere or the World Wide Web (Rocamora and Smelik 2016). Edelkoort (herself onetime Director of the Design Academy Eindhoven) may despair of teaching in some fashion design schools, but there is no cause to lament the vibrancy of analysis that continues to open up in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, in exhibition spaces and galleries, and indeed in many forward‐thinking practice‐based fashion and textile college departments for whom research and social, economic, political, technical, and aesthetic contexts are primary concerns. This gives us some cause for optimism at a moment of significant challenge in the world, and an opportunity to set some definitions for the future study of the fashionable object that recognizes its continuing relevance as a key element in the culture of contemporary design more generally. The exhibition “ITEMS: Is Fashion Modern?” opened at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York in October 2017. The development of an interesting curatorial idea, its content aimed to reappraise the first exhibition of dress at MOMA, “Are Clothes Modern?,” arranged by Bernard Rudofsky in 1944. Its material manifestation took an organizational framework informed by modernist readings of body and silhouette, new technologies and futurism, communication, sport, uniform, and power. The installation was spare and ascetic in true MOMA style, de‐humanized objects hung and mounted against austere blank walls. In essence the show was a cross between an upscale high‐technology sportswear shop and a didactic high school “show and tell.” The direct and uncompromising approach was replicated in the catalogue, an A–Z of 111 case studies (from 501s to YSL Touche Eclat) chosen to display exemplars of classic and contemporary dress from around the world whose qualities seemed, to the curators, to justify the relocation of the promotion and study of “fashion” into the pantheon of modern design (as if fashion’s unruly nature had previously denied it entry) (Antonelli and Millar Fisher 2017). “Items” received a mixed critical response: some applauded MOMA’s foresight in acknowledging that fashionable dress could claim a place in its galleries

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and enjoyed its democratic approach; others questioned its definitions and seeming rejection of decades of high‐profile fashion curatorship at other galleries and museums. For me (and, I admit, I had provided some curatorial advice on the content of the final section examining the suit as a cipher of power), the fascination lay precisely in the manner in which the exhibition took the demotic, unremarkable aspects of late twentieth century and contemporary dress and transferred them, with little intervention or styling, into the hallowed halls of modernism. For me, it represented Fashion’s antithesis. It was an Anti Fashion exhibition for Anti Fashion times. In that aspect it echoed many of the social and sartorial trends present on the street as we edge towards the third decade of the century: a blanding out, a turn to modesty, a rejection of excess that nevertheless still constitutes a deliberate statement of style (Lewis 2015).

Conclusion: A Provocation Should we still be concerned? Is the fashionable object, as my generation (those born in the mid‐1960s) understood it, a thing of history? Ten provocative aphorisms will suffice as a framework for further debate. I had rehearsed them as part of a response to a notable conference on contemporary fashion method convened at the Parsons School of Design, New York, a few years ago, which was itself a symptom of the “fashion turn.” In adapted form they still seem relevant and perhaps serve as a useful conclusion here (Jenss 2016). At the very least they take us one step further towards understanding the prescience of the fashionable object than the Oxford English Dictionary: The fashionable object is made manifest in material forms. It demands study in the same way that ancient artifacts are made meaningful by archeologists: through careful excavation. Fashion has a tendency to construct its own canons. Like every cultural form these should be documented and then subjected to debate and challenge. Art historians are expert creators and destroyers of these canons, as surely as modernism follows romanticism. Like art historians, fashion and design scholars need to look at fashionable objects and question them. The fashionable object is not necessarily spectacular (though it often conforms to the theory of the society of the spectacle), it can also be demotic, ordinary, mundane, routine, and humble. It is the stuff of the ethnographer and the anthropologist. The fashionable object moves in space and time. It shares in the complexity of physics and mathematics, making patterns and networks, forming mazes and constellations. Through its forms we have an opportunity to reunite art and ­science and to heal the rift of the two cultures. The fashionable object exists in and is formed by the culture of rumor and ­gossip. Never underestimate the power of gossip. Semiologists are driven into ­ecstasies of supposition by its whispers.



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Fashion can be about confirmation, of self and others. But it is also about anxiety, ambiguity, and worry. As an aid to understanding psychological complexities the fashionable object is unsurpassed. Fashion studies has always thrived, as many disciplines do, by positioning itself – like its object of study – between borders and at the periphery. Its apparent lack of respectability provided energy. Now there are many journals and conferences to serve its purposes. They give more space for multiple points of view, but the field must strive to avoid co‐option and exhaustion. Fashion is intensely personal, in the same way that poetry is intensely personal. The fashionable object is a medium through which personal stories can be told, memories relived, and futures foretold. Fashion is so all‐encompassing and encyclopedic in its terrain that it seems tailor‐made for the era of big data and the Internet of things. The old antiquarians used it to map national customs and habits. We have the tools to put the fashionable object to the service of as yet unimagined projects, of even greater scope and impact. Fashion does not define. It is instead a term that demands definition.

References Antonelli, P. and Fisher, M.M. (2017). ITEMS: Is Fashion Modern? New York: Museum of Modern Art. Barthes, R. (1967). Systeme de la Mode. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Bell, Q. (1947). On Human Finery. London: Hogarth Press. Breward, C. (2003). Fashion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Breward, C. (2004). Fashioning London: Clothing and the Modern Metropolis. Oxford: Berg. Breward, C. and Evans, C. (eds.) (2005). Fashion and Modernity. Oxford: Berg. Breward, C. and Gilbert, D. (eds.) (2006). Fashion’s World Cities. Oxford: Berg. Davis, F. (1992). Fashion, Culture and Identity. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Edelkoort, L. (2015). Anti_Fashion Manifesto. http://www.edelkoort.com/ 2015/09/anti_fashion‐manifesto (accessed 22 August 2018). Entwistle, J. (2009). The Aesthetic Economy of Fashion. Oxford: Berg. Evans, C. (2003). Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity and Deathliness. London: Yale University Press. Gilbert, D. (2000). Urban outfitting. In: Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis (eds. S. Bruzzi and P.C. Gibson), 7–24. London: Routledge. Griffiths, I. (1999). The invisible man. In: The Fashion Business: Theory, Practice, Image (eds. I. Griffiths and N. White), 69–90. Oxford: Berg. Hall, S. and Jefferson, T. (eds.) (1977). Resistance through Rituals. London: Routledge. Hebdige, D. (1979). Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge. Jenss, H. (ed.) (2016). Fashion Studies: Research Methods, Sites and Practices. London: Bloomsbury.

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Johnson, K.K.P., Torntore, S.J., and Eicher, J.B. (eds.) (2003). Fashion Foundations: Early Writings on Fashion and Dress. Oxford: Berg. Lewis, R. (2015). Muslim Fashion: Contemporary Style Cultures. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Lipovetsky, G. (1994). The Empire of Fashion. New York: Princeton University Press. Loschek, I. (2009). When Clothes Become Fashion: Design and Innovation Systems. Oxford: Berg. McNeil, P. and Riello, G. (2016). Luxury: A Rich History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McRobbie, A. (1991). Feminism and Youth Culture. London: Routledge. Melchior, M.R. and Svensson, B. (eds.) (2014). Fashion and Museums: Theory and Practice. London: Bloomsbury. Muggleton, D. (2000). Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style. Oxford: Berg. OED (1996). Oxford Compact English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Polhemus, T. (1994). Streetstyle: From Sidewalk to Catwalk. London: Thames & Hudson. Riello, G. and McNeil, P. (eds.) (2010). The Fashion History Reader: Global Perspectives. London: Routledge. Rocamora, A. and Smelik, A. (eds.) (2016). Thinking Through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists. London: I. B. Tauris. Seabrook, J. (2015). The Song of the Shirt. London: Hurst & Co. Thornton, S. (1995). Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Cambridge: Polity. Vinken, B. (2005). Fashion Zeitgeist: Trends and Cycles in the Fashion System. Oxford: Berg. Wilcox, C. (2001). Radical Fashion. London: V&A Publications. Wilson, E. (1985). Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity. London: Virago. Zukin, S. (2011). Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

15

The Written Object Design Journalism, Consumption, and Literature Since 1945 Grace Lees‐Maffei

Introduction: Words Across the Design Life Cycle The “written object” is just one focal point in a broader relationship between words and things. Writing accompanies designed objects throughout their life  cycles. We experience design of the present, the past, and the future, through words, written or spoken, as well as through designed images and objects. Design discourse mediates between designers, manufacturers, and consumers just as images and objects themselves do. Writing informs and supports the ideation and production phases of design, such as technical specifications, or the letters that have been exchanged between customers and manufacturers (Styles 1993). Designers’ writings are not only related to their design practice, but are also in some senses part of it: designers have designed with and through words (Lees‐Maffei 2012). Computer‐aided design and manufacturing (CADCAM) has introduced more words alongside communication by numbers, and text encoding, than the drafting process previously entailed. The words used to describe the design process, and its products, vary from region to region around the world, as an international research project examining “words for design” has shown (Fujita 2007–2009, 2008). Because the words for design differ regionally, so do its associations, as more or less technical, more or less creative, more or less associated with other areas of practice, and so on. Carma Gorman has argued that designers should study second or third languages as a way of expanding their thought process and A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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approaches to design (Gorman 2004), while Femke de Vries has applied a ­linguistic approach to deconstruct fashion design (de Vries 2016). Words are even more prevalent in the mediation of design. Design is mediated to users, consumers, and others in a variety of ways: through marketing campaigns, advertising, retail environments and retailing practices, design criticism, journalism, museum displays, and product placement in film, television, and online channels, among others. Designers’ industry and trade publications are a useful resource in piecing together the history of design. Titles such as Design and The Architectural Review are notable examples of a significant group of publications in which designers have written for each other, as we shall see later in this chapter. Books by designers are another group of texts which contribute to the corpus of the written object. From Le Corbusier’s writing on type‐form (The Decorative Art of Today, 1987[1925]) to Gordon Russell’s didactic How to Buy Furniture for the Council of Industrial Design (CoID) (1947), designers have theorized design and sought to persuade readers of their knowledge and competence through their writing as well as their design. Related to the group of writings by designers are those works of design advice written by authorities of various kinds. Studying domestic advice is valuable design historically because “Advice is an important resource for understanding how ideal models of the consumption of designing goods within the home were mediated to a reading or viewing public” (Lees‐Maffei 2003, p. 3). This discourse is best understood as communicating a group of constantly changing ideals, as much as representing actual, everyday uses of design in the home. For example, advice writers have promoted the qualities of practicality and thrift as being associated with certain objects; furniture has been written about in ways which render it symbolic of elegance, understatement, and permanence (Figure 15.1). Design criticism is another important element of the persuasive discourse surrounding objects, as we shall see below. It has been used to improve design and its understanding throughout the period under examination, that is, 1945 to the present. Anthropologist Grant McCracken has explained the circular nature of design discourse: The viewer/possessor must have been given prior acquaintance with new meanings so that he or she can identify the cultural significance of the physical properties of the new object. In short, the designer relies on the journalist at the beginning and then at the end of the meaning‐transferring process. The journalist supplies new meaning to the designer as well as to the recipient of the designer’s work. (McCracken 1988, p. 82)

Design criticism is written by designers, and sometimes by specialist critics, including – in recent years – the graduates of a small group of courses dedicated to design criticism such as those at the School of Visual Arts in New York and at the Royal College of Art in London.



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Figure 15.1  “Dignity in the entrance hall,” Plate XIX in Derek Patmore, Modern Furnishing and Decoration, London: The Studio, 1934.

Standing slightly apart from the persuasive function of designers’ writings, marketing and advertising, retailing and consumer magazines, and other consumer discourses, are those writings about design which are principally intended to inform and educate. This category encompasses museum captions, museum catalogues, school, further, higher, and adult education courses, textbooks, and scholarly tomes.

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Most of these mediating discourses combine words and images, such as store displays with price tags, museum displays with labels, and magazine articles with illustrations. Verbal representations intended to persuade readers to part with their money, and buy furniture, include the words in retail environments (“contemporary,” “traditional,” “bargain”) and those in catalogues and trade shows, from the Ideal Home show to the Milan Furniture Fair. Purely verbal design discourses include, for example, the dialogue and correspondence between collectors and their dealers. Finally, words accompany the reception, consumption, and use phases of the design life cycle. Mediation and reception are part of the same process, but consumption and use do not need to be. Having decided to buy a designed product, a consumer does not need to use words to describe the experience of getting or using the product. However, she or he may do so, whether in a diary (Vickery 1993) or in letters, or latterly in a blog or social media post as we will discuss below. In this process, consumption becomes mediation as the consumer mediates the product and she or he writes about it. Having described some of the ways in which words are a constant presence throughout the design life cycle, this chapter goes on to focus on several nodal points in the interplay of words and design. We will start by looking at how design historians have understood words within the process of mediating designed goods, images, and services to consumers and users. Next, we will briefly examine the development of design journalism since 1945. That leads into a discussion of Web 2.0 and consumers’ engagement in design criticism and design journalism as a new stage in the relationship between design and words. The chapter closes with two divergent approaches: the first examining the literary and aesthetic merits of writing about design and the appearance of design in literature, and the second exploring the possibility of design without words.

Words About Design: The Mediation Turn in  Design History Design historians have worked for four decades alongside curators to reveal the social and cultural significance of design using words. Indeed, the entire “project of design history, design studies and design criticism” might be characterized as “writing design” (Lees‐Maffei 2012, p. 9). Teachers and researchers seeking to understand the history of design have consulted textual sources as much as, if not more than, visual sources. Documents are read, critiqued, and contextualized, sometimes using techniques of literary analysis and linguistics. The written object, and the relationship between words and things, concerns not only designers and design historians but also practitioners and writers on craft, archeologists, students, teachers, and researchers in business and labor history, popular culture studies and cultural studies, social and cultural history, and cultural sociology, to name but a few.



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We know that design is a verb as well as a noun (Heskett 1987, p. 112), and that design can refer to the practice of designing as well as to the thing, or place, or indeed behavior designed. Yet, during the formative years of design history, from 1977 or thereabouts onwards, writing on design history principally examined the thing designed – and that was usually a modernist thing. Design history’s prevailing focus on production was associated by its detractors with the field’s roots in art history (Fallan 2010), with a connoisseurial fetishization of the object and with a “great men” approach to writing history, which had been dismantled in mainstream history by feminist historians seeking to add the achievements of women into the frame, and by practitioners of social and cultural history and “history from below” who sought to promote the historical importance of working‐class and middle‐class people (Lees‐ Maffei 2009). This challenge to the production focus in design history prompted a reactionary consumption turn in the 1990s. However, it is unwise to ascribe dates to these turns, because production, consumption, and mediation were not so much successive stages in the intellectual development of design history as three coterminous streams. But, by shifting attention from a production focus, in which producers, the production of things, and the things produced are key, to a consumption turn, in which the practices of consuming things are paramount, we can perhaps see a shift from noun to verb, with the noun being, of course, “design” and the verb being not “producing,” but rather “consuming.” If we accept that the consumption turn was a move away from things to behaviors in this way, then the behaviors of interest remained focused on things. Even though consumption is a practice, the consumption turn has depended on designed things being consumed, whether an object such as a chair or table (Øllgaard 1999), a designed space, such as a kitchen (Freeman 2004), the product of service labor, such as a carefully composed table setting (Lees‐Maffei 2011), or a haircut (McCracken 1997). The consumption turn has involved the study of mediating discourses such as magazines in the understanding of design, but it was not until the current century that “mediation” was posited as a term to describe a cogent concept denoting a methodological focus with sufficient critical mass to constitute a “turn.” Early examples of this work on design mediation include an article on etiquette writing as design discourse (Lees‐Maffei 2001) and, in the same year, the Design History Society annual conference Representing Design. By 2003, it was possible to observe that “Currently, design history is becoming increasingly preoccupied with mediation as a point on the design continuum providing a focus for studies attentive to both production and consumption” (Lees‐Maffei 2003, p. 3), and in 2009 three currents could be discerned in the mediation turn in design history: (i) analysis of “channels such as television, magazines, corporate literature, advice literature and so on in mediating between producers and consumers, and forming consumption practices and ideas about design”; (ii) work examining “the extent to which mediating

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channels are themselves designed”; and (iii) investigation into the role of designed goods themselves as mediating devices (Lees‐Maffei 2009, p. 351). A focus on mediation in design history can complement object‐based analysis and has the advantage of overcoming the binary of production and consumption, and complicating any sense of a linear progression between the two. It allows for the fact that production, consumption, and mediation can occur in any sequence, or simultaneously, and illuminates the intervening discourses and practices which endow objects with meaning.

Design Journalism Since 1945 One strand of the mediation turn comprises the considerably increased attention paid to magazines as a mediating channel for design discourse. Roland Barthes provides an early exemplar with his study of fashion magazines (Barthes 1983[1967]). Magazines have been consulted by design historians who studied the consumption of design, but, in more recent work, magazines are recognized not only as evidence of consumption practices and attitudes but also as mediating channels worthy of analysis in their own right. Jeremy Aynsley is pre‐eminent in this area (Aynsley 1992, 2005; Aynsley and Berry 2005). Design and the Modern Magazine examines “The magazine as designed object,” “Magazines and the consumer,” and “Promoting design through magazines,” and the chapters have “a dual focus”: “that of the design of magazines and the mediation of the idea of design” (Aynsley and Forde 2007, p. 2). The editors note that magazines parallel the rise of the department store, as organs of consumerism, and they point out that the only circulation figures available for magazines have been compiled by advertisers seeking to calibrate the reach of specific titles (Aynsley and Forde 2007, p. 8). Aynsley and Forde focus their selection on empirical case studies drawn from the UK and the USA since c. 1880, spanning “the emergence of the modern, mass market magazine as well as the specialist design periodicals” (Aynsley and Forde 2007, p. 4). They situate this new scholarship within a body of literature about magazines which has examined the technological developments that facilitated magazine printing, if not their circulation and the development of professional specialisms within the industry, including roles for women and the influence of magnates, as well as the central relationship between magazines and their consumers. An example of the former is provided by Ellen Mazur Thomson’s study of “Early graphic design periodicals in America” (Thomson 1994), while the latter is a core interest of Jennifer Scanlon’s Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies Home Journal, Gender and the Promises of Consumer Culture (Scanlon 1995), and Susan Sellers’ analysis of Harper’s Bazaar, Funny Face “and the Construction of the Modernist Woman” (Sellers 1995). Other examples from the now very extensive and interdisciplinary literature to have focused on magazines include Barbara Usherwood’s examination of Elle Decoration as an instance of



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transnational publishing (Usherwood 1997) and writing on The Face by Dick Hebdige (1988a) and Paul Jobling (1999). One area of design magazine publishing which warrants further attention is the ways in which academic and mass market consumer discourses intersect in design magazines, as this chapter will now go on to explore.

Design Journalism and the Promotion of “Good Design” Nikolaus Pevsner and Sadie Speight: The Architectural Review and “Design Review,” 1944–1946 Nikolaus Pevsner had envisaged a career as an academic. He took his PhD in 1924, and that year became a curator in Dresden. He then worked at the University of Göttingen before the Nazi regime prompted him to move to the University of Birmingham, UK, in 1933. His Pioneers of the Modern Movement (Pevsner 1936; reissued in 1949; revised 1960, 1975) has been an important influence on design writing. The same year that Pioneers was published, Pevsner became a regular contributor to The Architectural Review (Harries 2014), and he was appointed to the Editorial Board in 1941 (Crossley 2004, p. 12). From 1943, he stood in for J.M. Richards, who worked as Editor alongside Hubert de Cronin Hastings, while Richards was on active service in the war. The year that Pevsner assumed the role of acting Editor, The Architectural Review introduced “a regular ‘Design Review’ section, which ran from 1944 until 1946” (Seddon 2007, p. 29). Pevsner edited the section and architect Sadie Speight wrote it. Jill Seddon has provided a detailed account of the aims, process, and outputs of the “Design Review” section, as a way of promoting modernism to  a reasonably wide readership, and as a highly gendered case study of the production of design journalism (Seddon 2007; see also Kelly 2013). Seddon notes that The Architectural Review was not only “the mouthpiece of modernism” and that it increasingly evidenced a “pluralistic approach … reflected in Pevsner’s developing interest in the picturesque and in the architecture and design of the Victorian period.” “Design Review,” Seddon tells us, acknowledged “a new liberalism in its umbrella publication” while also communicating the sense that its role was “to preserve the purity of a modernist ‘line’ on design” (Seddon 2007, p. 32, cites Crossley 2004, pp. 12–14, and Mowl 2000, pp. 107–109). Speight’s approach to “Design Review” continued what she had started with her husband, architect Leslie Martin, in compiling The Flat Book in terms of recommending products which were aligned, more or less, with “the ‘good design’ policy and educative mission of the newly founded CoID” (Seddon 2007, p. 39). The Architectural Review functioned as part of an effort to cultivate a “General Reader, to act as an appreciative audience for modernism” (Kelly 2016, p. 363). Jessica Kelly has concluded that “modernism was defined as much by what was published, broadcast and exhibited about architecture, and

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for whom, as it was by what was built” (Kelly 2016, p. 363; see also Kelly 2013 and Parnell 2011). The “Design Review” section closed because Speight had competing family commitments and only limited time to devote to what was a very time‐consuming process of research and writing, and because Pevsner was busy with his involvement with the Board of Trade and was starting work on the research and writing of his two extensive postwar series, The Pelican History of Art and The Buildings of England. Pevsner’s ideas about art, architecture, and Englishness were important for a range of audiences (Madge 1988). But the most notable of his works were for a mainstream audience. His Buildings of England series, first for Allen Lane and Penguin, and later for Yale University Press, and his appearances on the BBC were the work through which most people knew him. This work, combined with professorships at Cambridge, Oxford, and Birkbeck College, London, took him away from design journalism and confirmed his reputation not only within academe but also with a wider art‐ and architecture‐loving public (Seddon 2007, p. 36).

Gillian Naylor, Design Magazine, 1957–1963 The work of Nikolaus Pevsner and Sadie Speight in promoting modernism at The Architectural Review was continued under the auspices of the Council of Industrial Design (later the Design Council) through Design magazine. Just like the “Design Review” section of The Architectural Review, Design ­magazine’s “remit was to increase the market for well‐designed products by exposing its readers to examples of ‘good design’” (Naylor and Garland 2007, p. 156). Indeed, when Gillian Naylor (1931–2014) was asked by Design’s editor Michael Farr (a student of Pevsner’s) in her interview for a position as a news editor in 1956 what she was reading, her reply – that she was reading Gordon Cullen in The Architectural Review – was obviously accepted as suitable preparation for her new role (Naylor and Garland 2007, p. 159). Naylor has described in detail the selection process through which she was deemed knowledgeable about good design as involving not only reference to The Architectural Review, but also an image test and questions about her recent exhibition visits (silverware and Finnish textile design at the Victoria and Albert Museum). But while Richards’ Architectural Review shifted its target readership from those with a professional interest in architecture to those general readers whose minds and tastes it sought to inform, Design magazine was aimed at “professional designers, manufacturers, company buyers and managers” (Naylor and Garland 2007, p. 156). For Design magazine, Naylor interviewed many key figures in the UK design establishment including Robin Darwin (Principal of the Royal College of Art), Paul Reilly, designers Gordon Russell and Ken Garland, and Henry Rothschild of the Primavera gallery (Lees‐Maffei 2016, p. 439). David Crowley has explained how “In the Manichean world of COID, design could be ‘good’ (modest, functional,



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transparent, rational, and enduring) or ‘bad’ (gauche, ambiguous, emotional, and ephemeral)” (Crowley 2004, p. 186). Naylor’s career at Design magazine ended in 1963 when she became a mother and moved into higher education teaching, research, and writing. Naylor’s books focus on the Arts and Crafts movement (e.g. Naylor 1971) and modernism, specifically the Bauhaus (Naylor 1985), and she continued to write reviews regularly for Crafts magazine.

Writing on Design Challenging Orthodoxies of “Good Design” Roland Barthes’ Mythologies for Les Lettres Nouvelles, 1954–1956 Any examination of postwar design journalism must acknowledge the ­achievements of Roland Barthes. Like Pevsner, Barthes’ writing on design was  important in bringing together academic and mass discourses. During the  1950s, this French literary theorist wrote, among other things, a series of  ­articles in the literary magazine Les Lettres Nouvelles, which innovatively ­subjected details daily life to serious analysis, informed by academic work in linguistics on semiotics and structuralism: In terms of methodology, Barthes’s short essays are journalistic and poetic (rather than academic and scientific), but his inter‐disciplinary approach to consumer culture, drawing upon linguistics, psychoanalysis, history, theater and politics, is particularly relevant to design studies. (Huppatz 2011, p. 89)

Barthes revealed the deeper meanings of apparently unremarkable aspects of popular culture, such as the claim that detergents clean deep down, when fabric is not deep, and the naming of a car after a goddess (Barthes 1972[1957]). Barthes’ journalism has been immensely influential in academic work across the arts and humanities since the essays were collected and published in French in 1957 and translated into English for publication in 1972. D.J. Huppatz has emphasized the fact that “For design critics and practitioners alike, Mythologies helped shape an understanding of how designed artifacts operate in a mass consumer culture: less as functional objects and more as metaphoric vehicles of collective desire” (Huppatz 2011, p. 85). Even now, well into the twenty‐first century, “Barthes’s eclectic and elusive criticism is still useful for understanding contemporary designed artifacts,” Huppatz continues: “Designers and design critics alike might benefit from revisiting Barthes’s mythological criticism in order to reveal dominant narratives embedded within contemporary consumer products … which are consumed today as not only universal but natural and inevitable” (Huppatz 2011, p. 97). Barthes has also contributed to analysis of the written object an academic study of fashion magazine writing (Barthes 1983[1967]). One author to have benefited from revisiting Barthes’ mythological criticism is Rebecca Houze; others are those whose essays appear in Peter Bennett and Julian McDougal’s edited collection Barthes “Mythologies” Today (Bennett and McDougal 2013). Houze’s New Mythologies: Reading Signs and Symbols in the

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Visual Landscape is inspired by Barthes’ Mythologies to ask what he might have written if, instead of being a French male literary theorist writing in France in the middle of the twentieth century, he had been a female professor and mother of two working in Chicago in the twenty‐first century. Houze’s essays are longer than Barthes’, and are prepared for an academic book market rather than the readers of a literary magazine, so she is able to be more expansive than Barthes is in his short essays. Houze traces recurrent sightings of visual phenomena, such as arches, targets, and grids. Houze’s associative and persuasive analysis ranges from revealing the cynicism at the heart of greenwashing in the oil industry to pointing out the significance of the siren call of new media devices within the context of debates about good parenting (Houze 2016).

Reyner Banham, Design Journalism, and  Modernism’s Other, 1952–1988 In 1952, Peter Reyner Banham started working for The Architectural Review with his doctoral supervisor, Pevsner, with whom he studied for a PhD at the Courtauld Institute from 1952 to 1958. He later recalled that his move to The Architectural Review was perceived as “defecting to the enemy camp” (Whiteley 2002, p. 16). However, rather than preaching the same ideas as Pevsner, Banham’s design writing offered an oppositional philosophy of design and its histories. His PhD thesis, published as Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (Banham 1960) countered Pevsner’s ideas about designers’ and architects’ responses to technology. While Pevsner had identified in the practitioners of the Arts and Crafts movement the precursors of modernism, Banham saw in them a failure to engage with technology. He preferred the machine aesthetic of the futurists, and the complex modernity of the American city, as shown in his book Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (Banham 1971). Naylor has described Banham as “a Modernist who was preoccupied with Modernism’s ‘other’,” transient as opposed to eternal, sharing the Futurists’ celebration of technology and taking consumption seriously. For Naylor, “Banham democratized design for the design historian, divorcing object analysis from what he described as ‘fine art criticism’” (Naylor 1997, p. 241). For Aynsley and Harriet Atkinson, Banham was “the most influential writer on design and architecture in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century” (Aynsley and Atkinson 2009, p. 1) and his importance is largely accepted (Sparke 1981) with few critical exceptions (Whiteley 2002). Aynsley and Atkinson follow Naylor’s “Banham factor” with a “Banham tradition” based on “the interpretation of modern architecture and design, with a keen interest in the iconography of popular design and an emphasis on the lasting impact of technology on the imagination of architects and designers” (Aynsley and Atkinson 2009, p. 2). When they point out that Banham’s 1000+ journalistic articles “bridge high and low” and “open new territories for future generations of enquiry” we can see a parallel between Banham’s anglophone discourses on



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design and Barthes’ francophone contribution for Les Lettres Nouvelles. Naylor makes this explicit: Banham signals what “might be described as a semiological – or Barthian – approach to the interpretation of objects, not necessarily in this case as a methodology for the historian, but as a means of product assessment for the critic” (Naylor 1997, p. 247). And like Barthes, and Pevsner, Banham’s ideas about design were disseminated through journalism, television, and radio, as well as through his books. Banham continued to write until his death in 1988, and indeed some of his writing was published posthumously. Banham’s extensive body of design journalism is recorded in a posthumous collection edited by his widow, Mary (Banham et al. 1999). Alice Twemlow has retrospectively characterized his output as follows: In 1956 he wrote about industrial design and “the common user” for The Listener, and with his “Not Quite Architecture” column for the Architects’ Journal, begun in 1957, and his New Statesman column on architecture, technology and design, begun in 1958, he experimented with broadening his field to include reviews of science fiction and blockbuster films, and industrial design or the themes that framed it, such as the retreat of the Italian influence in British society. By the mid‐ 1960s … he was knee‐deep in popular culture as subject matter, devoting columns to the British potato crisp, bank notes, sunglasses as fashion accessories, Californian surfboards, paperback book covers, the decoration of ice cream trucks, Carnaby Street, and commercial signage. (Twemlow 2013, p. 123)

Some of the most influential writers on design have extended their influence by working across media, and for various audiences: through their academic books, their media appearances, and their design journalism. We have seen how, in the 1940s and 1950s, design journalism was used to promote largely similar ideas of what “good design” was or might be, from Sadie Speight and Pevsner’s “Design Review” for The Architectural Review to Gillian Naylor’s work communicating government‐sanctioned ideas about good design for CoID and the Design Council’s Design Index at Design magazine. We have seen, too, some challenges to norms about what merited the attention of writers and readers alike. Barthes demonstrated the significance of details in everyday life, thereby toppling a hierarchy of cultural value. Banham’s inclusive enthusiasm for popular modernism, modern, and the American scene formed a needed counterpoint to the normative preoccupations of many architecture and design writers, teachers, and institutions.

The Designer Decade and the Increasing Consumption of  Design Magazines, 1980–1999 Design magazines demonstrate how people thought about and consumed design. For example, in the UK during the last two decades of the twentieth century, a shift in the popular reception of design is visible. A Conservative government, led by Margaret Thatcher, enacted polices fostering

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consumerism and individualism. Design was a key part of the Thatcherite strategy for promoting manufacturing and business buoyancy that included a Design minister and the Design Council, which was tasked with helping businesses harness design as a tool for commercial success. A right‐to‐buy scheme moved homes from the diminishing group of publicly owned social housing and into private hands. First‐time homeowners entered a doomed property market, we now know, which went on to suffer a double‐dip recession. Homeowners caught in negative equity became home improvers, and, more broadly, leisure became more home‐centered and individualized in both the UK and the USA (Putnam 1995, 2000). While the 1980s were popularly referred to as the “designer decade” in Britain, in the 1990s popular interest in design consolidated. Between 1980 and 1995, circulation figures for existing design magazine titles grew and several new titles were launched. David Crowley has examined the flowering of design magazines in the postwar period through the lens of graphic design, exploring titles such as Creative Review, which responded to increased awareness of the commercial benefits design can bring, titles associated with the rise of public awareness in design, such as The Face, designed by Neville Brody, and titles indicative of a critical mass of reflexive writing on the part of the design profession seen in, for example, Eye (Crowley 2004). Moving to design magazines which concern the home, in various ways, we can see the circulation of do‐it‐yourself (DIY) magazines declined into the 1990s, but trade publications increased their circulation figures by around 50%, denoting greater consumer interest in professional interior design and decorating. While Design magazine (1949–1999) (Figure 15.2) suffered from the competition of new launches in the 1980s, such as Creative Review (launched 1981) and Blueprint (f. 1983)  –  both of which enjoyed peak figures in 1991  –  magazine circulation data evidence a boom period for interest in design between 1986 and 1992 (Lees‐Maffei 2014, pp. 292–295). Indeed, Blueprint itself was established with the help of a governmental business development grant. Deyan Sudjic, editor of Blueprint until 1993, had worked at Design magazine in the early 1980s but, as he explained, his magazine was forged in contradistinction from both The Architectural Review and Design magazine: “we were pushing back against the Architectural Review, which was spectacularly dull. It featured dull buildings and the writing was didactic, careful, polite, good taste – dull!,” while “Design magazine ‘was so tedious … It had lost faith in itself and had no direction. The Design Council came from a strand of thinking that design was something the well‐bred inflicted on those that had no choice, which seemed deathly” (Twemlow 2013, p. 249). Rather, Sudjic’s writing for Blueprint was influenced by Banham’s writing on design in New Society, albeit applied to profiles of, and interviews with, notable designers of the time. Blueprint featured designers on its cover to reflect the interviews with designers inside. Twemlow describes this increased emphasis on the personality



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Figure 15.2  Gillian E. Naylor, “Decade of Development,” Design magazine, no. 120 (December 1958), p. 40. Design Council Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives. Reproduced with permission.

and celebrity of designers as a “new kind of pseudo‐psychoanalytic character analysis in design journalism” (Twemlow 2013, p. 262). Many of these titles experienced a decline at the turn of the century, however, when a paradigm shift occurred in terms of the move of design journalism onto the Web.

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Consumers’ Words: Web 2.0 and Mediating Consumers Until the current century, design journalism was largely written by professionals. Designers, design commentators, and journalists were paid by mainstream media channels such as newspapers and television companies to speak with authority and experience about design. In the second half of the twentieth century the World Wide Web was developed, for military (ARPANET, Advanced Research Projects Agency Network packet switching network) and research (Joint Academic Network, JANET, from JISC, the Joint Information Systems Committee, f. 1966) purposes and then rolled out for business, consumer, and social uses. It was introduced to a mass public in the 1990s, and made accessible by Internet service providers such as AOL (America On Line). While newspaper circulation figures have dropped in recent decades, this is only partly the result of online communication, and is also related to the fact that newspapers have, during the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries, competed in an increasingly crowded field of print as well as online discourse. What does the introduction of Web 2.0, the social web, and user‐generated content mean for the written object? Twemlow has characterized the “­turbulent” impact of the Web on: the way design criticism was conducted and consumed, as well as criticism’s reconfigured relationship to democracy, authority, and professional status in the early years of the twenty‐first century. Design criticism became increasingly fragmented and distributed across web media, with multiple micro‐constituencies, rather than recognized publishers or institutions, initiating, hosting and feeding the many simultaneous and rhizomatic conversations. (Twemlow 2013, p. 15)

Today the Web is full of amateur and consumer accounts of design, in blogs and social media, and in written and visual forms. The words about design seen on the Web may not be written by design professionals, as they have traditionally been recognized. The volume of writing by non‐designers and amateur writers on social media and blogging platforms means that online design discourse complicates the binaries of amateur and professional just as it complicates the production–consumption–mediation paradigm. As an example of the complex relationship between production, consumption, and mediation consider the purchase (consumption) of a can of mold‐ resistant bathroom wall paint. If a householder paints her or his own bathroom wall with this paint, she or he is engaged in a process both of production (a professional painter and decorator could charge a fee for such a service) and consumption (she or he is using the purchased product as intended). If the householder decides to use the mold‐resistant paint not in a bathroom or kitchen but in a bedroom, whether due to damp, condensation, or for the specific appearance and light‐reflecting qualities of the paint’s sheen then she or he is engaged in a design decision. The action is one of production (designers are



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trained to make such decisions and charge fees accordingly) as well as consumption, in this case using the product in an unscripted way. As an example of peer‐to‐peer advice about using mold‐resistant paint, see the chatroom thread MrsSteveBackshall (2011). The borders between production and consumption are porous, and not only do householders engage in both kinds of activity in their homes (Cowan 1983), they might be engaged in these activities at once. This simultaneity has been heralded by theorist of globalization George Ritzer as “prosumption,” following Alvin Toffler’s coinage of the term (Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010; Toffler 1980). Web 2.0, the read–write web – a key example in Ritzer’s commentary on prosumption  –  provides apparently endless examples of design prosumption, from Etsy, in which amateur craftspeople, manufacturers, and assemblers market their (principally) domestically produced goods for sale as household accents, gifts, clothing, and accessories, to Pinterest and other social media. The social value of amateur making, whether analog (Charny 2011) or digital (Gauntlett 2011), is being theorized in response to a sense that digital, online, cultures and practices necessitate a new understanding of craft making, materiality, and authorship (Adamson 2007, 2013; McCullough 1996). Online design discourse has changed how we understand design per se. If the householder writes about the problem and the actions she or he took, then this becomes an examination of words about design, and an example of mediation. Suppose that, having painted her or his bedroom wall with mold‐resistant bathroom paint, the householder adds complementary or clashing curtains or blinds, scatter cushions, and a bedspread and other personal items (whether home‐made or purchased “accents”), then photographs the ensemble and proudly posts the image(s) on Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or another social media site, awaiting the likes which she or he expects to accrue to the image from family, friends, acquaintances, and interested others. See, for example, the remodeling job “DIY Pallet Wall – Bathroom before and after” originally posted on Fabulous Home Blog (2013) and then pinned at Pinterest by Becca @amuse your bouche on her “interior design” board (Becca 2017). Comparison of before and after images is a technique used in marketing, by advertisers who want to demonstrate the difference a product makes, and it is also a standard technique for domestic advice writers, seeking to persuade readers of the effectiveness of their strategies, whether in cleaning and maintaining the home or in decorating. Architectural historian Tim Benton has remarked on Reyner Banham’s use of this “Wölfflinian technique”: Art history developed as a discipline in the tradition of the left and right projector screens and the basic grammar of art historical comparison – modern versus tradition, classical versus baroque, our man versus a lesser mortal, good versus bad – as well as the games of sequence: succession in time, development of an idea or shock intrusion. (Benton 2009, p. 14)

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Before and after is part of this rhetorical arsenal, with a long tradition in design reform literature beginning with Augustus Welby Pugin’s Contrasts of 1836 (Pugin 1841) and continuing in domestic advice literature (for example, De Syllas and Meade 1965, pp. 22–23) and up to the present. A Pinterest board may be kept for inspiration (or “thinspiration” in the case of infamous fitness and dieting boards) for future actions, or it may be seen by the “pinner” as an end in itself. In other words, the images and comments may be calls to action or they may be produced and consumed for their own a­ esthetic value. Or, the householder may post the image on her or his blog because she or he is an aspirant interior design blogger, who is looking to increase traffic, with a view to being sent manufacturers’ samples and trade show invitations, and a longer term aim of using the blog as a venue for publicizing her or his services as a professional interior designer. Online commenting is increasingly recognized as part of the creative process (Orton‐Johnson 2014; Rocamora 2016; Suhr 2015). Or, if the mold resistance of the paint turns out to fail, the householder may photograph some mold in situ, post the image on social media sites, such as Twitter in a complaining tweet, including the Twitter handle of the manufacturer and/or retailer in order to seek redress, and perhaps enjoy the schadenfreude of naming and shaming a manufacturer while initiating a process of compensation for customer satisfaction. What if the paint had been purchased on the recommendation of a friend, whether in person or through a social media posting? Is word‐of‐mouth recommendation any different from paid advertising in this case? The result is the same: purchase, emulation, consumption, and production, all taking place within a process that I have termed “mediation.” In her study of the ways in which consumers’ use of social media have changed fashion design and fashion writing, Agnès Rocamora suggests that “Where mediation refers to the media as conveyors of meaning, to their role in the transmission and circulation of messages, mediatization refers to their transformative power” (Rocamora 2016, p. 507). In the read–write Internet Web 2.0, householders are mediators as much as consumers and producers. The whole cycle of production, consumption, and mediation can take place in the home, simultaneously. The group we still refer to as consumers, therefore, should be listened to because they (we) are not only making purchasing decisions, but they (we) are also informing the production, consumption, and mediation of others on a broader scale than word of mouth ever allowed. Consumers are today’s advisors; they (we) write design objects every day.

Words Without Things: Literary and Aesthetic Value in Mediating Discourses If we accept that mediating discourses themselves can be the focus of design historical analysis, and that they are not entirely dependent on the object being mediated for their meaning, then we need to recognize the potential for



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mediating discourses to eclipse the thing mediated and achieve greater worth than the status of intervening discourse might allow or suggest. This worth might be literary, aesthetic, or something else. This requires consideration of disciplinary differences. In certain fields, the notion of studying mediating discourses for their own sake is a given; indeed, it is their focal work. The texts which have typically formed the mainstay of literary studies – novels, poetry, and plays – mediate ideas from the author to the reader, but for the purposes of design history they are not principally mediating discourses because their primary purpose is not to mediate design to an audience. In media studies, however, part of the purpose is to accord to media texts such as TV programs the status of literary texts and to subject those sources to literary analysis (Hall 1980[1972]). However, many of the texts studied do exist to mediate one thing to another, whether that is a brand of jeans or a political ideology. This is not simply about the persuasive function of certain discourses from advertising to political propaganda; rather, I am referring to the capacity of some discourses and channels to take one thing to another, to connect and bridge things. So, while a persuasive discourse such as advertising will seek to convince the consumer that this brand of jeans is better than any other, when viewed as a mediating discourse, the advertisement delivers the idea of the product and is intended to bring about the delivery of the actual product, through consumption not only of the advertisement but also of the product. So, for some fields, like media studies, the practice of studying the mediating discourse for its own sake, as the thing itself, is accepted. Design historians have tended to regard mediating discourses as subservient to the things being mediated. As Dick Hebdige notably insisted: “In design history there can be no subject without objects. All design practice has as its ultimate ideal and actual destination a tangible result, a real set of objects. Indeed, in design the thing itself is the ideal” (Hebdige 1988b, p. 80). Hebdige made this point to justify studying the surrounding practices of consumption. In design history, it has been necessary to point out the value of studying the discourses through which design is mediated because the a priori focus is on the thing itself. However, we need to allow for the fact that some mediating discourses have the potential to take on a life of their own, beyond that which is being mediated. This is not a new idea: precedents exist from Marshall McLuhan’s “medium is the message” (McLuhan 1964) to the application of Richard Dawkins’s notion of memes to explain how digitally disseminated images and words become so popular that they “go viral” and take on – it seems – a life of their own (Dawkins 1976). But I also want to recognize the currently less fashionable notion that mediating discourses can achieve an aesthetic power greater than the things that they describe, reference, or otherwise allude to. People do not read John Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn (2017[1819]) for what it tells us about ceramics, but rather as a meditation on beauty and mortality.

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Perhaps more prosaically, Evelyn Waugh’s satire on modernist design in his novel Decline and Fall (Waugh 1928) does more than describe certain design styles to communicate aspects of the characters. In the novel, Professor Otto Friedrich Silenus has attracted the attention of client Mrs. Beste‐Chetwynde “…with the rejected design for a chewing‐gum factory which had been reproduced in a progressive Hungarian quarterly.” We are told that “His only other completed work was the décor for a cinema film” from which the producer had eliminated “all human characters, a fact which had proved fatal to its commercial success.” Interviewed about his work for Mrs. Beste‐Chetwynde, Silenus expounds on his machine aesthetic: “‘The only perfect building must be the factory, because that is built to house machines, not men … Man is never beautiful; he is never happy except when he becomes the channel for the distribution of mechanical forces. The journalist looked doubtful.” Waugh deliberately mangles Le Corbusier’s idea that the house is a machine for living in (Le Corbusier 1986[1923]) to a ridiculous conclusion – that buildings are better without people. A design historian will read this as design criticism through satire; it conveys an idea about modern design to its readers. But, this text is not principally regarded as design criticism: it is lauded as part of the English canon of literature. The writing has achieved a reputation of its own, as much more than a verbal description of design, or as mediation, existing between things. However, Waugh’s novel offers an unusual example in this regard because the novelist himself produced a set of simple line drawings to accompany the first edition. Waugh claimed to have been interested in writing as a formal practice (Milthorpe 2016), rather than an exploration of character, but his illustrations offer non‐verbal depictions of the novel’s characters. Figure  15.3 shows Professor Otto Silenus in glasses, bow tie, and double‐ breasted reefer jacket amid some ruins and rectangular and cylindrical geometrical shapes, in front of a digger, holding his architectural plans. He presents an image of determination and will‐to‐power beyond the facts of the immediate surroundings. The image is captioned “I do not think it is possible for domestic architecture to be beautiful, but I am doing my best.” J.G. Ballard’s novel High Rise (1975) provides another example of a literary critique of modern society through a focus on modern architecture of a distinctly Corbusian character. This novel focuses on the community formed within a high‐rise residential block that is the first to be built of a planned five towers, arranged like the fingers of a giant hand extending out of a brownfield site. The single tower built thus far is a microcosm of society. The architect lives with his wife in the penthouse, where they throw decadent parties. She has established a verdant roof garden with lawns on which she rides her white pony. Like Marie Antoinette who played at being a milkmaid, the architect’s wife seeks escape in a rural idyll, albeit an artificial one and by no means a Petit Trianon. Professional workers live on the upper floors, and blue‐collar workers occupy the lower floors. Ultimately, the layers of society break down as the service systems and material fabric of the high rise fail. The tower block becomes



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Figure 15.3  – Evelyn Waugh, Plate III Professor Otto Silenus [man with charts and books under arm, standing among ruins in front of ditch digging machine] illustration for Decline and Fall, p. 155. 1928. 1 drawing (ink), 38.3 × 27.9 cm. Captioned “I do not think it is possible for domestic architecture to be beautiful, but I am doing my best.” Evelyn Waugh Art Collection, Box. 1.25, Accession Number: 67.76.3.32. Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. Reproduced with permission.

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the site of base survival. Ballard’s novel was adapted by Amy Jump as a feature film directed by Ben Wheatley (2015). The film’s mise en scène offers numerous visual cues in which designed goods impart information about the characters and their milieu. There is a growing body of writing about design in film (Albrecht 1987; Kirkham 2011; Lamster 2000; Shonfield 2000; Tobe 2016). These are just two examples and design historians might profitably consult the work of many more novelists, poets, playwrights, and filmmakers. Oscar Wilde, Aldous Huxley, and Mina Loy, to name a few modernist writers, all repay design historical analysis. Design historical analysis of these literary texts would remind design historians that the written object, words about design, mediating discourses, can be more than merely descriptive, informational, or persuasive utterances and that they can attain the status of an aesthetic experience.

Things Without Words? Understanding design, researching design, and communicating about design usually require the translation of “lines, shapes, colours, objects, materials, textures, surfaces, techniques, knacks, haptic, habitual, and sensory processes, and feelings, fleeting impressions, emotions and memories, into words” (Lees‐ Maffei 2011, p. 2). In many cases, the sources used by design historians show that word and image function as contiguous and complementary channels. Visual and verbal representations of design usually exist together, for example in advertising, advice books, pattern books, sales catalogues, and in the professional, amateur, and consumer accounts of design, in blogs, and social media on the Web. Exhibitions require that curators are trained in communicating the significance of design in labels of 70 words or fewer, which must contain key information such as date, designer, manufacturer, technique, provenance, materials, dimensions, and so on. Digital displays are freeing curators and exhibition visitors from a singular model of information delivery so that, for example, hyperlinks can reveal more to interested visitors, and those who prefer to watch or listen rather than read can find media in the exhibition venue to suit their preferences. Even attaching just one word to a design can transform it from a visual and/ or material artifact into a written object, verbally mediated. As mentioned at the start of this chapter, design commentators have employed the persuasive strategy of anthropomorphizing design through words indicating desirable personal qualities, thereby appealing to readers keen to attract such characteristics for themselves. In his book Modern Furnishing and Decoration, interior designer Derek Patmore shows a metal balustrade in a virtually empty stone‐flagged hall, exemplifying “dignity in the entrance hall,” and the association of understatement in design with good manners (Patmore 1934, plate XIX) (Figure 15.1). A generation later, sources such as the Woman’s Own Book of Modern Homemaking (1967) labeled a whole range of goods as “modern,” and sought



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to persuade readers to adopt modern design into their homes in the process (Lees‐Maffei 2001, p. 204; Woman’s Own 1967). We can point to verbal mediations of design that are not textual: the speeches of, for example, William Morris and the journalism of Charles Dickens, about the design crimes of mid‐ to late nineteenth century Britain (Dickens and Horne 1851; Naylor 1988). In the twentieth century radio and television were the key mediating channels for spoken design discourses. In the postwar period, the CoID also aimed to educate British consumers in the tenets of good design through the new medium of television as Jonathan Woodham and Michelle Jones have shown (Jones 2003; Woodham 1996). More recently, celebrities such as interior designers Linda Barker and Kelly Hoppen and lighting designer Kevin McCloud have produced books as tie‐ins with their media careers as much as with their design practice. Today, though, we find out about design principally through the Web, whether we are online as consumers or scholars. The archive is still privileged, not to say fetishized, but the Web is an increasingly important tool in learning about design, and as more archives are digitized the material appeal of archival sources is experienced by fewer researchers, while the convenience and accessibility of digital archives is available to all. On the Web, we can learn about design through the spoken word, rather than the written one, in a wide range of podcasts (such as Monocle’s “Section D”; Monocle 2017) as well as in updated versions of the older technologies of video and audiobooks. These visual and auditory forms of podcasts and vlogs are still verbal, however, like the archives and reference works available online today. So far, so text‐based. We have already referred to some instances of purely verbal representations of furniture – these might include the documentation of sales, including bills, invoices, and receipts, and inventories compiled for death duties and insurance. But where are the corresponding visual examples? What happens when we do without words entirely in mediating design? What if we move in the opposite direction, to consider not those texts celebrated for their literary merit, but rather the absence of text, as far as possible, in a non‐verbal design discourse? As an example, consider Professor Tim Benton taking us on a journey into the “Promenade Architecturale” at Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye in an Open University film of 1975 (Benton and Levinson 2015, 18m00s–20m00s). Benton moves in and around the house providing verbal commentary. But, it is possible to gather quite a lot of information about the house through the video, without words or sound. As a house museum, Villa Savoye is largely free of words, but inhabited contemporary homes are full books, magazines, and branded goods signaling the prevalence of the written in and on our domestic objects and interiors. This verbal quality of interiors is the basis for product placement in film and television, as a subtler and therefore perhaps more insidious form of advertising than the sponsorship of content such as soap operas, for example, and the television advertisement spots shown in commercial

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breaks. These mediating channels, too, offer a rich resource for the design historian and much of what is communicated is non‐verbal. Google’s image search function offers another example of non‐verbal potentiality, if not actuality. Finding an image of an object or other design usually requires us to translate the object into words, key these into a search engine, and rely on algorithms and tagging to deliver the images we seek. With Google image search, words are apparently removed from the process. Here, an image is used to find similar images, or that is how it appears. Of course the Web is constructed through coding languages, and search relies on tagging and keywords, but for the end user, at least, it appears not to need them. The results page shows words and images, but the input can apparently be purely visual. Is this process without words a purer, less mediated form of information gathering, because it seems not rely on the translation from design object or image, into words and back again into images? Is mediation a lossy, or noisy, form of translation of objects and other designed phenomena into words, which loses something in the translation? If so, then it is a process we take for granted and rely on in learning about and communicating about design goods, spaces, and services. This chapter has considered the written object within the context of the production–consumption–mediation paradigm in design history, and has noted that mediation combines text and image. It has moved beyond existing accounts of mediation to recognize the role of user‐generated content within the Web 2.0 environment and has suggested two further directions for design historians. The first is hyper‐ or ultra‐textual, in which the written object, or writing about design, attains literary and aesthetic recognition separate from, and beyond, the thing mediated. The written object in this case takes on a life of its own. The second is non‐textual, mediating design without words. Each of these departs from the primacy of the written object, albeit in what might seem to be contradictory ways. In the first of these, words enter a special literary and aesthetic category in which they are valorized on formal grounds, rather than for their relation to the material world. In the second, words are absent, replaced, and effaced whether entirely or largely by images.

References Adamson, G. (2007). Thinking Through Craft. Oxford: Berg. Adamson, G. (2013). The Invention of Craft. London: Bloomsbury. Albrecht, D. (1987). Designing Dreams: Modern Architecture in the Movies. London: Thames & Hudson. Aynsley, J. (1992). Gebrauchsgraphik as an early graphic design journal, 1924– 1938. Journal of Design History 5 (1): 53–72. Aynsley, J. (2005). Graphic change: design change: magazines for the domestic interior, 1890–1930. Journal of Design History 18 (1): 43–59.



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Aynsley, J. and Atkinson, H. (2009). The Banham Lectures: Essays on Designing the Future. Oxford: Berg. Aynsley, J. and Berry, F. (eds.) (2005). Publishing the modern home: magazines and the domestic interior 1870–1965. Journal of Design History 18 (1): 1–5. Aynsley, J. and Forde, K. (eds.) (2007). Design and the Modern Magazine. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ballard, J.G. (1975). High Rise. London: Jonathan Cape. Banham, R. (1960). Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Banham, R. (1971). Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies. Allen Lane: The Penguin Press. Banham, M., Lyall, S., Price, C., and Barker, P. (eds.) (1999). A Critic Writes:  Selected Essays by Reyner Banham. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Barthes, R. (1972[1957]). Mythologies. London: Jonathan Cape. Barthes, R. (1983[1967]). The Fashion System. New York: Hill & Wang. Translated by Matthew Ward and Richard Howard. Becca @amuse your bouche (2017). Interior design board. http://gb.pinterest. com/pin/239183430184290730 (accessed 2 April 2017). Bennett, P. and McDougal, J. (eds.) (2013). Barthes “Mythologies” Today: Readings of Contemporary Culture. London: Routledge. Benton, T. (2009). The art of the well‐tempered lecture: Reyner Banham and Le Corbusier. In: The Banham Lectures: Essays on Designing the Future (eds. J. Aynsley and H. Atkinson), 11–32. Oxford: Berg. Benton, T. and Levinson, N. (2015). A305 a real adventure in multimedia. Talk delivered at 40 years on: the domain of design history – looking back looking forward, Open University, Milton Keynes (22 May 2015). http://www. openartsarchive.org/research/clips/teaching‐architectural‐and‐design‐ history‐1 (accessed 24 April 2017). Charny, D. (2011). The Power of Making: The Importance of Being Skilled. London: V&A Publications. Le Corbusier (1986[1923]). Towards an Architecture (trans. F Etchells). New York: Dover Publications Vers une architecture. Paris: G. Crès et Cie. Le Corbusier (1987[1925]). The Decorative Art of Today (trans. James I. Dunnett). London: The Architectural Press First published as L’Art décoratif d’aujourd’hui, Paris: Editions Crès, 1925. Cowan, R.S. (1983). More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. New York: Basic Books. Crossley, P. (2004). Introduction. In: Reassessing Nikolaus Pevsner (ed. P. Draper), 1–28. Aldershot: Ashgate. Crowley, D. (2004). Design magazines and design culture. In: Communicate: Independent Graphic Design in Britain Since the Sixties (ed. R. Poynor), 181–199. London: Laurence King. Dawkins, R. (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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De Syllas, P. and Meade, D. (1965). Design to Fit the Family. Harmondsworth: Penguin. de Vries, F. (2016). Dictionary Dressings. Eindhoven: Onomatopee. Dickens, C. and Horne, R. (1851). The great exhibition and the little one. Household Words (5 July), pp. 356–360. Fabulous Home Blog (2013). DIY pallet wall – bathroom before and after. http:// fabuloushomeblog.com/2013/01/05/diy‐pallet‐wall‐bathroom‐before‐and‐ after (accessed 5 January 2015). Fallan, K. (2010). Design History: Understanding Theory and Method. Oxford: Berg. Freeman, J. (2004). The Making of the Modern Kitchen. Oxford: Berg. Fujita, H. (ed.) (2007–2009). Words for Design: Comparative Etymology and Terminology of Design and Its Equivalents, vol. 1–3. Osaka: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Fujita, H. ed. (2008). Another name for design: words for creation. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference of Design History and Design Studies, Osaka, Japan (24–27 October 2008). ICDHS. Gauntlett, D. (2011). Making Is Connecting. London: Polity. Gorman, C.R. (2004). Why designers should study foreign languages. Design Issues 20 (1): 40–47. Hall, S. (1980[1972]). Encoding/decoding. In: Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–79 (ed. Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies), 128–138. London: Hutchinson. Harries, S. (2014). Reputations: Nikolaus Pevsner (1902–1983). The Architectural  Review (13 January). https://www.architectural‐review.com/ rethink/reputations/nikolaus‐pevsner‐1902‐1983/8656870.article (accessed 14 March 2017). Hebdige, D. (1988b). Object as image: the Italian scooter cycle. In: Hiding in the Light (ed. D. Hebdige), 77–115. London: Comedia. Hebdige, D. (1988a). The bottom line on planet one: squaring up to the face. In: Hiding in the Light (ed. D. Hebdige), 155–176. London: Comedia. Heskett, J. (1987). Industrial design. In: Design History: A Students Handbook (ed. H. Conway), 110–133. London: Allen and Unwin. Houze, R. (2016). New Mythologies in Design and Culture: Reading Signs and Symbols in the Visual Landscape. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Huppatz, D.J. (2011). Reconsidering Roland Barthes’ Mythologies. Design and Culture 3 (1): 85–100. Jobling, P. (1999). The face. In: Fashion Spreads: Word and Image in Fashion Photography since 1980, 3–48. Oxford: Berg. Jones, M. (2003). Design and the domestic persuader: television and the British broadcasting corporations promotion of post‐war ‘good design’. Journal of Design History 16 (1): 307–318. Keats, J. (2017[1819]). Ode on a Grecian Urn. https://www.poetryfoundation. org/poems‐and‐poets/poems/detail/44477 (accessed 24 April 2017).



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Kelly, J. (2013). ‘To fan the ardour of the layman’: J.M. Richards, The Architectural Review, and discourses of modernism in British architecture, 1933–1972. PhD thesis. Middlesex University. Kelly, J. (2016). ‘To fan the ardour of the layman’: The Architectural Review, the MARS group and the cultivation of middle class audiences for modernism in Britain, 1933–1940. Journal of Design History 29 (4): 350–365. Kirkham, P. (2011). Saul Bass: A life in Design and Film. London: Laurence King Publishers. Lamster, M. (ed.) (2000). Architecture and Film. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Lees‐Maffei, G. (2001). From service to self‐service: etiquette writing as design discourse 1920‐1970. Journal of Design History 14 (3): 187–206. Lees‐Maffei, G. (2003). Studying advice: historiography, methodology, commentary, bibliography. The Journal of Design History 16 (1): 1–14. Lees‐Maffei, G. (2009). The production‐consumption‐mediation paradigm. Journal of Design History 22 (4): 351–376. Lees‐Maffei, G. (2011). Dressing the part(y): 1950s domestic advice books and the studied performance of informal domesticity in the UK and the US. In: Performance, Fashion and the Modern Interior (eds. F. Fisher, T. Keeble, P. Lara‐ Betancourt, and B. Martin), 183–196. Oxford: Berg. Lees‐Maffei, G. (ed.) (2012). Writing Design: Words and Objects. London: Berg. Lees‐Maffei, G. (2014). ‘Made’ in England? The mediation of Alessi S.p.A. In: Made in Italy: Rethinking a Century of Italian Design (eds. G. Lees‐Maffei and K. Fallan), 287–303. London: Bloomsbury. Lees‐Maffei, G. (2016). Gillian Naylor. In: Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design (ed. C. Edwards), 438–439. London: Bloomsbury. Madge, P. (1988). An enquiry into Pevsner’s Enquiry. Journal of Design History 1 (2): 113–126. McCracken, G. (1988). Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. McCracken, G. (1997). Big Hair: A Journey into the Transformation of Self. London: Indigo. McCullough, M. (1996). Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Milthorpe, N. (2016). Evelyn Waugh’s Satires: Texts and Contexts. Madison Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Monocle (2017). Section D. https://monocle.com/radio/shows/section‐d (accessed 24 April 2017). Mowl, T. (2000). Stylistic Cold Wars: Betjeman versus Pevsner. London: John Murray. MrsSteveBackshall (2011). Serious mold problem in bedroom – tips on getting rid, please. Mumsnet (9 March). https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/housekeeping/

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1168348‐Serious‐mold‐problem‐in‐bedroom‐tips‐on‐getting‐rid‐please/ AllOnOnePage (accessed 2 April 2017). Naylor, G. (1971). The Arts and Crafts Movement: A Study of its Sources, Ideals, and Influence on Design Theory. London: Studio Vista. Naylor, G. (1985). The Bauhaus Reassessed: Sources and Design Theory. London: Herbert Press. Naylor, G. (ed.) (1988). William Morris by himself: Designs and Writings. London: Macdonald Orbis. Naylor, G. (1997). Theory and design: the Banham factor. The ninth Reyner Banham memorial lecture. Journal of Design History 10 (3): 241–252. Naylor, G. and Garland, K. (2007). Design magazine  –  a conversation, 22 September 2003. In: Design and the Modern Magazine (eds. J. Aynsley and K. Forde), 156–176. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Øllgaard, G. (1999). A super‐elliptical moment in the cultural form of the table: a case study of a Danish table. Journal of Design History 12 (2): 143–157. Orton‐Johnson, K. (2014). Knit, purl and upload: new technologies, digital mediations and the experience of leisure. Leisure Studies 33 (3): 305–321. Parnell, S. (2011). Architectural Design, 1954–1972: The architectural magazine’s contribution to the writing of architectural history. PhD thesis. School of Architecture, University of Sheffield. Patmore, D. (1934). Modern Furnishing and Decoration. London: The Studio. Pevsner, N. (1936). Pioneers of the Modern Movement. London: Faber & Faber (second edition Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1949; revised edition, Pioneers of Modern Design: from William Morris to Walter Gropius, Pelican Books, London, 1960, revised 1975). Pugin, A.W. (1841[1836]). Contrasts, a Parallel Between the Noble Edifices of the 14th and 15th Centuries and Similar Buildings of the Present Day. Showing a Decay of Taste. London: J. Weale. Putnam, R.D. (1995). Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital. Journal of Democracy 6 (1): 65–78. Putnam, R.D. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster. Ritzer, G. and Jurgenson, N. (2010). Production, consumption, prosumption: the nature of capitalism in the age of the digital ‘prosumer’. Journal of Consumer Culture 10 (1): 13–36. Rocamora, A. (2016). Mediatization and digital media in the field of fashion. Fashion Theory 21 (5): 505–522. Russell, G. (1947). How to Buy Furniture. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office for the Council of Industrial Design. Scanlon, J. (1995). Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies Home Journal, Gender and the Promises of Consumer Culture. London: Routledge. Seddon, J. (2007). The architect and the ‘arch‐pedant’: Sadie Speight, Nikolaus Pevsner and ‘design review’. Journal of Design History 20 (1): 29–41.



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Sellers, S. (1995). ‘How long has this been going on?’ Harper’s Bazaar, Funny Face and the construction of the modernist woman. Visible Language 29 (1): 12–35. Shonfield, K. (2000). Walls Have Feelings: Architecture, Film and the City. London: Routledge. Sparke, P. (ed.) (1981). Design by Choice: Reyner Banham. New York: Rizzoli. Styles, J. (1993). Manufacturing, consumption and design in eighteenth‐century England. In: Consumption and the World of Goods (eds. J. Brewer and R. Porter), 527–554. London: Routledge. Suhr, H.C. (2015). Online Evaluation of Creativity and the Arts. Abingdon: Routledge. Thomson, E.M. (1994). Early graphic design periodicals in America. Journal of Design History 7 (2): 113–126. Tobe, R. (2016). Film, Architecture and Spatial Imagination. Abingdon: Routledge. Toffler, A. (1980). The Third Wave. New York: William Morrow. Twemlow, A. (2013). Purposes, poetics, and publics: the shifting dynamics of design criticism in the US and UK, 1955–2007. PhD thesis. Royal College of Art. Usherwood, B. (1997). Transnational publishing: the case of Elle Decoration. In:  Buy this Book: Studies in Advertising and Consumption (eds. M. Nava, A. Blake, I. MacRury, and B. Richards), 178–190. London: Routledge. Vickery, A. (1993). Women and the world of goods: a Lancashire consumer and  her possessions, 1751‐1781. In: Consumption and the World of Goods (eds. J. Brewer and R. Porter), 274–301. London: Routledge. Waugh, E. (1928). Decline and Fall. London: Chapman and Hall Penguin Modern Classics Kindle Edition www.amazon.co.uk/Decline‐Fall‐Penguin‐Modern‐ Classics‐ebook/dp/B0082FY29A. Wheatley, B. (dir.) (2015). High Rise. Feature Film. 1 h 59 m. based on J.G. Ballard, High Rise (1975). Screenplay by Amy Jump. Whiteley, N. (2002). Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Woman’s Own (1967). The Woman’s Own Book of Modern Homemaking. London: George Newnes. Woodham, J.M. (1996). Managing British design reform II: the film  Deadly Lampshade – an ill‐fated episode in the politics of ‘good taste’. Journal of Design History 9 (2): 101–115.

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Destabilizing the Scenario of Design Queer/Trans/Gender‐Neutral John Potvin

This chapter is an enquiry into the gendered and sexual implications at stake in the practices of contemporary design as much as the tacit manner in which design asserts itself in the formation of gender and sexuality. In short, it seeks to explore how queer and trans theories and experiences reveal the need to reassess and rethink how we perform the study, practice, and history of design. Additionally, my objective is to claim that a concern for gender and sexuality can initiate new pathways to understanding design by keeping in mind the specificity of unique constituency needs and by challenging the implications and continued limitations of universalism. To achieve my objectives I begin outside design history and design studies by turning to performance studies. As a starting point, I borrow conceptually from Diana Taylor’s influential notion of the scenario as a purposeful intervention and as a way to flesh out the dynamic interplay between design, bodies, and power. Although her primary focus is on the scenario of colonial discovery and conquest, her meaningful elaboration of the concept more broadly is pertinent to the three counter‐scenarios I will outline further on in this chapter and proves useful to our understanding of the social and political impact of design as it collides with gender and sexuality. First and foremost, Taylor posits “scenarios as meaning‐making paradigms that structure social environments, behaviours, and potential outcomes” (Taylor 2003, p. 28). This wider definition, I assert, is not far removed from the all too often overlooked social and cultural life of designed objects and spaces, which frame, impact, enhance,

A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.



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compel, assist, and help shape our experiences of being in the material world, meaning‐making and identity formation itself. By focusing on the performative aspect of these so‐called scenarios, Taylor argues that they include features such as “narrative and plot, but demands that we also pay attention to milieu and corporeal behaviours such as gestures, attitudes, and tones not reducible to  language … The scenario makes visible, yet again, what is already there: the ghosts, the images, the stereotypes … All scenarios have localized meaning, though many attempt to pass as universally valid” (Taylor 2003, p. 28). Although Taylor claims to be invested in material facets and outcomes, her points of focus do not include design. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a scenario is “a postulated or projected situation or sequence of potential future events; (also) a hypothetical course of events in the past, intended to account for an existing situation, set of facts, etc. Also, more generally: a set of circumstances; a pattern of events.” Implicit in this set of definitions is a temporal logic akin to how design praxis generally sets out to identify a problem or need (present), exposed through a continued absence or lack (past) toward projecting a solution (for the future). Historically, the practice of design has maintained a deep proselytizing zeal; whether it be an industrially produced object meant to be consumed and used by the masses and marketed as a “design solution” or the precious handmade product created by countless design reform initiatives whose inherent mission is constituent of a more encompassing moralizing scheme. As a result, the objects and spaces that populate our cultural, political, economic, and social environment ensure “scenarios exist as culturally specific imaginaries – sets of possibilities, ways of conceiving conflict, crisis, or resolution – activated with more or less theatricality” (Taylor 2003, p. 13). In short, I seek to explore design as a performative scenario of and for gender and sexuality. With this in mind, the concept of the scenario of design is deployed here to help explain the ways in which the repertoire of design continues to maintain universalized social and political registers of gender and sexuality and expose the struggles, tensions, assumptions, and pitfalls around the more recent design initiatives championing gender neutrality. As design historian Tony Fry asserts, design is “profoundly political.” He maintains that designed spaces and objects “arrive with forms lodged in particular sets of ideological value that are predicated on how human beings should be viewed and treated … As such, design expresses power materially and in ways that shape how people interact and ontologically prefigure their material culture and economy” (Fry 2011, p. 6). In other words, a politicized view of design provides a frame within which to analyze and even transform design or, more specifically, the stereotypes, imaginaries, narratives, and plots which determine the sexual and gendered nature of objects and spaces of design. By thinking through the scenarios as much as the counter‐scenarios of design, objects and spaces are understood not as vacuous, flaccid, superficial, and devoid of meaning, but as agentic, powerful, dynamic, and meaningful. Design, after all, is never neutral.

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If we begin with the premise that gender and sexuality are constituent of a series or a spectrum of performatives (Butler 1990), then we must also acknowledge that objects and spaces are indelible to and imbricated in these performances of identity. “Gender is performative because it inscribes itself as a discourse each time it inscribes on a body, as a lived experience” (Gerdes 2014, p. 149). What this assumes, therefore, is that objects and spaces are not neutral but are determined by the creator, user, or perceiver. After all, “[s]havers that are designed especially for men and women can be read simultaneously as the inscription of gender in design as well as the scripting of gender by design” (Van der Velden and Mortberg 2010, p. 665). Moreover, things matter; and different things matter differently to different people. In this way, understanding and mobilizing objects and spaces “as” performance (Schechner 2013, p. 30) permits us to pay closer attention to the impact design and gender and sexuality have on each other. What follows are three different, unique, and – yet I would argue – overlapping instances of dissident design that help us to understand the ways in which gender and sexuality continue to be ignored and yet are imbedded in the very foundation of the scenario of design which is elaborated and maintained through history, study, and praxis. What can only be described as counter‐scenarios of design, the three instances of queer, trans, and gender‐neutral design I consider attempt to expose and disrupt the dominant, heterosexist universalism and gender normativity, both powerful and pervasive, that are maintained through the repetition and sustainment of stereotypes naturalized within the scenario of design. These counter‐ scenarios purposefully move from the individual to the so‐called universal, or more specifically from trans and queer to gender neutrality to work through ongoing concerns, debates, anxieties, tensions, and processes at play in the universality insinuated in the scenario of design.

Counter‐scenario I – Craft/Body: Trans In the winter term of 2017, I was sitting in the classroom waiting to begin my undergraduate “Gender and Design” seminar, when I noticed one of my students embroidering. What he was doing was making what I affectionately have called the “nip‐pin;” a series of small embroidered areola and nipple pins of differing “flesh” tones, some with nipple rings, others without (Figure 16.1). Jay Bossé, the student and artist–designer responsible for these deceptively floral, hand‐crafted pieces, indicated to me that the reason he was making them was to pay for a specific surgery. Despite universal healthcare, the provincial ­government of Ontario, where he1 is a resident, considers the replacement of nipples in gender reassignment surgeries to be cosmetic and therefore denies doctors claiming this as a legitimate medical procedure. This exposure of the limitations of large‐scale institutions and universal healthcare reaffirms the economic dimension at the heart of trans identity in terms of treatment and services.



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Figure 16.1  Jay Bossé, nipple pin. Embroidery thread and beads on cotton with pin, 2017. Photo: John Potvin.

In many national contexts, economic limitations are all too often compounded by racialized and ethnic marginalization. By default, trans becomes a question of access, privilege, and support. Bossé himself made it clear that he was better off than many, because of the support he continues to receive from his parents. As Bossé recalls of the realization the surgery would not be covered through insurance, he states: After meeting with my surgeon and discovering that the surgery I wanted/ needed would be at extra cost, I spoke with my parents, and we decided to split the cost. However, as I will be unable to work a full‐time job and will have very little options for work due to the recovery time/my lack of mobility for a couple of months a fundraiser seemed like the best option for me to cover my portion. I felt that making an object that was both aesthetic and relevant seemed like a better way of going about it than just asking for money. Before getting the news, I had started to embroider more seriously and was thinking about selling them. Thus, the fundraiser seemed like a great way to start selling my work and for a direct purpose. (Bossé 2017)

As a hyphenated palindrome, the nip‐pin mirrors the relationship between design and embodiment and materializes a creative way and a specifically trans‐ action to address systemic challenges and limitations. “The resulting narratives [read: scenario] often reinforce gender normativity because medical approval

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sometimes requires transsexuals to display an essential construction of gender” (Doan 2010, p. 636). Here, design and craft become productive and concrete pathways to counteract the effect of such scenarios. The nip‐pin becomes a palimpsest of a queer temporality where the past, present, and future body become blurred, a body in constant transformation. As the name suggests, the nip‐pin also provides a mirror that betrays the ongoing politics of design. With Bossé’s pins, craft and design are not simply an economic tool, one through which to help embody his own sense of self, but also a political tool that reminds us of the actual making, or crafting, of sex and gender as much as sustained limits and boundaries. It might be worth mentioning that the areola (or areola mammae) has its origins in the diminutive of the Latin word area, referring to an “open place.” Here I see the open area as an area of trans‐acting, an area of transformation and possibility, an open space in which craft and body make possible identity itself without limitations. The importance of fashion, design, and craft is essential to creativity, but also to identity formation. Bossé “took up embroidery as a creative output and hobby, as well as to expand [his] interest in clothing design.” For him the relationship between design and identity is quite clear and vital: “[b]oth the way I dress and adorn my spaces are important modes of self‐expression and affirmation for me. Similarly making jewellery, clothing and embroidered objects permits me to construct objects that reflect my desires” (Bossé 2017). However, embroidery is suffused with clear gendered connotations, undervalued in the West as a decidedly feminine enterprise. Bossé knows this history all too well. However, with the pin there is an added ambition to actively transform this practice. According to the artist–designer: “I am aware that embroidery (like many of my hobbies) are seen as typically feminine. Rather than attaching them to my masculine identity, I welcome their perceived femininity. As a transmasculine (not trans man) identified person, I do not shy away from things that are seen as typical for women. I do not seek to perform or embody a hegemonic understanding of masculinity but rather engage with practices that interest me, be it perceived masculine or feminine” (Bossé 2017). For Bossé, design rubs up against the challenges of trans identity in the quotidian, rather than one that is embodied in a specific space and time, such as the bathroom debate that dominates the agenda in a number of countries such as Canada and the USA. Objects, for Bossé and many, like binders, packers, gaffs, etc. … designed to aid trans people to navigate public life (passing) and/or alleviate gender dysphoria. It is interesting how design can be an intrinsic part of trans people’s lives. They’re [sic] lived experiences have impacted the creation of these object which intern alter the perception of gender. Their existence thus is to aid trans people in the navigation of their identity. As objects, they really only fulfill the needs of trans people. And for many of us these objects, especially those waiting for surgery, are what make public life possible.



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Without my binder, which I have worn every day for over two years, I would have never been able to live as a trans masculine person before my upcoming surgery. (Bossé 2017)

The pin then can be read as a process of literally stitching or embroidering of the self; the emblem of process and the performative, of transition and becoming. In many ways, the pin embodies the importance that Jeanne Vaccaro places on the notion of the handmade, which she sees as a “methodological orientation” for trans identity. For her, [i]t calls for a reconsideration of how we read the body – as text, interpretation of surface, excavation of depth, or dimensional record … The handmade ­confronts the time of event and achievement to illuminate the everyday as a site of value for transgender politics and takes seriously the ordinary feelings and textures of crafting transgender life … The labour of making transgender identity is handmade: collective  –  made with and across bodies, objects, and forces of  power  –  a process, unfinished yet enough (process, not progress) … The ­handmade is a haptic, affective theorization of the transgender body, a mode of animating material experience and accumulative felt matter. (Vaccaro 2014, p. 96)

Craft becomes a question of process, of method, to transform the scenario of design by exposing the limits placed on corporeality itself as well as the expectations placed on trans bodies. “New temporalities of time and feeling are needed if we are to think of gender as something active and always in the making” (Crawford 2015, p. 93). If gender and sexuality are always in process, always in a trans‐itional state of being crafted and of becoming, then it stands to reason that objects and even space possess a significant plasticity and elasticity, always in a process of being, quite literally, fleshed out.

Counter‐scenario II – Space/Object: Queer My second counter‐scenario of design is a fictional exhibition, Queer Objects: Queer Methodology, Reorientation and Subversion in Exhibition Design by John Philip Sage. The fictional catalog of queer and design was part of a final graduating assignment for his degree from the London College of Communication that was never staged. Sage makes clear in the catalog that the exhibition’s purpose is not a recuperative enterprise to relocate queer artists or designers and interpolate them into the narrative of cultural production. Rather, the goal is critical and deconstructive: to challenge the hetero‐normative and normalizing processes that enabled the exclusions of queers to begin with. These mechanisms include our ways of seeing, knowing, and producing meaning. Sage follows along from Sara Ahmed’s important supposition that “sexual orientation might also be a matter of residence, of how we inhabit spaces, and who or what we inhabit spaces with” (Ahmed 2006, p. 543). Queer is not only understood here as a time, space, or

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orientation, but rather, and more complexly, as a series of different types of acts, meaningful and yet quotidian repetitions and performatives. According to Sage, “[w]e orient ourselves in the world based on the objects around us. However, due to the fact that we have come to internalize how we orient ourselves towards objects, our bodies are oriented always towards heterosexual objects in a heteronormative way. If an object is not within the norm, we experience a queer moment, a moment of disorientation. As we reorient our bodies, we achieve new experiences, creating new kinds of connections and relations between the objects and our bodies” (Figure 16.2) (Sage 2016, pp. 3–4). Appropriation is a strategy of inversion, and forms a critical aspect of queer and trans approaches; in short, a way of being and becoming that complicates and resists the norm. The vast array of objects selected was determined by first questioning what constituted a queer object. The queerness of an object for Sage might refer to a number of intersecting criteria, which he lists in the following manner: • It functions in a different way from what is expected; different from what we culturally understand as “common use” in this partial context. Functionality. • It is different from the rest due to its shape, colour, or use. • They are socially not accepted. • They have historically performed a queer moment. • They make me/us experience a queer moment. • They are defective objects, with imperfections in the making process. (Sage 2016, p. 37)

Figure 16.2  John Philip Sage. “What is a queer object for you?” orientation card, 2016. Image courtesy of John Philip Sage.



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Sage’s deployment of queer might first appear fluid and amorphous; it also seems to neglect the importance of sexuality itself. On the other extreme, for the oft‐cited architectural critic Aaron Betsky, it is orgasm that singularly defines the queerness of a designed interior space, for example, whether private or public (Betsky 1997). As a singular criterion, I have to ask, however: Do straights not experience orgasms? Do straights not use public space toward sexual ends, despite what the media has long led us to believe? Might we not seek to move beyond this binary division of objects and spaces framed in either purely sanitized or purely sexualized terms? What about variously sexually‐abled bodies and alternative intimate relationships? Are these to be denied their rightfully queer status? What do we make of a‐sexuality, for example? For Mark Graham, “[i]f to create things is to sex them, and often to gender them, then the act of creation also generates the potential for a sexuality, for connections, and for reconnections that are difficult to contain within sexual and gender binarisms. To exploit this potential requires an artifactual literacy that enables us to read the sexuality of things or, rather, of the assemblages of which they are part” (in Sage 2016, p. 109). For Johnathan Boorstein, for example, three characteristics are attributed to a queer sense of design: camp, drag, and bricolage (or appropriation) (Boorstein 1996, p. 11). In purposeful contradistinction to Betsky, I posit that the criteria for queer design, space, and objects are determined through a network of complex registers of style and taste as much as orientation (as Sage champions) and movement, criteria that have everything to do with designing gender and sexual through the performances of desire, pleasure, intention, (necessity), dissidence, purpose, and opposition. We would also do well to keep in mind that reception and perception – rather than creation and use per se – are also critical aspects of queer design. As the infamous case of Oscar Wilde revealed, his conviction in 1895 was nearly entirely premised on material objects and the perception grafted onto them (see Potvin 2014, p. 23). Neal Ulrich, a student in Stanford University’s Product Design Program, sees his designs as a way “to shed heteronormative and masculinist modes of thinking and doing that are deeply ingrained in society” (Ulrich 2015). What he refers to, I maintain, is at the heart of the scenario of design itself. Ulrich understands his design practice as a mode of en‐­gendering confusion and fashioning challenge into the very foundation of his furniture. As he asserts: “My own design practice is heavily informed by my queerness and my unique perspective as an ‘other.’ I like to highlight the assumptions we have of the way things should be by designing furniture that rejects these standards. My most recent project was the stool … I actually had someone tell me my stool made them mad … because I messed with their expectations and the way stools and chairs ‘should’ be designed” (Ulrich 2015). At the same time, it is important to remain mindful of how queers have long been vilified precisely because of their emphasis on artifice and beauty. Aware of the stereotypes, perception, and history, Ulrich explains that “[i]t is a certain type of man we expect to be working with their hands, and it isn’t uncommon that I restrain

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my more effeminate tendencies to better align myself with that image” (Ulrich 2015). Yet, I would contend that there is also a need to celebrate the camp within us, that which makes us different, and even that which helps reaffirm stereotypes as acts of resistance, re‐appropriation. As consumers, we are all constantly being told we are unique, special, and no one else exists like us, while at the same we are folded into the great mass. The celebration of camp, effeminacy, and butch is, I would argue, a transgressive act in itself, even in today’s supposedly open and tolerant West.

The Specters that Haunt the Scenario of Design The intellectual activism of this chapter eschews binaries between the academic and the activist, design as practice and design as history, the scholarly and the anecdotal to argue that queer and trans practices haunt the scenario of design. Design studies in particular and design history to a lesser extent continue to deny the place, role, and importance of sexuality and the vast majority of genders (Potvin 2016). My reader might erroneously surmise an overemphasis on the aesthetic dimension of taste and style. My intention, however, is not to evacuate queer and trans experiences and expressions from their necessarily social and political dimensions. Rather, as I have always maintained, questions of aesthetics, taste, and style have been yoked to a concern for morality, the political, and the sociocultural. Rather, I stand in alliance with queer and trans theorists who claim strategies of resistance and maintain the central role difference plays. David M. Halperin, for example, contends that queer stands as “a positionality vis‐à‐vis the normative – a positionality that is not restricted to lesbians and gay men but is in fact available to anyone who is or who feels marginalized because of her or his sexual practices” (Halperin 1995, p. 62). Similarly, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick understands the term as an “open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically” (Sedgwick 1993, p. 8). Finally, for her part, Elizabeth Freeman argues that as a theoretical model “[q]ueer theory, then, pays attention to gaps and losses that are both structural and visceral [and] also describes how specific forms of knowing, being, belonging, and embodying are prevented from emerging in the first place, often by techniques that intimately involve the body” (Freeman 2010, p. 11). Despite nuances and differences, collectively these scholars’ respective reappropriation of queer is valuable here not to render the term, theory, and identity fluid without purpose, making it ineffective, depoliticized, and amorphous to the point of ubiquity and hence sterility. Rather, collectively I believe that they share in common a suggested, alternative pathway, a way to think about or a technique to undermine the stereotypes that dominate the scenario of design; a narrative



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that continues to be performed, written, and maintained. Moreover, I suggest that queer manifests itself in and through different forms and acts. It comes in the form of a noun whether it be a person as the creator or consumer of design, for example, or an object itself. Alternatively, it also manifests itself as a verb, that is, how things are put to queer use, appropriated and/or redefined toward queer ends. Together, as both noun and verb, queer suggests the performative and the processual facets of design that do not, cannot, fit neatly within the normalizing and universalizing scenario of design. Trans is deployed similarly here. Although not to be conflated, trans and queer share common histories, strategies, concerns, fears, ambitions, experiences, and obstacles as a number of scholars have also argued (Hines 2006; Rothblatt 1995; Stony 1991). For Kendall Gerdes, trans “studies is positioned at the intersection of gender’s discursivity and its materiality, to pen vital questions about the (re)formation of gender, subjectivity, bodies and the body” (Gerdes 2014, p. 149). However, I once again seek to advocate for the inclusion of design (as both spaces and objects) as part of the materiality and the all too often misplaced aspects and assets of this intersection. The interstitial relationship between design and trans bodies is beautifully evoked through a discussion of craft by Jeanne Vacarro, who claims that by [d]eploying ideas of craft – too frequently dismissed as low art, skilled labor, or “women’s work” – the handmade connects transgender to collective process and quotidian aesthetics … In these uneven historical accumulations of value written between bodies and objects, the hand and handmade compel a generative turn to the material. As the material is marginalized by discursive forms of legibility, the performative dimensions of craft privilege the politics of the hand, that which is worked on, and the sensory feelings and textures of crafting transgender identity. (Vacarro 2014, p. 97)

Queer as a verb and a notion such as transacting (action, performance, and transition) point to corporeal, performative, and material processes of becoming. Together they help us to think of design not in strict terms of solution or problem‐solving, but as non‐teleological practices with no real end. Trans scholar Heather Love makes a strong and compelling case for the common goals trans and queer share, for both aim at “transforming the situation of gender and sexual outsiders. While queer is associated primarily with nonnormative desires and sexual practices, transgender is associated primarily with nonnormative gender identifications and embodiments, it is both theoretically and practically difficult to draw a clear line between them … Transgender studies also defines itself against identity, offering a challenge to the perceived stability of the two‐gendered system” (Love 2014, p. 172). I see the queer and trans projects as part of a majoritarian, rather than a  minoritarian, positioning (Bryson 1999; Sedgwick 1990) that aims to take  on, undermine, redress, and question the status quo, systems of

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meaning‐making and the universalizing, hetereo‐masculinism, and modernism of the scenario of design that professions of design and their academic disciplines continue to foster.

Modernism and Universal Design: A Necessary Excursion As a broadly grouped movement that coalesced more fully in the late 1990s, “Design for All” in Europe, “Inclusive Design” in Great Britain, and “Universal Design” in North America sought to develop design for the most amount of use by the most amount of people. Its ambitions were noble, but its outcomes still remain unfinished. Universal Design, as outlined in 1997 by North Carolina State University, led by Ronald Mace, set out to establish seven guiding principles for the design of objects, spaces, and even communication strategies: “1] equitable use; 2] flexibility in use; 3] simple and intuitive use; 4] perceptible information; 5] tolerance for errors in system use; 6] low physical effort; and 7] size and shape for approach and use” (Mace et al. 1997). Jack Nasar and Jennifer Evans‐Cowley point out that access and barriers to objects and spaces are all too often taken for granted by members of a society until something happens to disable them. An injury or loss of vision, for example, means that “the simple act of entering a building and getting to the desired destination often becomes an unpleasant chore. Yet millions of people experience barriers to movement every day” (Nasar and Evans‐Cowley 2007, p. v). Who is best situated to determine the direction of inclusive design and its best practices? Jane Bringolf has compellingly charted the complexity of issues at stake in the Universal Design movement, suggesting that government legislation comes into conflict with the original mandate of the movement precisely because it limits what design is and can do (Bringolf 2008, p. 46). Added to this is the temporal lag that is endured through bureaucratic processes. At the same time, market capitalism is often less than interested in shifting “design thinking” if its economic returns are insufficient. Although Bringolf favors legislative intervention, she also makes clear that the real challenge comes down to the language and cultural understanding of what universal design really is about. She maintains that legislation itself and even design schools have packaged universal design as a niche, specialized project, the antithesis of the movement’s ethos. In this way “accessible” is not simply equated with specialized or niche design, it is collapsed into “disabled” design. Bringolf importantly asserts that “[w]ord mis‐usage once again hinders the development of universal design thinking” (Bringolf 2008, p. 47). All too often the issue comes down to semantics and therefore perception, for, as she notes, “universal design automatically includes people with a disability, but the semantic difference is that it is not specifically for people with a disability thereby suggesting the exclusion of others” (Bringolf 2008, p. 49). At stake in the debates and challenges of



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universal design are the concepts of difference and diversity as much as the perceived polarization created between universal and specialized needs. As Suzanne Tick poignantly reminds us, “today’s design landscape is still deeply rooted in Modernism, a movement shaped by a predominantly male perspective” (Tick 2017). As a fundamentally broad and far‐reaching movement, modernism in design and architecture in the West is largely the by‐ product of the International Style. At its roots, modernist design exists at the historical conjuncture in which market capitalism, industrialism, the invention of sexuality, the development of new technology, the reification of the separate spheres, photography, and the advent of the modern interior collide. Modernist design and architecture ambitiously desired the utmost reach of influence and achieved this by way of various media, namely photography, show rooms, glossy magazines, and cinema. Through these ever‐ expanding channels of propagation modernism’s affiliation with capitalism was forever sealed. Through iconic figures such as the Swiss architect Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius and educational institutions like the Bauhaus in Germany, the International Style deployed design and architecture as solutions to the problems of modern life. Collectively, the style boasted three defining characteristics: (i) flexible interior structures and spaces; (ii) reduction or destruction of decoration and ornamentation; and (iii) the elimination of color. For trans theorist Jack (aka Judith) Halberstam, queer time and space is yoked to the postmodern experience (Halberstam 2005), and is the result of the AIDS crisis. However, I would assert that a much broader historical survey of queer time and space is vital, one that acknowledges a continuum of experiences of gender and sexuality long before the sexual liberation and activism of the late 1960s, the AIDS crisis, and postmodernism collided to form a deeply self‐conscious and self‐reflexive identity politics. Following on from Michel Foucault (1990[1976]), identity and its politics became a necessity long before the period invested in significance by Halberstam, when typologies were outlined in Europe by early sexologists and doctors in the second half of the nineteen century, at which point the homosexual was called into being, a deviant figure whose typology was soon followed by the heterosexual two years later. Modernism, adeptly repackaged as the International Style devoid of any avant‐ gardist leanings, was purposefully devoid of nationalist affiliations or cultural, gendered, and racial identities. In brief, it was universal in its implications, ambitions, and reach while determined in its limited understanding of identity. The de facto implication was clear and, like the Cartesian cogito (ergo sum), it assumed the purview and privilege of straight, white, middle‐ and upper‐class masculinity. Universalism through the auspices of internationalism had clear assumptions attached to it. Universalism implies design is made in the service of everyone, and yet it is for the very few. In this insistence, it is not for a specialized niche group but rather for an elite that is disdainful and suspicious of  difference itself. The narratives of modernism and sexual and gender

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normativity are entirely inseparable and in fact, I assert, co‐dependently give rise to the scenario of design. Modernist design has at once ignored and yet set out to attack sexual difference and effeminacy, seemingly embodied in the decorative and the ornamental. For their part, canonical texts by design historians have replicated and reproduced the same exclusions, affirming a modernist grip on design studies and its history. For Ahmed, “[t]o become straight means that we not only have to turn towards objects that are given to us by heterosexual culture, but also that we must ‘turn away’ from objects that take us off this line” (Ahmed 2006, p. 21). These are part of the strategies and legacies of modernism that have greatly assisted in the formation of the scenario of design and that have seemingly accelerated within the environment of a neo‐liberal political economy that turns identities and commodities to be sold, consumed, and assimilated. The acceptance of popular culture figures such as Caitlyn Jenner and the mainstream rhetoric around same‐sex, or so‐called “gay,” marriage are products of an assimilationist politics in which trans and queer citizens are neatly folded into the larger (normative and normalizing) scenario. Within this seemingly inclusive, homo‐normalizing scenario the messiness of dissident trans and queer bodies continues to be denied and obscured. The effects of neo‐liberalism have been all too palpable on the pathways of identity politics. In short, if economically profitable, corporations, organizations, and governments allow for inclusion only when it is warranted through a broadening of the consumer or electoral base. The trans and queer projects share in common, perhaps not always purposefully, a narrative of transgression, a purposeful movement away from these normalizing and assimilationist plots. All too often, as queer and trans citizens we are so desperate for inclusion to facilitate the quotidian that we embrace a neo‐liberal assimilationist policy, a form of mimicry, which compels the trans and queer subject to pass. For entirely different reasons, queer and trans citizens’ access to design objects and especially space (both public and private) is often less a chore, as much as it can pose a life‐threatening encounter with hostile bodies. Taking up where the Universal Design movement leaves off, I wish to ask what about the social, cultural, political, and moral barriers to movement and access?

Counter‐scenario III – Body/Space: The Clusterfuck of Gender‐neutral Design Clusterfuck: 1] a sexual orgy; 2] a bungled or botched undertaking; (also) a situation, state of affairs, or gathering (esp. a military operation) that is disorganized or chaotic. (Oxford English Dictionary)



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Figure 16.3  Bathroom signs, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden. Photo: John Potvin.

My third and final counter‐scenario evolves from my experiential encounter with the public lavatories at the Moderna Museet (Museum of Modern Art) in Stockholm. The two large lavatories that are clearly marked by way of a number of figures meant to signify the spectrum of gender variance act as a political statement on the part of a cultural institution that prides itself on its avant‐ garde status within the city (Figure 16.3). These placards offer a rare semiotics through which queer and trans are visibly made welcome into the spaces. What marks these spaces as rather unique and even subversive is how the museum purposefully confuses its visitors (from around the world) by not making the wall between the two rooms physically separate, once defined as male and female. Their design choice, perhaps borne out of necessity, leaves them as physically separate and yet open to all as signified through the meaningful and powerful placards. These spaces go beyond gender neutrality to mark out clear queer and trans spaces of inclusion. In other words, the spatial binary is maintained but transformed. Their choice was not simply and easily to write “lavatories” above the two spaces, but rather to express the gender queer range semiotically. The Moderna is an important venue of modern and contemporary art, a space of cultural, social, and even political importance within the city. However, what are the affective perceptions of the space in which one is – even

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if temporarily as a cis‐gendered person – seen as a foreign body entering into a space and using design? On my own visit to the museum, I observed countless instances of confusion on the part of the visitors, unsure where to go. Visitors also seemed uneasy with the need to have to make a choice in an instance where choice is unnecessary as the lavatories allowed for full inclusion. Whether received with appreciation, humor, or hostility, the end result was a move – or orientation – in the right direction. That the museum’s initiative is an important initial strategy, one must also consider the quotidian and affective experiences of being continuously in the wrong space and using the wrong design. When I asked Bossé his thoughts on which issues best describe and most affect the trans community in terms of design and architecture, he described it in the following manner: I think that many of us first think of bathrooms when discussing trans people and design. What this situation really embodies is the how non‐gendered or gender transgressive people navigate gendered spaces, which can be easily seen through the architecture and constructions of gendered public bathrooms. However, I  think that even non‐gender specific spaces still affect trans people, especially in  discussions of safety. Also, many mainstream discussions of trans people in public space usually look at how trans people are a threat rather than in reality are threatened. (Bossé 2017)

The public lavatory/bathroom debate makes liberal institutions claim i­ nclusion – a way of saying we embrace trans and the full spectrum of genders, a strategy not dissimilar to the affirmative ethos that embraces figures like Jenner within popular culture. What happens outside the bathroom remains a different story, however. It is important to recognize the semantic, performative, and political difference between gender‐neutral public lavatories versus a trans person ­seeking to use the gendered lavatory of their choice. Adulterating Descartes’ infamous adage, “I think, therefore I am” to “I walk into whichever bathroom, therefore I am” is a cheeky way to highlight the complex registers of embodied practices, performances, and realities that spaces, especially as loaded as public lavatories, hold. Despite my cis‐gendered privilege, I am, as a queer male, always apprehensive and at times fearful of public toilets, not for reasons of hygiene (though this certainly poses its own set of issues) but personal safety. Again, for different reasons, it is also important to underscore how variously gendered women experience a similar fear where, in countless instances, public lavatories pose a threat to bodily safety. Petra L. Doan asserts “that transgendered and gender variant people experience the gendered division of space as a special kind of tyranny – the tyranny of gender – that arises when people dare to challenge the hegemonic expectations for appropriately gendered behavior in western society” (Doan 2010, p. 635). Fundamentally, we have extended and enlarged the so‐called Ideal Divide of the separate spheres as idealized throughout the long nineteenth century in



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which women were sequestered to the domestic, while men enjoyed the benefits and privilege of the public domain, to enforce a novel spatial dynamic of gender and its preferred performances and proper orientations. Public lavatories have held a very troubled history for queer men and trans people in particular. From arrests for public indecency, to fears around catching the so‐called “fag disease,” to conflicts of territory for gender‐neutral bathrooms, these private–public spaces have for over a century served as the landscape par excellence of sexual and gender struggle, hopes for emancipation and recognition, and basic human rights.2 However, public lavatories are symptomatic of a much larger and deeper concern for gender, sexuality, and space. When, on 23 February 1967, Dr. Charles Socarides testified to the congressional hearing on gay men serving in the US Defense Department, he stated that the homosexual “does not know the boundary of his body. He does not know where his body ends and space begins” (in Berlant and Freeman 1992, p. 160). Additionally, as Lucas Crawford argues, “the discourse of transgender dysphoria locates/spatializes transgender feelings  –  by definition, ‘wrong’ ­feelings – in the individual” (Crawford 2015, p. 89). The issue here is that the problem lies within the trans and not within society. The effect of gender is “located in the hermetically sealed interiors of the self”; or at least this is what we are led to believe (Crawford 2015, p. 89). Expressed from divergent positions, these two fundamentally related spatial metaphors assert the historically grounded fact that queer and trans bodies are indelibly bound up with the troubled experiences and perverse expressions of space.

Three Easy Steps for Gender‐neutral Design Typically, gender‐neutral design is conceived of through two specific means. The first is through blending, while the second follows off a modernist ethos that strips a space or design of any marker of difference or identification. The first instance is best seen in the one‐time design advice proffered by self‐fashioned design blogger Erin Hiemstra. As her website Apartment 34 makes clear, she “collaborates with brands to develop rich stories and beautiful content.” In her article “Mars vs. Venus: How to Achieve Gender Neutral Décor,” alluding to John Gray’s best‐selling book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, from 1992, Hiemstra (2013) asserts that “[e]very couple deserves to live in a home that they both love.” In addition to the obvious heteronormativity of her premise, the author sets out to “do a little breakdown of masculine and feminine design.” The cursory exercise yields a common and not surprising set of tried and true gendered design attributes in which masculine rooms are defined through their neutral and dark colors that best set into relief more modern, streamlined furniture. For their part, so‐called feminine rooms are bedecked with bright, colorful, and lush fabrics which enhance delicate glass, gold, and brass accents. “Obviously, vases and flowers are a must.” Taking these basic

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premises as gendered building blocks, Hiemstra (2013) provides three basic tips to creating a truly gender‐neutral home. First, one is advised to use a masculine base, which comprises a neutral color palette and large, bold furniture that avoids “anything too curvy.” Neutrality is seemingly essential, for, after all, “feminine pieces speak much louder than masculine ones!” Second, texture and pattern are advised in accent pieces. This second stage serves as the bridge that enjoins the first and third (highly gendered steps). Finally, the third step requires a layering of more feminine touches throughout. A vase with flowers is given as an easy way to add a feminine touch. However, Hiemstra is quick to remind her readers that “feminine pieces speak much louder than masculine ones. So for as many gold vases and pretty bowls you bring in, be sure to add a masculine touch to juxtapose the feminine lines” (Hiemstra 2013). Through her basic design principles for constructing a so‐called gender‐neutral home, one that both a man and a woman can equally enjoy, Hiemstra swiftly and neatly reinforces static assumptions of a universal experience and expression of space, design, gender, and sexuality. The second method seen in the recent foray into gender‐neutral design is exemplified by the acclaimed A‐gender spaces in Selfridges department store in London, designed by Faye Toogood. Developed over three stories of the eponymous department store, Toogood’s “Agender” retail space is designed as a gender‐neutral shopping experience. Designated by metal chain link fencing and equipped with what can best be described as large primordial sculptural blobs, the space is characterized by Selfridges as “an environment in which you are given the freedom to transcend notions of, ‘his’ and ‘hers,’ as you simply find your most desired item by colour, fit and style.” According to Selfridges and Toogood, the space goes “beyond the concepts of androgyny and unisex to question the innate assumptions that still underpin gendered clothing in the twenty first century. The space is stripped of all the trappings of merchandising; the garments, including the Selfridges debut of Toogood’s Collection 002, are  sold in unbranded bags and archive boxes. This uniform packaging breaks down retail’s artificial divisions, and thereby democratises it” (http:// fayetoogood.com/space/agender). In our logo‐centric world, unbranded is itself a brand and in no concrete way speaks to concern for gender or sexuality. After all, one need only look at Giorgio Armani, for example, to locate non‐ gender‐specific packaging. One might legitimately ask what is this really about? Toogood defines agender as “‘without gender,’ but it also suggests a plan of action or an ideological goal. This project sets out an agenda to move fashion forward and to reflect the realities of the way we live now” (http://fayetoogood. com/space/agender). In a positioning that is eerily reminiscent of modernist architects and designers, Toogood maintains that what makes the space unique and groundbreaking is that all elements of the artifice of commerce and marketing have been removed, leaving it “to suggest a domestic space as opposed to the impersonality of a retail space” (http://fayetoogood.com/space/agender). In the end, Toogood’s Agender experiment speaks more to an old form of



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retail branding than a genuine desire to tackle real issues that continue to occur within the spaces of retail. Cloaking retail to appear as if not a retail space is a by now tried and true strategy devised by high‐end retailers for decades. One simply has to look at the Rheinlander Mansion‐turned Ralph Lauren boutique in Madison Avenue (New York) to see a much more successful exemplar of deploying the domestic sphere as a guise for consumption. Moreover, the brutalist metal chain link fencing deployed to segregate the space is more akin to a fenced‐off yard, with implications far less homely and less inviting than a domestic space, which is itself, I might underline, a highly gendered and complicated space. Toogood notes how the clothes are not visible at first glance, but are “boxed and archived; I don’t want a man to be put off from entering the space by a pink jacket” (Farrell 2015). Clearly conscientious of gender stereotypes, Toogood resorts to hiding garments and in turn unwittingly reinforces the very stereotypes she purports to want to dismantle. She continues by asserting that “[b]y removing all traces of branding and visual merchandising, you allow people to make their own decisions about what they want to buy. Agender is as neutral as we could make it” (Farrell 2015). Stated otherwise, and cutting to the heart of the matter, gender neutrality, or agender as Toogood states it, is a novel means toward banding and has little if anything to do with genuine gender inclusiveness. In the store space, a large formatted crumpled up paper has a still visible “He” and “She” written on it with tape placed over it. Also included is “Me,” strategically left untouched. Through the illusion of choice, Toogood reinforces the me‐centricism of our consumer and political cultures, in which individuality and identity are bought and sold on the open market under the guise of independence and uniqueness. However, as Gerdes importantly reminds us, choice is a neo‐liberal myth, in which “[t]he subject does not wield the discursive power of the performative. Discourse, language itself, first en‐genders the subject as an effect of language’s positing power” (Gerdes 2014, p. 149). In her article “Beyond the binary: design moves past gender lines,” Royce Epstein optimistically explores the ways in which contemporary British retailers are attempting to provide gender‐neutral spaces and design concepts. Citing Selfridges and its “unisex department that appeals to a more gender‐flexible customer” (Epstein 2017), Epstein also spotlights the avant‐garde retailer Dover Street Market, devised by Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo. At both its New York and London emporia men’s and women’s collections are displayed and purchased side by side. Epstein, however, suggests that, by displaying men’s and women’s clothing by brand rather than by gender, the Dover Street Market provides for a “more intuitive shopping experience” (Epstein 2017). Yet, for her part Toogood explains that “[a]s someone that wants to buy the clothes in this space, you’re going to have to work hard to understand it” (in Tseng 2015). It appears as a terribly odd choice to reinforce what amounts to a hostile retail environment for constituencies which already face challenges every time they

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choose to move or work against the expected norms of spaces and objects. Indeed, these emporia are not simply for the financially privileged, but I would assert, more problematically, for an already gendered and sexually privileged few. Moreover, intuition also refers to the third principle of universal design, and yet as Bringolf argues: “universal design is not universally designed – it is not easy to understand or simple and intuitive to use” (Bringolf 2008, p. 48). In both instances, I cannot help but have an effective response borne out of feelings of isolation and segregation. Despite the supposed liberatory ethos of the pick and choose methodology of the Dover Street Market and Selfridges I question how the seemingly radical consumers get home on the subway as much as the issues around safety for the gender‐variant consumer? What about all other parts of these and other stores in which shop assistants continuously police movement when one moves into the spaces devoted to the opposite gender? Finally, these supposedly novel retailers do not allow true freedom to trans or queer people to navigate any space wherein they can choose to buy whatever they want or need (seemingly the truest form of capitalist expression). Rather, objects are curated and orientation is predefined for the consumer. Textile designer Suzanne Tick claims that “[i]dentity is no longer clearly defined as female or male, but by increasingly visible manifestations of sexuality or lack thereof. Designers, who should focus a critical eye on society’s issues, need to work within this discourse and help promote acceptance and change” (Tick 2017). While her reading of more recent events and political struggles is rather simplistic, she raises a critical issue all too often dismissed or obscured in design forums. She notes how “[m]asculine and feminine definitions are being switched and obscured. But this is an essentially human phenomenon” (Tick 2017). Statements such as these are only made possible in certain positions of privilege and at moments when countless people have yet to gain access to a modicum of power. She concludes by referring back to the largely disastrous outcome of the Universal Design movement, claiming: “Making people feel accommodated – whether it’s in a public space or office – parallels the bigger conversation about universal design. It’s a disaster what’s happened with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and it’s unbelievable how hard it still is to find accessible bathrooms and entryways. We cannot approach gender issues in the same way, with just regulations and compliance” (Tick 2017). Epstein swiftly concludes, like countless journalists of late: “We are moving away from society’s defined norms of gender and age to a more open, blended, and fluid culture. This is happening alongside the blurred boundaries of geography, ethnicity, and history, as our now ever‐streaming lifestyles have no borders. We are personalizing our experiences and tailoring our lives to be exactly what we want them to be as we discard outdated societal constructs. And nowhere is this more evident than in design, fashion, and retail” (Epstein 2017). However, we would do well to mix our cocktail of optimism with a dash of vigilance, for as I have argued elsewhere it is precisely in moments of supposed social, political, cultural, and economic progress that laws are quietly reversed,



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normativity reasserts its force, and history repeats itself (Potvin 2014). The seemingly tolerant, open society of Sweden, where queer theory and feminism are part of the political, cultural, academic, and national discourse, provides a case in point of the deep conservativism that remains alive and well. On several humorous occasions I have encountered gender binary toilet paper (Figure 16.4), whose semiotics, while surely redundant, are nonetheless revealing. Seemingly a clear and direct response to the Moderna Museet’s initiative, there is no real need to indicate, to borrow from the toilet paper packaging itself, “conventional” signs for male and female on toilet paper packaging as if to ensure and even enforce proper use of the object. After all, who else uses toilet paper other than all humans, regardless of sex, gender, and sexuality? Something as simple, banal, and quotidian as toilet paper is deployed as a means to reinforce the binary gender system and normative notions of sexuality and family with more recent examples displaying a mother, father, and two children on the packaging. However, its efficaciousness is premised entirely on the fact of its banality and ubiquity. After all, in order to sustain, maintain, and enforce preferred gender roles, it must be routinely visualized and materialized through countless means and media. Inevitably one must acknowledge the concern for access. The “moral” or ethical, more aptly, ambition of this chapter has not been premised on the desire of locating which minority or marginal groups are “more oppressed and more extraordinary than others” (Halberstam 2005, p. 20). Rather, and in opposition to the current state of design studies and design history, I wish to compel design and scholarly communities to increase their awareness of the issues that (continue to) affect communities so long hidden from its practice and still prevalent in the modernist scenario of design.

Figure 16.4  Tork, conventional toilet paper roll. Photo: John Potvin.

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Conclusion Gender‐neutrality in design skips a few important beats. Design studies and design history have largely bypassed a concern for sexuality and non‐binary genders. Queer and trans is, I humbly suggest, the future of design if for no other reason than that it reminds us of the value of process, the transitional, the unstable. In other words, they might offer new pathways for how we understand and use design. T. Garner asserts that: An engagement with the notion of becoming brings into focus the borders between and within bodies, both individual and political, because it is these demarcations that shape bodies and their (trans)formations … This approach repudiates an individualized conception of the body and the self; there is no “us versus them,” always “us and them (and them …),” to the extent that none of these terms is intelligible within the others. It undermines the concepts of bodily integrity and wholeness as it necessitates a consideration of the “intra‐active” character of materiality – the idea that “things” do not precede their interactions but emerge through them. (Garner 2014, p. 31)

As a result, design in all its forms has an important role to play in all this. Fry has claimed the political for design, asserting that “[d]esign has to become a politics. For design to become politicized, it has to directly confront politics” (Fry 2011, p. 7). In order for this to occur it must be developed and situated “as a particular political practice in its own right” (Fry 2011, pp. 11–12). Following Fry, I seek to assert the centrality of queer and trans as endemic to this politics of design’s future, as a means to confront, reorient, and reimagine the scenario of design. Spaces and objects are appropriated, misused, reused, disused, abused, etc. and must be viewed through the entirety of their lives; in other words, as products, outcomes, and agentic processes of becoming. Queer and trans methods, issues, and politics, I conclude, oblige us to locate design problems and solutions outside the formulaic and the binary solutions that have so long plagued Western thought. If we think of trans as a process of and in becoming, one of constant corporeal (re)defining and (re)negotiation, then, I would posit, design must take into account the body’s endless possibilities outside of normative ideals of “gender” and sexuality. As the other side of identity, difference is entirely negated and neutered in the universalist zeal for gender neutrality. Perhaps this is simply a question of timing. If toilet paper is any indication of where we are at, we are absolutely not at that point. Women are still fighting for equality and against sexual predation, precisely because of their “gender,” fags are discriminated against precisely because of their sexuality, trans are beaten and publicly humiliated precisely because they do not, will not conform. I cite, as one example, Philip Arcidi’s conclusory remarks regarding the Organization of Lesbian and Gay Architects



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and Designers (OLGAD)’s Design Pride 1994. He maintains that it “would be hazardous to categorize architecture [and design] solely on the basis of sexuality” (Arcidi 1994, p. 36). He further admonishes his reader that “sweeping labels like ‘heterosexual’ or ‘queer’” should be avoided at all costs when it comes to a discussion of design and architecture. The universalizing subtext of his position clearly ignores the fact that it is precisely these identity labels that have long been used as a means of segregation and persecution. Again, we return to a question of and concern for access. When one claims that sexuality or gender is not a factor all too often this usually belies very real and troubling sociocultural realities and it usually comes from the mouths of those for whom it has never been a struggle. Design too participates very clearly in this symptomatic denial of true “difference,” as embodied in the International Style that continues to dominate all sectors of design pedagogy and production. If we consider Arcidi’s claims or Toogood’s retail designs as part of a continuous spectrum of universalism and neutrality, what becomes clear is that there remains an omnipresent danger akin to that fateful moment when white males were declaring the death of the author in the late 1960s. As with this infamous declaration that occurred at the precise moment when women were finally gaining authorial credibility and economic currency, the supposed death of gender we are currently witnessing is in no way different. At the very point when LGBTQQIP2SAA constituencies are gaining voice, rights, emancipation, etc., universalism and neutrality are seen as an inclusive means through which equality might be achieved for one and by all. Yet, if we do not work through and completely eradicate sexual and gender stereotypes, can we really speak of gender neutrality? And if so, for whom does this work? More significantly, perhaps, is that gender neutrality also collapses the important acknowledgment of the messiness of sexuality, desires, and pleasures, and even the notions of taste and style. With gender‐neutral design, sexuality is once again parsed out of design. It ignores how objects and spaces orient our desires and pleasures, and indeed our sexuality. It highlights the very thing that Michel Foucault (1990[1976]), Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1990), and Gayle Rubin (1984) in their own ways argued against, that is, that there are values placed on certain types of sexual and gendered identities, which are in turn products of discourse. It returns us, once again, to the morality implicated in design practices and its histories. Gender neutrality, whether in design or otherwise, tames sexuality and sexual expression. As with Toogood’s retail space, gender neutrality threatens to fence off sexuality itself, rendering it antiseptic, asexual, neutered. In short, “difference” is eradicated, subsumed within the great universal mass in which desires, pleasures, and even fears are neutralized. Gender neutrality is at best a hopeful utopia, a messy futurity; at worse, it is a passing fashion. What is certain is that we remain a long way away from gender‐neutral design in terms that genuinely defy discrimination. Through their pretentions to inclusivity, universal and neutral design provide a repackaged and largely commodified force that maintains, in a seemingly benign way, the scenario of design.

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Notes 1 Out of respect for the artist, I use “he” as this is the pronoun of choice. 2 On the relationship between sexuality, gender, and public and private spaces of hygiene, see Cavanagh (2010), Edelman (1994), Gerhenson and Penner (2009), Magni (2007), and Potvin (2005).

References Ahmed, S. (2006). Orientations: toward a queer phenomenology. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 12 (4): 543–574. Arcidi, P. (1994). Defining gay design. Progressive Architecture 75 (8): 36. Berlant, L. and Freeman, E. (1992). Queer nationality. Boundary 2 19 (1): 149–180. Betsky, A. (1997). Queer Space: Architecture and Same‐Sex Desire. New York: William Morrow. Boorstein, J. (1996). Queer style: public faces to private spaces. Lesbian and Gay New York (LGNY) 37: 11. Bossé, J. (2017). Email interview with author. Bringolf, J. (2008). Universal design: is it accessible? Multi 1 (2): 45–51. Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge. Bryson, N. (1999). Todd Haynes’s Poison and Queer Cinema. In[ ]visible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Studies. www.invisibleculture.com (accessed 1 February 2000). Cavanagh, S.L. (2010). Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality and the Hygienic Imagination. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Crawford, L. (2015). Transgender Architectonics: The Shape of Change in Modernist Space. Farnham: Ashgate. Doan, P.L. (2010). The tyranny of gendered spaces – reflections from beyond the gender dichotomy. Gender, Place and Culture; A Journal of Feminist Geography 17 (5): 635–654. Edleman, L. (1994). Homographesis: Essays in Gay Literary and Cultural Theory. New York: Routledge. Epstein, R. (2017). Beyond the binary: design moves past gender lines. Metropolis. http://www.metropolismag.com/interiors/retail‐interiors/beyond‐binary‐ design‐moves‐gender‐lines (accessed 20 March 2017). Farrell, A. (2015). Faye Toogood’s radical, genderless, brand‐free concept space at Selfridges. New York Times Magazine (12 March). http://tmagazine.blogs. nytimes.com/2015/03/12/faye‐toogood‐selfridges/?pagewanted=print (accessed 12 January 2017). Foucault, M. (1990[1976]). History of Sexuality., vol. 1: An Introduction. New York: Vintage Books.



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Freeman, E. (2010). Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Durham: Duke University Press. Fry, T. (2011). Design as Politics. Oxford: Berg. Garner, T. (2014). Becoming. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 1 (1–2): 30–32. Gerdes, K. (2014). Performativity. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 1 (1–2): 148–150. Gershenson, O. and Penner, B. (eds.) (2009). Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Halberstam, J. (2005). In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: New York University Press. Halperin, D.M. (1995). Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography. New York: Oxford University Press. Hiemstra, E. (2013). Mars vs. Venus: how to achieve gender‐neutral décor. Apartment 34. http://apartment34.com/2013/05/mars‐vs‐venus‐how‐to‐ achieve‐gender‐neutral‐decor (accessed 15 November 2016). Hines, S. (2006). What’s the difference? Brining particularity to queer studies of transgender. Journal of Gender Studies 15 (1): 49–66. Love, H. (2014). Queer. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 1 (1–2): 172–175. Mace, R. et al. (1997). The 7 Principles of Universal Design. Dublin: The Centre for Excellence in Universal Design. http://universaldesign.ie/What‐is‐ Universal‐Design/The‐7‐Principles (accessed 2 January 2017). Magni, S. (2007). Performative queer identities: masculinities and public bathroom usage. Sexualities 10 (2): 229–242. Nasar, J. and Evans‐Cowley, J. (2007). Universal Design and Disability: From Accessibility to Zoning. Columbus, OH: The John Glenn School of Public Affairs. OED Online. http://www.oed.com/search?searchType=dictionary&q=scenario&_ searchBtn=Search (accessed 07 September 2017). Potvin, J. (2005). Vapour and steam: the Victorian bath, homosocial health and male bodies on display. Journal of Design History 18 (4): 319–333. Potvin, J. (2014). Bachelors of a Different Sort: Queer Aesthetics, Material Culture and the Modern Interior in Britain. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Potvin, J. (2016). The pink elephant in the room: what ever happened to queer theory in the study of interior design 25 years on? Journal of Interior Design 41 (1): 1–7. Rothblatt, M. (1995). The Apartheid of Sex: A Manifesto on the Freedom of Gender. New York: Crown. Rubin, G. (1984). Thinking sex: notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality. In: Pleasure and Danger, 143–178 (ed. C. Vance). New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Sage, J.P. (2016). Queer Objects. London: London College of Communication. Schechner, R. (2013). Performance Studies: An Introduction. New York: Routledge. Sedgwick, E.K. (1990). Epistemology of the Closet. Berkley: University of California Press. Sedgwick, E.K. (1993). Tendencies. New York: Routledge.

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Selfridges (2017). Q & A with Faye Toogood. http://www.selfridges.com/US/ en/content/agender‐concept‐store/?cm_sp=Campaign‐_‐AgenderLandingPage‐_‐ TheConceptSpace (accessed 1 May 2017). Stony, S. (1991). The ‘empire’ strikes back: a posttransexual manifesto. In: Bodyguards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity (eds. K. Straub and J. Epstein), 280–304. New York: Routledge. Taylor, D. (2003). The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham: Duke University Press. Tick, S. (2017). His & hers? Designing for a post‐gender society. Metropolis. http://www.metropolismag.com/ideas/his‐hers‐designing‐for‐a‐post‐gender‐ society (accessed 21 March 2017). Toogood, F. (2017). Agender. http://fayetoogood.com/space/agender (accessed 1 May 2017). Tseng, Z. (2015). Inside Selfridges’ radical, gender‐neutral department store. Dazed (12 March). http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/24088/1/ inside‐selfridges‐radical‐gender‐neutral‐department‐store (accessed 12 January 2017). Ulrich, N. (2015). Making Queer. Model View Culture 25. https:// modelviewculture.com/pieces/making‐queer (accessed 14 November 2016). Vaccaro, J. (2014). Handmade. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 1 (1–2): 76–77. van der Velden, M. and Mortberg, C. (2010). Between need and desire: exploring strategies for gendering design. Science, Technology and Human Values 37 (6): 663–683.

Part V

Audiences

17

Luxury and Design Another Time, Another Place Jonathan Faiers

Any attempt to discuss the concept of luxury in contemporary design has ­inevitably to address the same inconsistencies encountered when attempting to define the term itself. The concept of luxury is slippery, subjective, and mutable. Even its etymology is the subject for heated historical and linguistic debate. As a term, luxury was first used by the Romans, but in a pejorative sense; for them luxuria was equated with decadence, self‐indulgence, and excess, an abandonment of traditional Roman values by both a declining elite and a rising nouveau riche, whose self‐aggrandizing expenditure contrasted strongly with the traditional concept of magnificence (magnificentia) understood as the spending of wealth for the benefit of society at large. In turn, this critical understanding of luxury as enervating and undesirable finds its conceptual antecedents in ancient Greece with a whole range of terms used to describe the numerous pitfalls associated with what today we might understand as a luxury lifestyle. Terms such as truphe, meaning a softness or feebleness as a result of overindulgence, habrosune, used to define the desire for refinement and sophistication, and poluteles, which perhaps finds its closest equivalent in another term often invoked in contemporary luxury studies, that is, Thorstein Veblen’s concept of conspicuous consumption, or the spending of wealth with the express intention of signaling that wealth to the general public first postulated by him in 1899 (Veblen 1979). Luxury’s ancient, negative connotations continued to be applied to the habits of those condemned as effete, hedonistic, and self‐indulgent and, by the early Middle Ages in Europe, decidedly ungodly, with luxuria by this period A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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being exclusively equated to the deadly sin of lust, a mortal condition of excess and abandon (Kovesi 2015). Luxury finally recovers, or, perhaps more accurately, establishes, its use as a term that can be applied to an object or experience, rather than used as an unfavorable judgment on a person’s character or lifestyle, in the eighteenth century. In this period of unparalleled financial growth and industrialization luxury made the transition from morality to economics, from the world of temperament to the world of things, the birth of modern luxury in effect (Berg 2005). Henceforth luxury acquires a beneficial status, playing an indispensable role in a society basing its economy on the production and consumption of newly available and affordable goods. In short luxury is re‐formulated, or de‐moralized as Christopher Berry describes the start of luxury’s renovation in the late seventeenth century (Berry 1994). From this moment onwards luxury becomes a term that can encompass the full spectrum of consumer behavior: profligacy, ostentation, excess, indulgence, reward, and beneficence, a multivalency the term retains today. The contemporary model of luxury production, marketing, and consumption delivers us to a world where the term can be just as easily applied to margarine, toilet tissue, and tinned dog food as to watches, luggage, and spa retreats. The magical application of the epithet is, it seems, enough in many quarters to transform the mundane into the instantly desirable. This terminological fluidity has been of inestimable value to today’s luxury super‐brands and conglomerates, which, ironically, promise many of the qualities traditionally associated with luxury design such as rarity, artisanal construction, and the highest quality materials to an ever expanding global luxury brandscape. The vistas of apparently limitless luxury goods, services, and experiences proffered by the advent of digital technologies mean that we now inhabit a universe of unassuaged virtual luxury, in a state of delirium akin to that which the ancient moralists originally warned us against (Faiers 2014). So if luxury is notoriously elusive in its meaning, with everything from Egyptian cotton sheets to having more free time only beginning to cover the range of responses offered, when the question “what is your idea of luxury?” is asked, then understandably there is a similar lack of consensus as to what constitutes luxury design. As stated previously it would appear that any product may be understood as luxurious purely by the simple act of nominating it as such, and this basic linguistic operation underpins many of today’s most successful “luxury” brands. There are of course certain generally agreed characteristics that cluster around the concept of traditional luxury design, whether that be the individual object or the complete luxury lifestyle encompassing habitat, leisure activities, clothing, transport, etc. Traditional luxury design should fulfill at least some of the following criteria: it should be costly, rare, custom‐made, constructed of the finest materials, entail a high degree of artisanal skill, possess a verifiable and, ideally, historical provenance, be able to be maintained and refurbished by its manufacturer, and, crucially, but contentiously, be excessive. This last



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quality is, of course, highly subjective, and excess takes many forms, but in terms of luxury design’s established understanding Christopher Berry’s equating luxury with superfluity is instructive (Berry 1994). Invoking both Bernard Mandeville’s celebrated eighteenth century discussion of luxury, The Fable of the Bees or Private Vices, Publick Benefits (Mandeville 1962), and Werner Sombart’s twentieth century Luxury and Capitalism (Sombart 1967) we reach a condition of superfluity, of an excess of choice, and, it could be argued, an excess of design. Sombart sees this as an inevitable accompaniment to the development of capitalist society, calling luxury the “illicit child of capitalism” (Sombart 1967, p. 27), a result of the rise of the bourgeoisie, and what he describes as the feminization of taste that by the eighteenth century was a defining characteristic of the burgeoning luxury goods industry. Mandeville, writing in the eighteenth century, understood this consumer development as being inextricably associated with the desire for novelty and fashion as drivers of this new luxury economy: The Root of evil Avarice, That damn’d ill‐natur’d baneful Vice, Was Slave to Prodigality, That Noble Sin; whilst Luxury Employ’d a Million of the Poor, And odious Pride a Million more: Envy it self, and Vanity, Were Ministers of Industry; Their darling Folly, Fickleness, In Diet, Furniture, and Dress, That strange, ridic’lous Vice, was made The very Wheel, that turn’d the Trade. (Mandeville 1962, pp. 31–32)

Accompanying the qualities of excess, superfluity and fashionableness, other more elusive and ephemeral qualities regularly exhorted by the creators and purveyors of luxury design, especially by those who today promote their businesses digitally, include timelessness, exclusivity, distinctiveness, excellence, and possessing iconic status – qualities that are as intangible and subjective as their virtual platforms (Armitage and Roberts 2014). It quickly becomes apparent that any attempt to trace a history of contemporary “luxury” design would be as fraught with difficulty as has been the definition of the term itself, and additionally it would be entirely subjective and necessarily partial both given the length of this chapter and bearing in mind that “luxury” can apparently describe an inexhaustible range of design practices. This paradoxical situation, in which the term luxury is used more frequently than ever before and yet the consensus as to its meaning and definition becomes ever more indefinite and transformative, has given rise to a new field of enquiry  –  critical luxury studies. As an attempt to understand the term’s

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current ubiquity in a time of global economic crisis and market saturation of supposedly exclusive luxury products, critical luxury studies draws on previous scholarship, which has tended to concentrate on classical, renaissance, and eighteenth century formations of luxury but, crucially, brings the debate forwards to today in order to discuss luxury as a dominant sociocultural practice as outlined in the essay “Critical luxury studies: defining a field”: This is important because, for us, critical luxury studies is not a static entity but a dynamic process. Moreover, critical luxury studies has a specific political and philosophical dimension that is crucially linked to the cultural politics of academic disciplinarity. For us, it matters a great deal that critical luxury studies is defined in relation to the important disciplines of art, design and media. For these reasons we are concerned with luxury as “cultural capital” and with the ever‐shifting attitudes towards luxury as both a subject of study and socio‐ cultural practice. (Armitage and Roberts 2016, pp. 1–21)

Acknowledging the pivotal role that the media has played in the construction of contemporary luxury design is crucial to an understanding of how film, television, and the hyperbolic discourse of online luxury promotion actually manufactures contemporary luxury; representing, inciting, and demonstrating aspirational ways of being, and the designed world which these lifestyles might inhabit. Popular cinema’s didactic function has long been recognized, as Elizabeth Wilson so cogently expressed when writing about Hollywood’s impact on early twentieth century fashion: “The cinema, with its much larger audience, was correspondingly even more influential in creating new ways for men and women to move, dance, dress, make love, be” (Wilson 2007, p. 169). Media’s influence is nowhere more apparent than in its representation of privilege, affluence, and comfort. Film and television’s creation of luxurious worlds separate from that of the viewer, illusory and unobtainable yet simultaneously “real” in their meticulous attention to design, uses to full effect one of the key marketing strategies deployed by luxury designers; that is, the promise that its products will magically deliver the consumer to a place they currently do not frequent, but are endlessly exhorted to try and reach – another time, another place. A discussion of luxury design’s essentially fictive core, and the enclosing of that core within ever more costly veneers of precious materials, layers of art historical aggrandizement, and technologized possibility, will be the subject of the remainder of this chapter. However, rather than attempt to locate this within a chronology of luxury design or the canon of schools, makers, and movements, certain templates of luxury design will be offered that adhere to no particular moment but are atemporal and universal. This universality, however, is achieved through luxury design’s mediated image rather than being intrinsic to any object or physical space, and therefore how luxury has been represented primarily via film and television, offers the possibility of formulating an alternative account of luxury design, unfettered by the contemporary



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brandscape of luxury. As Anne Massey in her study of the influence of American film on British material culture, Hollywood Beyond the Screen, demonstrates, there is a direct and fertile relationship “between the transient, two‐dimensional image projected on the screen and the more permanent three‐dimensional artefact” (Massey 2000, p. 2). Similarly, film and television’s ability to become embedded within public consciousness assists in the production of what Raphael Samuel termed “unofficial knowledge,” a body of information concerning a wide variety of sociocultural and historical phenomena (Samuel 1994). This “unofficial knowledge,” I  would argue, is what today constitutes luxury design, and by considering fictional representations of luxury it should be possible to define certain ­qualities which, if not always present in reality, are the bedrock of modern luxury design’s marketing and which have become popularly associated with luxury and its concomitant lifestyles. This chapter will not attempt to chart a history of luxury on film, but rather focus on one example; within that e­ xample, the chapter will find indicators of what might constitute luxury design today and which, I will suggest, condense around the three concepts of immersion, dysfunctionality, and atemporality. In the “Haunted Mirror” sequence, the central tale of the portmanteau British postwar horror film Dead of Night, released in 1945, Peter Cortland is given a birthday present of an antique Chinese Chippendale mirror by his fiancée. As the story unfolds we see Cortland increasingly possessed by what he alone can see in the mirror. Instead of his mid‐twentieth century bedroom he sees himself reflected in an early nineteenth century interior (Figure  17.1). Even once married and ensconced in a new house in Chelsea he continues to see the “other room,” a situation which reaches a climax when he attempts to strangle his wife, as did the original owner of the mirror. The “spell” is only broken when his wife, Joan, breaks free of his grasp and smashes the mirror, restoring Peter to his sanity and to his “own time.” Dead of Night is unique in British cinematic history, being widely regarded as the only true British horror film made before the advent of Hammer Film Productions and its celebrated series of Gothic horror films spanning the mid‐ 1950s until the 1970s. There had of course been British horror films made before Dead of Night, but these tended to take the form of British versions of successful American horror films produced by studios such as Universal starring Boris Karloff or vaudevillian vehicles for the other great British prewar horror film actor Todd Slaughter. Dead of Night by contrast is a psychologically disturbing production made by Ealing Studios that is all the more remarkable given that it was made at the end of the war during which films bearing the H certificate, standing for horror (predating the more familiar X certificate), were unpopular. Considered frivolous, irrelevant, and even damaging to public morale it also seemed out of step with the general air of postwar optimism and restoration that would lead to Britain’s new Elizabethan era of the 1950s. However, Dead of Night, with its circular central motif of ever repeating

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Figure 17.1  The “haunted mirror” sequence from the film Dead of Night (1945). Directed by Robert Hamer. Produced by Ealing Studios. Frame grab by Jonathan Faiers.

waking nightmares, can also be understood as a film that grapples with the recent horrors of war and the psychological trauma of a nation coming to terms with a strange new world in which the rigid prewar social, economic, and moral guarantees could no longer be relied upon. While it might seem willfully perverse to base this necessarily cursory examination of luxury design on just one cinematic production, Dead of Night provides a range of approaches from which to consider this most elusive of subjects. Its very year of release, 1945, seems auspicious given that this same date provides the starting point for this volume, and a point after which global society as a whole, as well as its patterns of consumption, including luxury consumption, changed irrevocably. Similarly, its decidedly middle‐class protagonists may seem unlikely champions of luxury, hitherto the preserve of an elite, wealthy minority, but their indulgent, self‐affirming aspirational lifestyle, reinforced early in the story by the smug satisfaction they derive from looking at themselves in the mirror and Joan’s emphatic “Why not!” given in answer to Cortland’s question “What shall we do tonight? Dress up? Spend a lot of money?,” presages the so‐called democratization of luxury characteristic of today, when luxury is increasingly regarded as a right rather than a privilege. Formally, the production’s circular narrative structure (the film ends exactly as it starts and the viewer realizes that the various stories are part of a relentless, waking nightmare) seems germane to the inescapable, endless production of



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identikit luxury design by contemporary super‐brands. The claustrophobic atmosphere pervading the “haunted mirror” sequence is a result of its action taking place mostly within Cortland’s and, subsequently, the married couple’s bedrooms, with the only possibility of escape from these environments offered by the illusory “other” bedroom reflected in the mirror. This can be understood as a cinematic translation of the hermetically sealed, febrile space of contemporary luxury production, an unreal world where luxury design both cocoons and constructs the consumer. Cortland, towards the climax of the film, isolated, dressed as an approximation of a nineteenth century gentleman in a luxurious padded silk dressing gown, and consumed by the reflection in the mirror, declares: There’s nothing wrong with the mirror. I look in it often. I sit here and look at the four walls, and then for a change I look at them in the mirror. (Dead of Night 1945)

But above all of these considerations the “haunted mirror” sequence offers a beguiling cinematic demonstration of the immersive, atemporal, and dysfunctional condition of contemporary luxury design. If Dead of Night is quintessentially English in its design, acting, and literary provenance, the postwar dismantling of the old hierarchies that it also depicts was very much a global phenomenon during this period, which included a decisive shift in patterns of consumption. This shift was brought about by the accelerated production and distribution of goods, the identification and targeting of new markets, and an increasing reliance on media to disseminate the desire for newly achievable, aspirational lifestyles. All of this prepared the ground for a heightened sense of entitlement and personal affirmation achieved through objects, lifestyles, new technologies, travel, experiences  –  in short, contemporary consumer society. One abiding characteristic of this new consumer society was an increasingly populist understanding of luxury, a democratization of luxury characterized by new materials, technologized lifestyles in the form of labor‐saving appliances, and, in America at least, a design aesthetic informed by cinema and ideas of the “future,” a rethinking of luxury subsequently dubbed “populuxe” by Thomas Hine (Hine 1986). From populuxe to the ubiquity of today’s luxury branded “masstige,” another compound word consisting of mass market and prestige used to describe the growth of “affordable” luxury, popularized by Silverstein and Fiske in their book Trading Up (Silverstein and Fiske 2003), the message is clear: luxury design should transport the consumer to a place of aspiration, where clearly understood design demarcates a world of luxury – elsewhere in effect. Elsewhere returns us once more to Peter Cortland’s flat in 1945, a space at once typical of immediate postwar British design and yet poised on the threshold of a space, or indeed spaces, indicative of luxury design’s subsequent topographies. The 1940s Georgian/Moderne interior of his flat, complete

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with minimal, vaguely Art Deco sofa, built‐in shelves, a choice selection of Hepplewhite‐style chairs, and a George III period chest of drawers, displays the typical aspirations of a wealthy, middle‐class bachelor flat of the period with its pretensions to Continental but suitably masculine modernism wedded to traditional conservative good taste in the form of select pieces of antique furniture. This form of knowing luxury “mix and match” interior scheme is indebted to prewar designers such as Syrie Maugham, whose work was “perceived as fashionable and their clients as fashion‐conscious, modern and discerning” (Sparke 2008, p. 84). Although indelibly associated with mid‐twentieth century design, this melange of periods and styles, where anything goes as long as it is part of a tonally unified scheme, constructed from fine materials and therefore evidently costly, and with most of the elements in the design suitably anodyne in order to showcase the “statement” piece, has remained the preferred luxury interior design style. One only has to take a quick survey of the interiors, and especially the bedrooms, of what are widely accepted as the world’s pre‐ eminent luxury hotels to see this scheme alive and very well. From The Peninsula in Shanghai, to the Four Seasons in New York, to the Hotel du Cap‐ Eden‐Roc in Antibes, finally arriving at Claridge’s in London, the identikit beige and cream schemes, referencing the eighteenth century seen through a late twentieth century lens of dark wood accents, mirror, and marble, is the livery of these principalities of luxury, regardless of continent or exterior architecture. The blandness of this hotel luxe style has recently been compounded and extended by the rise of the so‐called designer hotels such as the Bulgari in London, the Baccarat in New York, Ralph Lauren’s Round Hill Hotel in Jamaica, and the Palazzo Versace on Australia’s Gold Coast, all of which perpetuate the enervating international luxury hotel style with a few signature designer flourishes to reassure the consumer that they have arrived at fashion designer nirvana. So as an echo of the process of Balmoralization, used to describe Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s predilection for dressing themselves and their retinue in tartan when ensconced within the tartan‐saturated interiors of their Scottish hideaway (Faiers 2008), today’s luxury brand sojourners have the chance to slip into monogrammed bliss under a Louis Vuitton bedspread at the Cheval Blanc Randheli resort in the Maldives or kick off their Ferragamos in the brand’s own Hotel Lungarno in Florence. This atemporality is of course the ideal environment for the modern luxury consumer. Time and space are stripped of temporal and geographical reality, economic instability is a fantasy, and history is compressed into a series of decorative references. This sense of unreality is most familiar to us, however, from a long tradition of theatrical and cinematic luxury, offering a popular vision of luxury to global audiences that can only dream of actually inhabiting such spaces. Throughout the 1960s design underwent a technological revolution with the combination of an increased use of new synthetic materials and the all‐pervasive aesthetic influence of the American and Soviet space programs, inspiring the most radical architects, fashion, and product designers to create



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environments for a future that never came to be, before plunging back into the next decade’s nostalgic romanticism. On screen during this same period, however, the future had very much arrived, and in a decidedly luxurious manner was there to stay. In the non‐fictional world the battle between a future characterized by minimalism, synthetic materials, white and primary colors and a future that enjoyed the benefits of new technology disguised beneath an atemporal luxe carapace was won by the latter, leaving us with a legacy of TV sets disguised as chests of drawers, radiators covered by nineteenth century fretwork, and jacuzzis masquerading as Roman baths. While 2001: A Space Odyssey’s limitless white vistas furnished with Olivier Mourgue’s red, biomorphic “Djinn” seating units and with the space station workers dressed in Hardy Amies’ futuristic couture has come to characterize the space age 1960s, it is the series of remarkable villains’ “lairs” created by Ken Adam for the James Bond films where the future of luxury is experienced at its most striking, ironic, and enduring (Figure 17.2). Throughout the 1960s and on into the early 1970s Bond’s villains enjoyed the best of all luxury worlds and times it seems, fully automated and chock full of space age gadgetry but in reassuringly luxe and historicist disguise. The most memorable and influential of these luxe lairs include Dr. No’s spectacular underwater Crab Key dining room, complete with exposed stone work, oriental antiques, animal skin rugs, mid‐ century modern furniture, and magnifying glass wall providing a spectacular subterranean ocean view, and Blofeld’s volcanic hideaway, showcasing a fine

Figure 17.2  Interior of Blofeld’s lair designed by Ken Adam for the film Diamonds Are Forever (1971). Source: Danjaq/EON/UA/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock.

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selection of presumably stolen old master paintings, exposed stone work (again), and a retractable bridge over a piranha pool, while in a later incarnation and film we find him in his remarkable Renaissance studiolo with its tapestries and cabinets illuminated by an imposing tubular steel light feature all resting on a steel circular floor. But perhaps the most remarkable of all is Auric Goldfinger’s rumpus room, an equestrian‐themed, wood‐paneled, luxe tack room equipped with fairground horses, a bucking bronco ride, pool table, and huge stainless steel fireplace. So far, so Kentucky kitsch, but at the flick of a switch the pool table converts to a scale model of Fort Knox, the walls become giant projection screens, and the whole high‐tech operations room can be hermetically sealed and converted into a gas chamber. It is entirely fitting therefore that fiction should be such a key element in, and provide such an impetus for, the contemporary escalation of luxury design. No luxury brand website today is complete without its fictional pages devoted to the brand’s “heritage,” “world of …,” “our story …,” and endless exhortations to “discover,” “experience,” and “live” the brand’s own version of “history,” shorn of any information other than narratives of “timeless” craftsmanship, exclusivity, and quality. Returning to the “haunted mirror,” if Peter Cortland’s mise en scène with its disregard for period and design chronology can be understood as a prototype for today’s global luxury design aesthetic, then the actual diegetic spaces he inhabits, his “real” mid‐twentieth century apartment, and the progressively more “real” reflected nineteenth century interior he is drawn to, can be likened to Mikhail Bakhtin’s literary model of the chronotope, a model which also describes the contemporary spaces of luxury design. In the 1937 essay Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel Bakhtin proposes that: In the literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought‐out, concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot, and history. This intersection of axes and fusion of indicators characterizes the artistic chronotope. (Bakhtin 1981, p. 84)

This “thickening of time” is what Cortland experiences in front of the mirror, enabling him to precisely detail the contents of the other room. A room that shatters the atemporality of his own room with its collage of styles and periods and that, as the film progresses, holds an ever greater sway over Cortland, who is irresistibly drawn to the authentic, the genuine space on the other side of the mirror. Cortland describes the other room in loving detail to his bewildered companion: It’s just as it always is. Instead of my bed, there’s the other bed. I can see it clearly. The posts have vine leaves twisted round them. With bunches of grapes at the top. The hangings are dark red silk. The walls are panelled. There’s a log fire burning in the grate. (Dead of Night 1945)



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Like some pre‐digital luxury consumer Peter Cortland is increasingly seduced and subsumed by the vision of the other room in another time and place that he sees reflected in the mirror. This impossible bedroom, distinctly different from his own, gradually takes on a reality for Peter as he immerses himself in this other space, confessing: But in a queer sort of way it fascinates me. I feel as if that room, the one in the mirror were trying to … to … claim me! To draw me into it. It almost becomes the real room, and my own bedroom imaginary. (Dead of Night 1945)

Even when later in the film we see the couple, now married and moved into “quite a nice house in Chelsea” that boasts an interior scheme more opulent than Cortland’s bachelor flat, including a matrimonial bedroom replete with quilted satin head board, “Victorian” cut crystal globe light suspended from the beak of a carved wooden eagle, a Rex Whistler‐style trompe l’œil painted folding screen, and a growing collection of “antique” furniture, the vision of “authentic” luxury reflected in the mirror still lures Cortland. Luxury as a conduit to the past and the lure of the antique haunts any account of luxury design. Cortland’s hankering after the reflected early Victorian bedroom is understandable enough for a film produced immediately after World War II, when fictional characters in films and real survivors alike turned to the solidity of the nineteenth century for psychological comfort and design inspiration. This yearning for stability, for the “authentic,” for a vanished past was felt most insistently perhaps within fashion design, especially by luxury couture designers. An editorial from British Vogue of March 1946 entitled “The new bloom of couture” (Beaton 1946) is typical of this postwar nostalgia for Victoriana, featuring designs by the leading English couturiers drawn and photographed by Cecil Beaton, which share a rationed, yet decidedly historicist, look back to a time of opulent stability. One year later the remarkable “Renaissance” feature which appeared in June 1947 featured models photographed by Clifford Coffin wearing that season’s lavish couture creations amid the bombed out interiors of Mayfair mansions; their wrecked interiors described with as much painstaking detail as Peter Cortland uses to describe the room in the haunted mirror. The haunted mirror itself condenses many of the qualities popularly associated with luxury design. It is rare, it is costly, it displays a high level of artisanal skill, it is made from fine materials, and it is the genuine article, as the exchange between the couple on his receiving the mirror testifies: Cortland: Darling, it’s a beauty! Joan: It’s certainly an improvement on that old barbola thing your aunt gave you! Cortland: This is a honey! Where did you find it? Joan: Chichester. Very expensive! (Dead of Night 1945)

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The emphasis on expense, on its provenance (the mirror is by Chippendale), its authentic construction made from carved giltwood, not barbola (a plastic paste popular in the 1930s, typically fashioned into fruit and flowers to make decorative frames), and its assertive historic orientalism (it is in Chinese Chippendale style) all signal the object as luxurious. What is more, the mirror offers a glimpse of authentic luxury, a genuine early Victorian interior, correct in every detail, something that from his mid‐twentieth century perspective Cortland finds fatally attractive. The concept of immersive luxury is widely regarded as the “way forward” today by luxury brands desperate to maintain their economic growth and status in a period which, ironically, due to those same brands’ global popularity, has seen luxury “lose its luster” to paraphrase the title of Dana Thomas’s influential book, one of the first to highlight the threat to luxury designer brands’ “exclusivity” posed by their own success (Thomas 2007). Immersive luxury focuses less on the actual object than on the consumer experience itself. This can range from the quality of service given to the customer in traditional luxury retail outfits to a panoply of technically augmented consumer experiences, such as interactive websites, in‐store promotional films, digital technologies offering a variety of virtual consumer enticements, collaborations with contemporary artists, and in‐store bespoke audio, olfactory, and refreshment experiences. Variations and refinements of these immersive experiences multiply as “Luxury aims to recover its uniqueness not by offering expensive and exclusive goods, but by providing an experience that is unique in the acquisition and enjoyment of such goods” (McNeil and Riello 2016, p. 235). The Pradasphere project of 2014 is typical of recent luxury immersive experiences. Designed as an all‐encompassing touring environment paying homage to the Italian luxury brand Prada’s global fashion influence, its patronage of contemporary art via the activities of its Fondazione Prada, and an audiovisual tour through the artistic and cultural influences behind the brand, Pradasphere met with considerable critical and no doubt long‐term commercial success at its incarnation in Harrods department store in London and its subsequent destination in a purpose‐built structure poised above Hong Kong’s Central Ferry Pier No. 4. Further sensory immersion into the luxury designer lifestyle was possible at Harrods in the specially recreated Pasticceria Marchesi. This celebrated Milanese institution, founded in the early nineteenth century, is now controlled by Prada as a perfect example of designer brand extension aimed at those who can certainly afford one of its celebrated, newly fashion‐branded panettone cakes, if not a Prada handbag. The rhetoric promoting Pradasphere on the company’s website was suitably immersive and hyperbolic: Prada: A cosmos of its own composed of heavenly bodies set in a complex orbit. A universe of contradictions



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and endless elaborations, noble causes and base temptations where idealism meets vanity, intelligence meets passion, fashion meets fiction. Welcome to Pradasphere. (Prada 2014)

This supreme example of what Hayakawa termed “venal poetry,” that is, poetry put to the service of crass commercialism (Hayakawa 1946), is also the perfect distillation of what Peter Cortland experiences when he looks into the haunted mirror: “a universe of contradictions,” “where idealism meets vanity” and “fashion meets fiction,” and which also perfectly describes those luxury interiors created by those whose immersion is absolute. One of the key organizational terms for the Pradasphere project was “excessivity,” used to describe the fashion brand’s characteristic use of color, decoration, and layering of pattern and texture, but which is also characteristic of much luxury design. Excessivity of course is only an additional term that serves as an appropriate characteristic of luxury design and joins more established terms such as maximalist design, used typically to describe interior schemes that oppose minimalism in their layering of textures and colors and drive towards excess and extravagant atemporality of all kinds, which characterized much design at the close of the twentieth century and was vividly distilled in Stephen Calloway’s book Baroque: The Culture of Excess (Calloway 1994). While evocations of nineteenth century luxury found a specific audience in mid‐twentieth century British cinema, another time and another place, that of pre‐ and postrevolutionary France, could be fairly claimed to be the pre‐eminent template for excessivity. So‐called “French” taste, whether rococo or neoclassical, is the default design style favored by those whom the ancient Greeks would have recognized as being guilty of poluteles, displaying their wealth and power in the most ostentatious manner possible. As the style most favored by those with aristocratic, if not despotic, tendencies, it has become synonymous with ersatz Marie Antoinettes and Napoleons, from Imelda Marcos to Bokassa. Self‐styled President for Life of the Central African Republic, Jean‐Bédel Bokassa famously modeled himself on Napoleon and stage‐managed his own coronation, employing Parisian stage designers, jewelers, and couturiers to create his 11‐foot‐high gold‐plated throne in the shape of an imperial eagle, a set of regalia including a scepter mounted with an 80 carat diamond, and a 29‐ foot‐long crimson velvet, ermine‐bordered coronation robe (York 2006). If French/African dictator luxury, as we might term it, is perhaps the crudest manifestation of retrolux, we can find a wealth of more restrained, but as insistently atemporal, evocations of France’s past in hotel interiors around the world, especially those built in the early twentieth century. “French/antique” taste with all “mod cons” and key works of contemporary art thrown in for good measure endures today as the go‐to style of the fictional

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and actual super‐rich alike. At the beginning of the documentary series Millionaires’ Mansions we are given access to a Belgravia mansion, which has been transformed into a neoclassical palace by leading British luxury interior designer Joanna Wood. Wood proudly confesses that the ornate blue and gold Napoleonic “small state dining room” is a fiction – “absolutely everything is new, or newly built” – and that the molded “22 carat gold leaf” ceiling decorations that adorn the ceiling, which formerly was decorated with nothing more than gray emulsion and the remnants of polystyrene ceiling tiles, are, as she puts it, “none of your fake.” Following this sequence we are introduced to Juliette Thomas, a newcomer to the world of luxury design who established her Chelsea shop Juliette’s Interiors in 2014. On a guided tour of her emporium she informs the viewer that “One of the things our customers do like an awful lot is this light‐up LED wallpaper. And it not only has the LED lights on it, but it also has the crystals.” Following this she is seen tenderly tracing the loosely Art Deco style wallpaper’s pattern outlined with Swarovski crystals, which she notes it is possible to have inlaid into any item. Thomas’s customers, who “walk through the door and they say we want drama, we want over the top,” share a love of theatricality with another set of televised luxury lovers, the characters in the hit US television series Empire. Dubbed the “hip hop drama,” Empire tells the story of the Lyon family and their hugely successful music and entertainment company Empire Entertainment, as each member struggles to gain control. Part Dallas, part hip hop musical with storylines taken from King Lear and Macbeth, Empire as an award‐winning black soap opera is remarkable enough, but beyond the wildly convoluted plot lines and high‐octane performances Empire is perhaps most notable for its extravagantly luxurious sets and costumes. From French chateau to minimal gadget‐laden penthouse, Empire boasts an opulent array of atemporal luxury fantasy interiors. Ironically, many of the props used on set are in fact genuine articles of antique furniture or contemporary luxury design, including a grand piano made by Warren Shadd, the only African American piano manufacturer in the USA, and a dazzling array of contemporary African American art, including works by Walter Lobyn Hamilton, Mickalene Thomas, and Kehinde Wiley. Wiley’s critically admired hyper‐realistic portraits of anonymous young black men and celebrities alike re‐stage famous works of art such as Jean‐Auguste‐ Dominique Ingres’ Napoleon on His Imperial Throne (1805) as Wiley’s Portrait of Ice‐T (2005), which substitutes the rapper and film star for the Emperor, or his celebrated version of Ingres’ Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1801–1805) retitled Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps (2005). Here, in place of Napoleon, Wiley inserts an anonymous black figure dressed in contemporary street fashion – camouflage fatigues, Timberland work boots, and a bandana – on horseback, and supplants the original painting’s Alpine scenery with a characteristic two‐dimensional, vibrant red and gold neoclassical patterned background derived from historical textile patterns. This luxuriant backdrop both throws the figure into startling relief and yet also merges background and



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foreground, immersing the seated rider in luxury as the pattern starts to overlap and encase him (a form of neoclassical Balmoralization) and spill over onto the rocks framing the bottom of the picture. Wiley’s playfulness, his willingness to collapse spatial and temporal indicators in his work, and its critical celebration of excess comments simultaneously on the contemporary consumption of luxury, luxury as an immersive practice and luxury as an effective tool for self‐ fashioning, which can be traced from Napoleon himself, by way of Bokassa to the super‐rich of today. Wiley’s luxury portraiture returns us again to Bakhtin’s chronotope and his observation that: Within the limits of a single work and within the total literary output of a single author we may notice a number of different chronotopes and complex interactions among them … Chronotopes are mutually inclusive, they co‐exist, they may be interwoven with, replace or oppose one another, contradict one another or find themselves in ever more complex interrelationships. (Bakhtin 1981, p. 252)

Having considered contemporary luxury design’s essential atemporality and its immersive qualities we are left with its final characteristic element – dysfunctionality. Dysfunctionality in contemporary design, however, is here understood not simply as an object having lost or being unable to fulfill its original purpose, but rather to become, by its very dysfunctionality, able to assume new functions, and convey new meaning and purpose. Echoing Jean Baudrillard’s celebrated discussion of the object once it has entered the space of the collection as being “divested of its function, abstracted from any practical context,” and that it subsequently “takes on a strictly subjective status,” so too the typical luxury object must leave behind its primary function, or at least maintain an outmoded, less efficient, even obsolete operation in order to accrue its more socially significant function as an indicator of wealth and status (Baudrillard 1996, p. 85). Take, for example, the classic contemporary luxury object – the watch; costing many thousands of pounds and often destined to be kept in presentation boxes or bank vaults and rarely worn, in this sense the watch is inherently dysfunctional and yet it has become the ultimate status symbol for today’s super‐rich. As an accurate timepiece, however, the luxury watch, no matter how costly and burdened with jewels to regulate it, is a dysfunctional anachronism and a cheap digital watch will keep better time than an exorbitantly expensive mechanical one. As Peter Oakley clarifies: The wristwatch as the apogee of applied engineering excellence is no longer a ­reality. An early manifestation of the digital revolution – the quartz regulator – has resulted in a more accurate and even smaller timekeeper that can be made for a fraction of the price of a mechanical watch mechanism. As a consequence, mechanical watches have become primarily symbolic objects. (Oakley 2015, pp. 63–64)

The wristwatch is an obvious example of dysfunctional luxury, but dysfunctionality alongside excess and refinement pervades a wide range of what might be

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understood as luxury design, rendering what was once practical impractical, efficient inefficient, and functional dysfunctional. The custom‐made leather and walnut interior of a Rolls Royce does not add to the car’s performance and the crystal‐studded wallpaper beloved by Juliette Thomas’s patrons adds a glittering, dust‐collecting embellishment to an already superfluous and unnecessary object, wallpaper. Mirrors are perhaps one of the most ancient examples of luxury design and from the myth of Narcissus onwards the desire to see one’s own reflection has driven the development of this fundamentally inessential object. Leaving aside more recent applications of the mirror as a safety device or its deployment as a scientific instrument, the mirror transcends the usual formulation of a once practical object elevated to luxury status by its over‐ refinement. Unlike food, shelter, and clothing, which we all need to survive and which have, through various processes of refinement, achieved luxury status as Berry details (1994, p. 11), the mirror’s function is inherently superfluous as it is not essential to our existence to see our reflection. As we have seen in the “haunted mirror” sequence the refinement of this already inessential luxury item is clearly signaled; it is costly, rare, and has involved considerable time, effort, and a degree of connoisseurship on the part of Joan to locate it. As a Chinese Chippendale mirror it has authenticity and provenance (or heritage as a contemporary luxury brand’s promotional material might term it) and we learn later in the film from the dealer, Mr. Rutherford, that the mirror was acquired at a sale of the contents of a house that had not been touched since the owner’s death in the early nineteenth century. But beyond all of these refinements the mirror, to Cortland at least, is supremely dysfunctional in that it cannot be relied upon to show his reflection. As the film reaches its climax Cortland’s expected reflection vanishes, only to be replaced by a view of the past, a view of another time (which has “thickened and taken on flesh”) and another place (which has “become charged and responsive”) (Bakhtin 1981, p. 84) but from both of which he is absent. Yet, as with all luxury objects this intrinsic dysfunctionality makes way for endless opportunities for affirmation, aggrandizement, and development, even if in Cortland’s case he senses this development may prove fatal: I know there’s something waiting for me on the other side of the mirror … And if I cross that dividing line something awful will happen! (Dead of Night 1945)

While superficially understood as the luxury accent in a fictional mid‐twentieth century interior design scheme, the mirror here conforms more closely to those convex “mirrors” familiar from renaissance vanitas still life paintings, which feature distorted reflections, alongside soap bubbles, skulls, and burnt down candles, serving to remind the viewer of the unreality, transience, and vanity of mortal existence (Janson 1985). The mirror is essentially atemporal, reflecting both 1945 and 1836 (the year in which the mirror’s original owner murdered his wife and committed suicide), a temporal oscillation that “mirrors” luxury



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design’s chronological uncertainties and condensation. The mirror also offers a supremely immersive luxury experience, its gilded frame creating an exotic, Rococo stage setting for its owner’s reflection, and a further virtual experience placing Cortland at the heart of the mirror’s other passionate and violent “story,” a narrative leap presaging Pradasphere’s “universe of contradictions and endless elaborations.” The sequence ends with the mirror’s destruction and the spell it has cast over Cortland is broken – but not so it seems the spell of modern luxury design. Remaining with the mirror as the quintessential atemporal, immersive, and dysfunctional luxury design object, this chapter moves to its conclusion from a fictional 1945 example to a mirror produced by Studio Job, the Dutch design studio, as part of its “Bavaria” furniture collection in 2008. Studio Job’s provocative designs knowingly straddle the boundaries between art, design, and craft, “high” and “low” taste, combining rare and mundane materials, and regularly court controversy with their interrogation of contemporary luxury – with the mirror (Figure 17.3) from the “Bavaria” collection no exception (Smeets and Tynagel 2010). The mirror is in the form of a triptych enclosed within Indian rosewood panels and frame dazzlingly inlaid with marquetry composed of rare and exotic woods such as African koto, pama, tulipwood, ash, bird’s eye maple, anigre, madrone burl, and birch. Visually echoing the woodworking skills associated with the luxury products of Chippendale and his contemporaries, and the so‐called “golden age of furniture,” the “Bavaria” mirror destabilizes this once we learn that the intricate marquetry is not hand, but laser, cut, calling into question the value we place on the handmade while elevating the machine‐made to the level of craft.

Figure 17.3  Studio Job. “Bavaria” mirror 2008. Photo: Robert Knot. Reproduced with permission from Studio Job.

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The decoration of the mirror itself is equally equivocal. Inspired by Bavarian hand‐painted furniture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Studio Job reinterprets this rustic style in the most sophisticated of techniques, while its subject matter referencing a pastoral farming idyll of a decidedly storybook variety consisting of red barns, silos, tractors, farm implements, work boots, and roosters is made doubly ironic when applied to such an exquisite and narcissistic piece of furniture. This is a mirror for a luxury‐loving sophisticate who sometimes chooses to “see” themselves as a simple farm laborer, or as the Phillips New York catalogue of the auction held on 16 October 2012, at which number 1 of the limited edition of six “Bavaria” mirrors was on sale, describes it: “surely more destined for Queen Marie Antoinette’s ‘Pleasure Dairy’ at Rambouillet than for the every day wear and tear of the common man’s farm house” (Phillips 2012). Supremely atemporal and immersive as this fairytale mirror is, it is of course simultaneously dysfunctional: a “non‐mirror” for, when its “doors” are closed, like Cortland’s haunted mirror, it is unable to reflect its owner. Studio Job’s designs offer a tongue‐in‐cheek distillation of the current status of luxury design: costly, often intentionally garish, exquisitely made, seductive, ludic, highly collectable, and able to instantaneously transport their owners to another time and place. Their work offers a knowing interrogation of the contemporary status of the luxury object forcing us to revel in its illogical, mutable, and ultimately illusory condition: Cortland: Some sort of optical illusion I suppose. Joan: All done with mirrors in fact! (Dead of Night 1945)

References Armitage, J. and Roberts, J. (2014). Luxury new media: euphoria in unhappiness. Luxury: History, Culture, Consumption 1 (1): 113–132. https://doi.org/10.2752/ 205118174x14066464962553. Armitage, J. and Roberts, J. (2016). Critical luxury studies: defining a field. In: Critical Luxury Studies: Art, Design, Media (eds. J. Armitage and J. Roberts), 1–121. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bakhtin, M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (ed. M. Holquist). Austin: University of Texas Press. Baudrillard, J. (1996). The System of Objects (trans. J Benedict). New York: Verso. Beaton, C. (1946). The new bloom of couture: collections by London couturiers presented to overseas buyers with pre‐war perfection. British Vogue (March), pp. 37–45. Berg, M. (2005). Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth‐Century Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Berry, C.J. (1994). The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



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Calloway, S. (1994). Baroque Baroque: The Culture of Excess. London: Phaidon Press. Coffin, C. (1947). “Renaissance”. British Vogue (June), pp. 32–35. Faiers, J. (2008). Tartan. Oxford: Berg. Faiers, J. (2014). Editorial introduction. Luxury: History, Culture, Consumption 1 (1): 5–13. Hayakawa, S.I. (1946). Poetry and Advertising. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse 67 (4): 204–212. Hine, T. (1986). Populuxe. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc. Janson, A.F. (1985). The convex mirror as vanitas symbol. Source: Notes in the History of Art 4 ((2–3)): 51–54. Kovesi, C. (2015). What is luxury?: the rebirth of a concept in the early modern world. Luxury: History, Culture, Consumption 2 (1): 25–40. Mandeville, B. (1962). The Fable of the Bees or Private Vices, Publick Benefits. New York: Capricorn Books. Massey, A. (2000). Hollywood beyond the Screen: Design and Material Culture. Oxford: Berg. McNeil, P. and Riello, G. (2016). Luxury: A Rich History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oakley, P. (2015). Ticking boxes: (re)constructing the wristwatch as a luxury object. Luxury: History, Culture, Consumption 2 (1): 41–60. Samuel, R. (1994). Theatres of Memory. London: Verso Books. Silverstein, M.J. and Fiske, N. (2003). Trading Up: The New American Luxury. New York: Portfolio. Smeets, J. and Tynagel, N. (2010). Studio Job: The Book of Job. New York: Rizzoli. Sombart, W. (1967). Luxury and Capitalism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Sparke, P. (2008). The Modern Interior. London: Reaktion Books. Thomas, D. (2007). Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Luster. New York: Penguin Press. Veblen, T. (1979). The Theory of the Leisure Class. London: Penguin. Wilson, E. (2007). Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity. London: I.B. Tauris. York, P. (2006). Dictator’s Homes. London: Atlantic Books.

Films Dead of Night. 1945. Alberto Cavalcanti, Michael Crichton, Basil Dearden & Richard Hamer (dirs.), UK, Ealing Studios. Diamonds Are Forever. 1971. Guy Hamilton (dir.), UK, Eon Productions. Dr. No. 1962. Terence Young (dir.), UK, Eon Productions. Goldfinger. 1964. Guy Hamilton (dir.), UK, Eon Productions. You Only Live Twice. 1967. Lewis Gilbert (dir.), UK, Eon Productions. 2001: A Space Odyssey. 1968. Stanley Kubrick (dir.), USA, MGM.

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Television Empire. 2015–Present. US, Fox. Creators Lee Daniels and Danny Strong. First broadcast on Fox 1 July 2015. Millionaires’ Mansions. 2016. UK, Indus Films. First broadcast on Channel 4 7 April 2016.

Websites http://www.prada.com/en/a‐future‐archive/projects/specials/pradasphere. html (accessed 19/03/2017) https://www.phillips.com/auctions/auction/NY050412 (accessed 16/04/2017)

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Amateur Design Paul Atkinson

Introduction The history of amateur design has always been one of contention. In many ways it is seen purely as a rivalry between amateur and professional. One side looking to put up barriers (on the grounds of safety, issues of quality, status, or income protection) and the other side striving to overcome such obstacles (on the grounds of expense, free will, and social benefit). The word amateur, though, has not always had the kind of negative associations some place with it today. As Stephen Knott notes, until well into the eighteenth century, its definition in Europe was consistent with its Latin root – amare (to love), and it was used to refer to virtuous activities carried out purely for their own sake (Knott 2015).

Amateur and Professional Design It is perhaps important to start this discussion with some definitions. What is amateur design? Presumably, any design activity that is carried out by anyone who is not a trained, certificated designer would constitute amateur design. By this measure it may seem obvious that amateur design, as an activity that can, and has been, carried out by anyone, must have a far longer history than professional design. While this could be argued, on further examination it becomes clear that, from a terminology point of view, both amateur and professional design are inextricably intertwined and in fact have exactly the same historical A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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starting point. This is purely for the reason that, in order for amateur design to exist as a concept, the notion of professional design first has to be established and accepted as part of a system of distinction. This is because “Professional practice defines itself by its distance from the unschooled practitioner” (Beegan and Atkinson 2008, p. 305). Once a benchmark standard is established and is recognized, and the appropriate barriers to membership of that profession have been raised, then and only then can an amateur exist. Otherwise, how can the amateur designer be an amateur? An amateur in relation to what? Robert Stebbins has explored the relationships between amateur and professional in great depth in his books Amateurs, Professionals, and Serious Leisure (Stebbins 1992) and Serious Leisure: A Perspective for our Time (Stebbins 2007). Stebbins utilizes a complex triangular system of relations and relationships that he refers to as the “professional‐amateur‐public,” or P‐A‐P, system, wherein actors are either professional, amateur, or outside of but aware of the core activity under discussion. Amateurs and professionals are locked in and defined by their place in the P‐A‐P system of relations. As he explains: This condition suggests a critical precaution: enactment of the core activity by the professionals in a particular field, to influence amateurs there, must be sufficiently visible to those amateurs. If the amateurs, in general, have no idea of the prowess of their professional counterparts, the latter become irrelevant as role models. (Stebbins 2007, pp. 6–7)

All this of course relies on an acceptance of design as a profession  –  not as straightforward as might be thought, as the title designer is not a clearly protected term in the ways that the titles of doctors, lawyers, or architects are. Despite the existence of various professional bodies and learned societies for designers, there is nothing illegal in anyone setting himself or herself up to practice as a designer in any discipline. The line between amateur and professional, then, arguably comes down to payment and the extent to which people support themselves through that activity: a more modern interpretation of “professional” than the traditional meaning, but one widely understood and largely accepted by the majority outside of those professions.

The Rise of the Professional The rise of the professional designer is charted in some detail by Jonathan Woodham in his book Twentieth‐Century Design, in which he notes that a range of societies were established in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries across Scandinavia, the UK, and mainland Europe in order to promote design. These societies “sought to achieve recognition of the economic significance of design in manufacturing industry and thus indirectly helped to enhance the professional status of the designer” (Woodham 1997, p. 165). Woodham



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notes, though, that, on top of some reservations from manufacturing industry about the input of designers, there was considerable disagreement among designers themselves about their expected roles, centered on the oppositions of individuality versus standardization, subjectivity versus objectivity, and artistic license and social responsibility. Even the terms used to describe design were difficult to negotiate, with early societies opting for “industrial art,” “commercial art,” or “applied art.” The term “designer” was not widely used in the UK at that time, and the Society of Industrial Artists, founded in 1930, did not add the words “and Designers” onto its title until the mid‐1960s. It finally dropped the word “artist” when it became the Chartered Society of Designers in 1976, although its principal mechanism for governing the status of the professional designer did include the term, and the “Code of Conduct for the Professional Designer” was published much earlier, in 1945 (Armstrong 2015, p. 161).

DIY, Craft, and Amateur Design While on definitions, there are also distinctions that need to be made between amateur design, amateur craft, and do‐it‐yourself (DIY). Like amateur design, DIY has a long history that predates its terminology, for a long time being seen predominantly as a male concern of maintaining the physical standing of the home without recourse to professional tradespeople. The historian Steven Gelber noted this gendered aspect of DIY, stating that: “Mr. Fixit” put in his first formal appearance just after the turn of the century, although there had been calls and precursors as early as the 1870s. Furthermore, his appearance did indeed indicate an important alteration of the male sphere. By taking over chores previously done by professionals, the do‐it‐yourselfer created a new place for himself inside the house. In theory it overlapped with a widening female household sphere, but in practice it was sufficiently distinct so that by end of the 1950s the very term “do‐it‐yourself” would become part of the definition of suburban husbanding. (Gelber 1997)

A “traditional” view of DIY, then, might involve some element of necessity in carrying out maintenance work, even if the person doing it enjoys the endeavor. Some forms of DIY will, of course, include elements of design activity, but certainly not all. DIY can be seen as a far more nuanced activity than merely undertaking house repairs, and can include numerous hobbies and pastimes that might also be labeled by many as craft activity. The distinction made here is that there is no element of necessity; the work is carried out without the need for financial reward, for the sheer enjoyment of the activity itself. In the introductory article to “Do it yourself: democracy and design” (a special issue of the Journal of Design History) I attempted to break DIY down into a number of categories in an attempt to clarify this complex activity. These categories proved

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useful, and have been used by a number of authors citing the work, although, as stated, there might be significant overlap between them: Pro‐active DIY – consisting of those activities which contain significant elements of self‐directed, creative design input, and which might involve the skilled manipulation of raw materials or original combination of existing components, where the motivation is personal pleasure or financial gain. Reactive DIY – consisting of hobby and handcraft or building activities mediated through the agency of kits, templates or patterns and involving the assembly of predetermined components, where the motivation might range from the occupation of spare time to personal pleasure (but which might consequently include an element of financial gain). Essential DIY – consisting of home maintenance activities carried out as an economic necessity or because of the unavailability of professional labour, and which often involves the following of instructional advice from manuals (yet which does not rule out the possibility that such activities may also be creative and personally rewarding). Lifestyle DIY  –  consisting of home improvement or building activities undertaken as emulation or conspicuous consumption, and where the use of one’s own labour is by choice rather than need (although professional input, usually in the form of design advice, is often included). (Atkinson 2006, p. 3)

The Amateur as an Area of Academic Study Books and magazines covering the subject of DIY are quite obviously manifold. They range from Victorian instructional books on house maintenance, pre‐ and postwar books containing advice on how to repair everything from a pair of boots to rewiring a house or installing central heating systems, through a huge range of general DIY magazines in the second half of the twentieth century, to more recent specialist magazines covering everything from practical electronics and popular mechanics to woodworking, and moving into the realm of home crafts, knitting, and scrapbooking. The number of sources and subjects covered is huge. Added to such printed material are a variety of radio and television programs covering similar topics, from the essential repairs of Barry Bucknell’s Do It Yourself in the 1950s (BBC, first broadcast 1957) to the lifestyle choices of Changing Rooms (BBC, 4 September 1996–28 December 2004) in the 1990s. In the light of such wide reportage, then, it seems strange that, as a subject of academic study, amateur design and DIY have been so lightly represented. The value of amateur design activity to society and calls for its inclusion in studies of design have been put forward by a number of scholars. In 1992, an article by Philip Pacey proposed that design history would considerably limit its area of study if it were to continue to focus solely on “professional” design activity, stating:



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It will be my contention that design history, by acknowledging the truth of the concept of everyone as a designer without dismissing it as a “truism,” and by contemplating the study of professional design with recognition of the prior and current activities of non‐professional designers, can encourage the design profession radically to redefine its role vis‐à‐vis people at large, for the enrichment of all concerned. (Pacey 1992)

In 2000, the design historian Judy Attfield highlighted amateur design as being worthy of serious academic attention with her seminal book Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life  –  a study of everyday objects in the lived world that went beyond professionally designed and manufactured goods to include discussion of “a whole swathe of uncategorisable non‐professionally produced design and craft activities and objects, mainly produced in the home, the garden shed or the adult education center, which go unaccounted for in the history of design” (Attfield 2000, p. 71). Later, special issues of the Journal of Design History further explored the diverse nature of amateur design activity and its relation to professional design practice (Atkinson 2006; Beegan and Atkinson 2008) and a number of design historians have started to concentrate on the area. Andrew Jackson’s work on DIY activity has focused on two main aspects – those of the motivation for and the rewarding experiences gained by undertaking such activities (Jackson 2010, 2011), and the role played by the spaces and locations in which these activities are performed (Jackson 2013). Fiona Hackney’s work has considered the dissemination of DIY to women through analysis of 1930s women’s magazines (Hackney 2006) and critiqued the recent resurgence of home crafts as a form of design activism (Hackney 2013). Another relevant study is Stephen Knott’s book Amateur Craft: History and Theory, in which, like Attfield, he sees amateur craft as having made “a vital and important contribution to the material culture of the modern world” (Knott 2015, p. x1).

Motivations for Making A number of recent books have explored the theme of the emotional wellbeing engendered by taking part in the hands‐on, creative design, and constructive activities of DIY and craft construction. The sociologist Richard Sennett, in his book The Craftsman, employs a wide‐reaching definition of “craft” that covers the application of any learned skill. His view is that the term “craftsmanship” “names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake” (Sennett 2008, p. 9), and argues that this desire for craftsmanship can be used as a template for a full, rewarding life. In his view, physically crafting objects, and the difficulties encountered and overcome in doing so, can provide insights into dealing more successfully with human relationships. Life being a skill to be learned, just like any craft. In The Case for Working With Your

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Hands, the writer Matthew Crawford (Crawford 2009) argues that societal drives to concentrate on academic rather than vocational pursuits and the awarding of higher status to office over manual work have led to a situation where many people lack any understanding of even the most basic technologies and have no capacity to maintain or fix things – contributing further to the throwaway society, their dependence on others in order to repair things, and a lack of awareness of their own creative and productive potential. In a similar vein, Mark Frauenfelder, previously editor‐in‐chief of Make magazine, argued in his book Made by Hand that DIY activities are an essential part of achieving a more meaningful life, filled with “engagement with the world” (Frauenfelder 2010, p. 16). He sees that taking responsibility for one’s self and the things that one’s family use in everyday life is hugely beneficial, encouraging the reader to overcome the fear of failure and to embrace experimentation. Frauenfelder also acknowledges the role of social media in expanding this awareness: “The growing interest in DIY is charging a virtuous circle – individuals who make things enjoy documenting their projects online, which inspires others to try making them too” (Frauenfelder 2010, p. 222). These authors’ views are supported by those of Ellen Dissanayake, who has explored the role and value of the physical act of making from a biobehavioral perspective, concluding that “pleasure in handling is hardwired into human nature for good reason: it predisposes us to be tool users and makers” (Dissanayake 1995, p. 41). There is strong evidence, then, that the act of making, either in the form of DIY or amateur craft practice, can be a very enriching experience, and that one very positive aspect of the Internet is the way it enables people to share this positivity with others. David Gauntlett makes exactly this point in his book Making is Connecting (Gauntlett 2011).

Amateur Design and the Role of Technology While amateur making in the form of DIY or home crafts does not rely on computer technology (though its emotional and societal benefits are widely disseminated by social media), the growth of amateur design has, in fact, largely depended on it. Advances in computer technology have enabled users to reach ever higher standards of design and creative practice. In many cases, digital technology has lowered or even removed the barriers to taking part in a range of activities that previously required professional skills training, many hours of dedicated study, and access to expensive, specialist equipment. For example, with the introduction of the Apple Macintosh and the software Aldus Pagemaker in the mid‐1980s, users could design, typeset, lay out, and print their own publications in a way that could previously only be done by a professionally trained graphic designer. Consequently, and understandably, professional designers were highly concerned about the impact on their discipline. Without the professional barrier to entry, what status and respect could graphic



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designers hold? How could graphic design maintain its credibility as a profession when anyone could use a computer to do graphic design work? The emergence of desktop publishing required a paradigm shift in the ways in which graphic design was presented and perceived. In her book D.I.Y. Design It Yourself, Ellen Lupton (2007) supports these advances, feeling it is important that people are given the ability to design elements of their own lives. She argues that amateur graphic design helps to avoid the potential homogeneity of the commercial world and suggests that, rather than seeing amateur design as a threat, professional designers could take a lead role in helping people to understand the inherent complexity of visual communication, and, in so doing, raise the level of design literacy at the same time as improving the appreciation of professional graphic design. A very similar situation arose with respect to professional photography in the 1990s with the ready availability of digital cameras and image manipulation software such as Adobe Photoshop. The general public has, of course, had access to cheap photography since Kodak introduced the cardboard box “Brownie” camera in 1900 (Baker 2017), and, although the films used could be developed and printed at home, the expense of the specialist enlargers required and the complexity of the wet chemical processes involved meant that the films were usually developed by the manufacturer or other third‐party professional companies. Certainly anything other than the taking of straightforward snapshots, such as the retouching, hand‐tinting or high‐quality printing of photographs, remained the remit of professionals. With the advent of cameras that produced a digital file rather than a physical negative, those professional barriers largely disappeared. Suddenly, with relatively little financial outlay and a fairly low level of computer know‐how, users could not only engage in taking and printing their own photographs but also perform all kinds of creative design tasks – from simple cropping and recomposition to retouching, altering exposure levels in different parts of an image, correcting the color balance, or applying a whole range of creative filters to achieve ­different effects. At a similar point in time, digital video cameras allowed people to produce and edit their own films, and sound‐editing software in the form of digital audio workstations enabled anyone to be able to record and mix music and create videos on their own computer: activities that were previously the remit of professional film‐makers and music technicians. As a result, an enormous number of amateur videos have been uploaded to video‐sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo, and aspirational artists disseminate CD‐quality recordings of themselves via music‐sharing sites such as SoundCloud. Despite the lack of industry support, numerous high‐profile performers created their own careers in the music industry this way. In the process, whole creative industries were turned upside down almost overnight. Companies that were part of an established system of control and that employed professional casting agents, camera, lighting, and sound crews, publishers and distributors, and artist and

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repertoire specialists suddenly faced financial ruin as their gatekeeping roles disappeared. They too had to completely change their approach and look at other ways in which they could create revenue streams in order to survive.

Open Design Computer technology has also been at the heart of the very latest developments in amateur design. Three‐dimensional design disciplines, such as industrial design and product design, are in the process of undergoing the same kind of upheaval experienced by the graphic design, photography, film, and music industries outlined above. In the early 2000s, the emergence of more affordable rapid prototyping machines in the form of 3D printers led to people designing and developing their own products that could be digitally produced, and forming online communities through which their designs could be shared in the form of a computer software file for others to download, adapt, and use as they saw fit – a process now known as open design. I  have defined open design as “the collaborative creation of artefacts by a dispersed group of otherwise unrelated individuals” (Atkinson 2011, p. 26), with an important point being that this dispersed group may well not include any professional designers. The sudden freedom afforded by these computer technologies has boosted an already extant and burgeoning attitude that was in many respects, ironically, a backlash against the conformity to and dependence upon a small number of computer manufacturers and the systems they insisted people used, coupled with more general concerns around the dominance of digital technologies and the increasing distance of many in society from the physical aspects of daily life. This phenomenon is now widely referred to as “the maker movement,” and while it often takes place in homes and garden sheds all over the world, it also takes the physical form of “makerspaces” and “fab labs” (fabrication laboratories) in which people can access shared facilities such as high‐end 3D computer‐aided design (CAD) software and computer‐aided manufacturing equipment, 3D printers, laser cutters, and so on in order to create and fabricate their own designs. The growth of this movement can be evidenced through the emergence of countercultural Californian DIY magazines such as Readymade, first published in 2002, and the more radical Make magazine of 2005, the founders of which launched “Maker Faire” in San Mateo, California, in 2006: Part science fair, part county fair, and part something entirely new, Maker Faire is an all‐ages gathering of tech enthusiasts, crafters, educators, tinkerers, hobbyists, engineers, science clubs, authors, artists, students, and commercial exhibitors. All of these “makers” come to Maker Faire to show what they have made and to share what they have learned. (Maker Faire 2017)



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Maker Faires have since become an extremely popular global activity, with numerous annual Faires and mini‐Faires now organized all around the world, each attracting many thousands of people (Figure 18.1).

Open Design: Arguments Against The debates for and against open design and the impact it will have on society have been raging for many years, yet can be summed up by reference to two books published fairly close to one another but holding wildly opposing views. Arguing strongly against open design is Andrew Keen’s book The Cult of the Amateur, in which he laments the removal of boundaries between professional and amateur, noting that “The cult of the amateur has made it increasingly difficult to determine the difference between reader and writer, between artist and spin doctor, between art and advertisement, between amateur and expert” (Keen 2007, p. 27). Keen sees this open approach as a threat to our culture and our economy, largely because of the disenfranchisement of the expert “gatekeeper.” “The traditional institutions that controlled our news, our music, our literature, our television shows, and our movies are under assault” (Keen 2007, p. 7). When so many citizen journalists self‐publish unedited blogs propounding their own theories and opinions, our sense of what is true or real and what is false or imaginary is undermined. Every post becomes just another version of the truth (what we might now refer to as post‐truth). As for online reference sources, without experienced reporters or editorial staff, Wikipedia, he wrote, is the blind leading the blind. If anyone can record and film himself or herself making music and upload it onto YouTube, there is no quality control, no filtering. With millions of poor quality videos online, it becomes impossible to find the ones that are high quality. Such a level playing field means no more hits, as no record label is in place to nurture and promote talent. As for intellectual copyright, Keen notes, who “owns” the content on the Web when anonymous authors cut and paste at will from anywhere they like? How can royalties be collected when work is copied and distributed with impunity? The economic impact of the Internet worries Keen, as he notes that none of the companies creating this content is ever likely to employ the same amount of people as the industries they decimate. For every blog read, that is one less newspaper sold. For every track listened to or video watched online, that is one less CD or DVD sale.

Open Design: Arguments For Holding completely the opposite view is Charles Leadbeater, whose book We‐Think, first published in 2008, proselytizes “You are what you share.” His book attempts to “understand how we think, play, work and create, together,

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Figure 18.1  Maker Faire attendance infographic, 2016. Image courtesy of Maker Faire.

en masse, thanks to the web” (Leadbeater 2009, p. 19). Critics of open design struggle to understand why so many people are happy to work for nothing to create something and then share it freely online, but they do. People do not necessarily conform to a capitalist, commercial system as might be expected. This is the difference between a market and a community: “Markets trade products, communities breed knowledge” (Leadbeater 2009, p. 25). Leadbeater uses a series of case studies, some quite historical, some very recent,



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to show how open collaboration has often triumphed over closed individuality. While acknowledging some of the pitfalls such as the potential for state surveillance, over‐reliance on online sources, and the economic dangers alluded to by Keen, Leadbeater chooses to celebrate the new‐found freedoms the Web has brought, allowing people to collaborate and express themselves creatively through writing, making films, or composing music. Surely, it is a good thing that an amateur musician can record and upload a video of a performance without having to approach a television network to try and get a program commissioned or a record label to try and secure a recording contract? If no one likes it, nothing is lost. If they do, millions of people get to see or hear something they might never otherwise experience. Moreover, open reference sources such as Wikipedia may have their occasional problems, but are free to use and quickly updated compared with, for example, Encyclopedia Britannica, the cost of which makes it inaccessible to many. The main difference in these examples is that in the new approach the audience does the filtering after the publication or release, whereas in the traditional approach corporate gatekeepers do the filtering before publication. In Leadbeater’s view, what collaborative and open working offers, then, is a reduction of top‐ down, hierarchical control as people challenge official sources and instead look for and share information themselves, coupled with an increase in peer‐ to‐peer control in a more decentralized and distributed network. In this scenario, the quality control by professional editors and regulators is replaced by a more transparent process of peer review.

Post-Industrial Manufacturing Sharing the view of Ellen Lupton with respect to the technological advances enabling amateur graphic designers to “design it yourself,” it seems to me that 3D designers need to respond to the technological changes that are seeing amateur designers using 3D printers and CAD packages in home computing set‐ups, at the risk of finding themselves disenfranchised. As Tad Toulis succinctly put it: “Failure to appreciate DIY/Hack Culture is to risk having professional design become as irrelevant to the contemporary landscape as record labels and network television are in the age of iTunes and YouTube” (Toulis 2008). Professional designers could usefully develop systems to empower amateur designers to create high‐quality design work. The bottleneck to the large‐ scale take‐up of the 3D printing of DIY designs is, I believe, the existing complexity of CAD software, which can take many hours to master and can seem impenetrable to non‐designers. To this end I was involved in the early 2000s in leading practice‐led research projects aiming to simplify users’ interaction with CAD software and the creation of 3D forms. The projects were based around the direct digital manufacture of forms created by generative software, which had differing levels of user input.

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The first of these projects, in conjunction with the designer Lionel Theodore Dean and computer programmer Ertu Unver, was titled “Future Factories” and was an exploration of the possibilities for flexibility in the manufacture of artifacts inherent in digitally driven production techniques. The project focused on the layer additive manufacturing techniques associated with rapid prototyping. In essence the project proposed an inversion of the mass production paradigm to one of individualized production  –  in which a random element of variance was introduced by the computer within a parameter envelope defined by the designer. Each artifact physically produced was a one‐off variant of an organic design defined by the designer and maintained in a constant state of metamorphosis by the computer software. This variance covered parameters such as the relative positioning of features, scale, proportion, surface texture, pattern, and so on. The aim was to achieve subtly different aesthetics based on a central theme rather than mere differentiation that might be achieved by, say, scale or color change alone. It was intended that this random variance would simulate the lack of uniformity in one‐off craft production where the craftsperson might be guided by a design intent rather than a toleranced production drawing (Atkinson and Dean 2003). In the Future Factories project, a production system was envisaged in which the consumer was presented with a 3D digital model of the artifact via a website. The website, the “Future Factory” itself, had a series of “production lines” corresponding to different products. When a particular production line was selected the user was presented with a computer animation showing that particular product design in metamorphosis within a parameter envelope specified by the designer. At any given point the consumer could freeze the animation, effectively creating a one‐off design on screen. Should the consumer wish they might then proceed with an order, in which case the relevant digital production files would be generated automatically and an artifact, a one‐off piece of design, was then manufactured using 3D printing techniques (Figure 18.2). In this scenario, the level of user input was deliberately restricted. The consumer could not adjust design features to their liking, even though, technically, this could have been achieved. It was the designer’s intent that the animation continuously changed in real time and was outside their control (this was intended to be part of the allure). A variant was “designed” for them by the system when they selected the moment at which to freeze the animation and they could then choose to order it or not. I explored the potential for an increased level of user interaction in a follow‐ up project titled “Automake,” carried out with the designer–maker Justin Marshall and the same computer programmer, Ertu Unver. In the Automake software, a series of CAD‐modeled individual “building block” units which had the ability to be connected together in 66 different ways were assembled together randomly by the computer within a 3D wireframe mesh form. The user selected the wireframe mesh form from a menu of envelope shapes including a sphere, cylinder, cube, cone, or torus, and then manipulated, twisted, and



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Figure 18.2  A series of “Tuber” lamps created by the FutureFactories software. © Lionel T. Dean. Reproduced with permission from the artist.

scaled the mesh to create unique shapes. When the desired form was achieved, the user selected the particular building block units to be used to fill the resulting envelopes. The computer then placed a randomly selected building block within the mesh envelope and connected the next randomly selected block to the first at one of the six connecting points to create a new shape. This process continued in a random order until the mesh envelope was completely filled with a unique 3D model. The system then generated a digital file that could be sent directly to a rapid prototyping machine for printing in the same way as Future Factory products (Figure  18.3). Alternatively, a mesh form could be selected as in the first process and then randomly filled with the building blocks falling together into the shape by the use of a “gravity engine,” a piece of software that gave the components physical properties such as mass and bounce (Atkinson 2010). I curated an interactive exhibition, “Automake and FutureFactories,” of these two projects which ran for five weeks in May and June 2008 at Hub, the National Centre for Craft and Design in Sleaford, UK. One of the most

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Figure 18.3  The Automake interface in use and resulting bracelet. © Justin Marshall. Reproduced with permission from the artist.

rewarding aspects of the exhibition was the ability for visitors to fully engage in these new processes of creative production. A computer and printer were set up, and the Automake system could be tried first hand. The results were printed out as color photographs and mounted on the gallery wall, constantly expanding the exhibition. Additionally, an industrial sponsor of the show actually



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manufactured a selection of items created by visitors each week, and these too were put on display. Visitors returned to the show regularly and brought with them their friends and relatives to view their artistic output, expressing huge levels of pride in their achievements, stating that, before this, they had “never done anything creative.” A common statement by the users of the Automake system was “look what I have designed.” This raises a particular point about the use of such software systems in an open design context, one that is at the center of many discussions about the pros and cons of open design. At what point does the object created cease being the intellectual property of the designer who created the system and become that of the user who altered the design within the limits of the system? This is especially problematic when there is an element of random selection generated by the software itself. At the point of starting the Post-Industrial Manufacturing research projects, such open design systems were in their infancy, but have developed at a remarkable pace. Early start‐ups included such sites as “Nervous System,” “a generative design studio that works at the intersection of science, art, and technology.” This site has an online store where customers can buy their nature‐inspired pieces of jewelry or lighting; the website also provides a number of apps where visitors can use interactive systems, very much like the “Automake” system, to adapt existing design templates in a process of co‐creation, and create individual pieces that can then be made to order or downloaded to print at home. The designs created are offered under a creative commons license and the condition of designing a product using one of their apps is that any designs saved may be openly shared for others to use or adapt (Nervous System 2014). It is a design and production model now used by numerous competitor 3D printing bureaus such as “Shapeways” or laser‐cutting bureaus such as “Ponoko.” Many of the objections raised to the widespread use of 3D printers by amateur designers revolve around the potential lack of design value of the objects produced and the ecological consequences of large amounts of people repeatedly printing slight variations of their designs and generating huge quantities of waste in the process until they achieve the desired result. Counterarguments include that hopefully systems will develop in such a way as to mitigate against this, and that, in any case, products created where the user has had a significant level of input into the design should in theory be kept and used for longer as there is an emotional connection to the product that is absent in the relationship of users to mass‐produced goods. These arguments against amateur‐produced products are perhaps understandable when the designs under discussion are for “unnecessary” small articles such as jewelry, or items that are already cheaply produced in quantity and readily available such as pots and coffee mugs or even food (people soon experimented with the 3D printing of chocolate and squeezy cheese, and the food corporation Barilla recently launched a specialized 3D pasta printer). While such items were the mainstay of 3D printed output in its early days, important developments have been very quick to

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emerge and their potential impacts are enormous. Larger scale items such as pieces of furniture are now regularly 3D printed, as are clothes made from 3D printed fabrics. Musical instruments from flutes to drums, violins, and guitars can be printed in a single piece, and even whole vehicles such as the ecological “Urbee” car have been developed. Architects have developed machines that are able to 3D print low‐cost houses in a day, raising the prospect of providing cheap accommodation wherever needed. On the medical front, personalized casts for broken limbs can be produced, and even replacements for whole bones from fingers, to jawbones, to whole skulls have been surgically inserted successfully. Using live cells in a process called bioprinting, bionic replacement ears with built‐in microphones have been produced and even whole replacement organs such as hearts, kidneys, and livers are under development, which promise to further extend human longevity. I am not suggesting that these kinds of things would be suitable for amateur designers to be involved with, but replacement prosthetic limbs have been designed and printed by amateurs, including a working prosthetic hand designed by a 16‐year‐old high school student for a nine‐year‐old boy (Gaurav 2014). Reducing the cost of a prosthetic limb from $18 000 to $100, the design is now shared on the Thingiverse website to allow anyone to adapt and print one. Such advances hold great potential for increasing quality of life following birth defects, illness, or accident.

The Future of Open Design In many ways, the rise of amateur design and the advent of open design should not come as a shock to designers. For many years now, designers of all disciplines, and especially design researchers, have been keen to place the user at the center of the design process. With user needs capture, focus groups and user trials, user involvement before, during, and after the design process became an established part of the designer’s everyday work. To reflect the fact that the user’s views were taken into account, the approach became known as “user‐centered design.” Over time, the user was brought more and more into the design process, to the point where the user’s role in the product or service’s design began to be openly acknowledged, and the approach was termed “co‐design.” With the advent of the recent technological developments described above, especially in the area of peer‐to‐peer communications via the Internet, CAD, and direct digital manufacturing via rapid prototyping and 3D printing, the rise of open design was in many respects inevitable. As designers, we have, through our own efforts, moved from a position of designing for people, through designing with people, to a point where we have design by people. It is easy to get carried away in writing about open design and digital manufacturing and present a utopian view that completely subverts the existing design/production/distribution paradigm. There is no doubt that it will



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affect some models of production, but it is unlikely to replace them all. In  a  co‐written article, Leon Cruickshank and I considered the challenges when open approaches are actually applied in real‐world contexts (Cruickshank and Atkinson 2014). First, problems with democratized innovation, where the tacit knowledge of expert lead users and a lack of design training leads more often only to incremental improvements rather than the kind of valuable intuitive leaps more readily achieved by trained designers. Second, the difficult ethical problems that arise with open design approaches in areas such as the design of medical products. The question being one of responsibility and ­liability. If a user downloads the design for a simple object such as a mug or T‐shirt, and there is a problem with it, it is unlikely to cause a serious problem. However, if the download is for the design of a product that could have a significant impact on a user’s quality of life and it malfunctions, who can be held to account? Yet, there are strong arguments, from both a moral and practical perspective, for employing end users as co‐designers, and those whose lives and wellbeing will be directly affected by the design of a product should have the right to have a say in how that product comes about (Dexter et al. 2011). Our conclusion was that, while it seems clear that the role of design professionals is going to be transformed by open design and local manufacture, a world without specialist professional designers remains problematic. Perhaps the role of at least some open design practice in the future will not be to replace professional design per se, but to expand and augment the capabilities of existing design approaches with the additional meaningful input of a wider range of users having relevant experiential and contextual knowledge (Cruickshank and Atkinson 2014).

Postcapitalism So, where do all these developments in amateur design and the emerging technologies that underpin its dissemination take us? It is clear that people designing and making things for themselves will have an impact on the existing business structures surrounding commercially designed goods, but there are also significant economic and social impacts to consider. The news reporter and journalist Paul Mason has written numerous articles and produced a convincing book on this aspect. The changes we are seeing in the way products and services are designed and produced are an important part of and tied inextricably to wider changes effected by technological progress. Mason’s prediction is that the end result will be an era of postcapitalism (Mason 2015a). Capitalism, he says, will be abolished by the reshaping of the economy around new values and behaviors – exactly the kinds of values and behaviors displayed by amateur designers. Three major changes have occurred over the past 25 years, he says, that have made postcapitalism possible (Mason 2015a). First, information technology has “reduced the need for work, blurred the edges

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between work and free time and loosened the relationship between work and wages.” Second, businesses are striving to capture and privatize all socially produced information for their own ends, and “constructing a fragile corporate edifice at odds with the most basic need of humanity, which is to use ideas freely.” And third, we’re seeing the spontaneous rise of collaborative production: goods, services and organisations are appearing that no longer respond to the dictates of the market and the managerial hierarchy. The biggest information product in the world – Wikipedia – is made by volunteers for free, abolishing the encyclopedia business and depriving the advertising industry of an estimated $3bn a year in revenue. (Mason 2015a)

The currency of postcapitalism according to Mason is “free time, networked activity and free stuff … Information goods are freely replicable. Once a thing is made it can be copied/pasted indefinitely. A music track or the giant database you use to build an airliner has a production cost; but its cost of reproduction falls toward zero” (Mason 2015b). In response to open design practices we are seeing new forms of ownership in honor‐based creative commons licenses; in response to new modes of manufacturing we are seeing new models of funding in crowdsourcing. This is the “sharing economy” that the media and politicians refer to, and seem unconcerned about, but in Mason’s view the sharing economy sounds the death knell for capitalism itself (Mason 2015b). We are, he says, in for a potentially painful period of transition to a new economy.

Conclusions The distinctions between professional design and amateur design outlined above are important ones, but seemingly largely only to professional designers. It also seems clear that, today, where many, especially younger, people have “portfolio” careers consisting of multiple jobs; where the boundaries between home and the workplace, and between work and leisure are becoming hopelessly blurred; and where online routes to education and peer‐to‐peer skills development operate in parallel with traditional university and workplace‐based training, the distinction between “professional” and “amateur” is far less clear, and, in many respects, far less important. Amateur design, DIY, and home crafts may have started out as a way of saving money, as harmless pastimes; a hobby carried out when not at work, to keep “unproductive” hands occupied; or as a leisure activity carried out purely for the love of the activity itself, but, as the latest developments show, they have rather unexpectedly moved from being harmless pastimes to being powerful forces for change  –  forces which may be at the heart of paradigm shifts in global economics, politics, and neoliberal capitalist society.



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References Armstrong, L. (2015). Steering a course between professionalism and commercialism: the society of industrial artists and the code of conduct for the professional designer 1945–1975. Journal of Design History 29 (2): 161–179. https://doi. org/10.1093/jdh/epv038. Atkinson, P. (2006). Do it yourself: democracy and design. Journal of Design History 19 (1): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epk001. Atkinson, P. (2010). Boundaries? What boundaries? The crisis of design in a post‐ professional era. The Design Journal 13 (2): 137–155. https://doi.org/ 10.2752/175470710X12735884220817. Atkinson, P. (2011). Orchestral manoeuvres in design. In: Open Design Now: Why Design Cannot Remain Exclusive (eds. B. van Able, L. Evers, R. Klaassen, and P. Troxler), 24–31. Amsterdam: BIS Publishers. Atkinson, P. and Dean, L.T. (2003). ‘Future factories’: teaching techné. 5th European Academy of Design Conference, Barcelona. http://shura.shu.ac. uk/8667/7/Atkinson.pdf (accessed 26 July 2017). Attfield, J. (2000). Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life. Oxford: Berg. Baker, C. (2017). The Brownie Camera. http://www.brownie‐camera.com (accessed 25 July 2017). Beegan, G. and Atkinson, P. (2008). Professionalism, amateurism and the boundaries of design. Journal of Design History 21 (4): 305–313. https://doi. org/10.1093/jdh/epn037. Crawford, M. (2009). The Case for Working With Your Hands, or Why Office Work is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good. London: Penguin Books. Cruickshank, L. and Atkinson, P. (2014). Closing in on open design. The Design Journal 17 (3): 361–378. https://doi.org/10.2752/175630614X13982745782920. Dexter, Matt, Paul Atkinson and Andrew Dearden. 2011. Health products; designed with, not for, end users. Proceedings of the 1st European Conference on Design 4 Health (ed. A Yoxall), Sheffield (13–15 July 2011), pp. 111–121. Dissanayake, E. (1995). The pleasure and meaning of making. American Craft 55 (2): 40–45. Frauenfelder, M. (2010). Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World. New York: Portfolio. Gauntlett, D. (2011). Making is Connecting: The Social Meaning of Creativity, From DIY and Knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gaurav (2014). High school wizkid makes 3D printed prosthetic hand for 9‐year old child. https://web.archive.org/web/20140208045856/http://www. damngeeky.com (accessed 22 August 2018). Gelber, S.M. (1997). Do‐it‐yourself: constructing, repairing, and maintaining domestic masculinity. American Quarterly 49 (1): 66–112. Hackney, F. (2006). Use your hands for happiness: home craft & make‐do‐and‐ mend in British women’s magazines in the 1920s & 1930s. Journal of Design History 19 (1): 23–38. https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epk003.

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Hackney, F. (2013). Quiet activism and the new amateur. Design and Culture 5 (2): 169–193. https://doi.org/10.2752/175470813X13638640370733. Jackson, A. (2010). Constructing at home: understanding the experience of the amateur maker. Design and Culture 2 (1): 5–26. https://doi.org/10.2752/17 5470710X12593419555081. Jackson, A. (2011). Men who make – the ‘flow’ of the amateur designer/maker. In: Extra/Ordinary: Craft Culture and Contemporary Art (ed. M. Buszek). 260–275. North Carolina: Duke University Press. Jackson, A. (2013). Understanding the home workshop: project space, project time, and material interaction. Interiors: Design, Architecture, Culture 4 (2): 175–194. https://doi.org/10.2752/204191213X13693260150380. Keen, A. (2007). The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy. London: Nicholas Brearley. Knott, S. (2015). Amateur Craft: History and Theory. London: Bloomsbury. Leadbeater, C. (2009). We‐Think, 2e. London: Profile Books. Lupton, E. (2007). D.I.Y. Design It Yourself. New Jersey: Princeton Architectural Press. Maker Faire (2017). Maker Faire: a bit of history. http://makerfaire.com/ makerfairehistory (accessed 27 April 2017). Mason, Paul. (2015a). The end of capitalism has begun. The Guardian (17 July). https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism‐end‐of‐ capitalism‐begun. (accessed 26 April 2017). Mason, P. (2015b). Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future. London: Penguin Books. Nervous System (2014). https://n‐e‐r‐v‐o‐u‐s.com (accessed 26 July 2017). Pacey, P. (1992). “Anyone designing anything?” Non‐professional designers and the history of design. Journal of Design History 5 (3): 217–225. https://doi. org/10.1093/jdh/5.3.217. Sennett, R. (2008). The Craftsman. London: Penguin Books. Stebbins, R.A. (1992). Amateurs, Professionals, and Serious Leisure. Montreal, QC: McGill‐Queen’s University Press. Stebbins, R.A. (2007). Serious Leisure: A Perspective for Our Time. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Toulis, T. (2008). Ugly: how unorthodox thinking will save design. Core 77 (30 October). https://www.core77.com/posts/11563/UGLY‐How‐Unorthodox‐ Thinking‐Will‐Save‐Design‐by‐Tad‐Toulis (accessed 26 July 2017). Woodham, J.M. (1997). Twentieth‐Century Design. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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The Professionalization of Interior Design Mark Taylor and Natalie Haskell

Introduction In recent years a number of publications have turned their attention to, first, the professionalization of interior design and, second, the associated professional status. These writings have traced how the discipline has defined itself in an attempt to distance itself from the amateur and raise its academic credibility, while also recognizing that there is a vast body of knowledge that has remained hidden. At the same time, practice has increased its professional status through various bodies and charters, and through organizations such as the International Federation of Interior Designers (IFI), which has sought to reach beyond national boundaries and establish aspirational charters to lead both practical and intellectual development. At times they seem to be in concert but another perspective indicates a tension between practice and education relative to the term “industry ready,” and the expectations of design practices within industry. The desire to have a more professionalized approach to the theory and practice of interior design reflects not only the desire to differentiate and evolve beyond nineteenth century decorative practices, but also modernism’s axioms that structured architecture away from the decorative or so‐called superficial qualities of space for a more functionally defined outcome. Thus the practice moved from “interior decoration” to “interior design,” and more recently to “interior architecture.” In part this seems to have been framed around a ­rejection of the psychological interior constructed around self and identity, A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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and  the adoption of more “reasoned” or “functional” approaches to spatial articulation. In some sense it could be an attempt to see the other (decorator) cast as an amateur, giving rise to the separation and identification of the professional designer, and the ability to gain ground by aligning itself to ­ ­architecture and the associated practices. In parallel with this move was an emerging body of theoretical knowledge that encouraged the discourse as something other than architecture, and, even now, continues to test itself against new paradigms. One issue that seems to be at the heart of this is that the threshold of the interior is an elusive demarcation that covers a range of conditions including patterns of inhabitation through to physical and psychological body–space relations. However, the line of the decorative surface seems to be most ­commonly defined as lying somewhere between the distribution of personal identity and neutral territory. In order to set the decorative surface apart, many architectural theorists and practitioners identify form and spatial articulation as the governing principles, and across history this gradient of decoration flips between the “clean and pure” to a wider spectrum of ornament and “clutter.” This threshold is not only the outcome of cultural, social, and theoretical constructs, but is defined as an interplay of human identification (accumulated artifacts on display), patterns of physical arrangement (modern use of materials and artifacts), and artisanal practices (intensification of the surface). In this chapter we examine this relationship through disciplinary developments in interior theory and the corresponding shifts in professionalization. This is not to suggest the two are closely aligned, but to examine how their respective conditions have evolved relative to the theoreticization and ­positioning of interior design as a discipline in its own right.

Background When surveying the various publications charting histories of interiors one key theme that emerges is that “in the modern world, human life experience is played out in interior spaces” (Pile 2009, p. 10). While this might seem self‐ evident it is an often overlooked aspect, particularly when the focus is directed to the outputs of domestic and industrial practice – the artifacts and products associated with the interior. However we are aware that this statement privileges the interior or “inside” as the locus of experience when this is not necessarily true. Moreover it tends to help shape notions of the interior as a nurturing, protective space, when again research and practice suggest otherwise (Ellin 1997; Meade 2011; Taylor 2013a). Survey histories of the interior often follow similar practices to those in architecture, but address issues of color, materials, and decorative motifs, as against geometry, proportion, and construction processes. Similarly, the documentation of interiors in a broader historical context, recorded in the largely



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Eurocentric Western tradition, is constructed in a chronological linear fashion that indicates changes to form and decoration through a number of “distinct” periods. This method tends to map the breadth of the decorative line against technological and societal changes, and follows, for example, the fifteenth century rise of humanism (with changes to ideas on art, architecture, and interiors), to the distinctive styles of the Renaissance (fifteenth to seventeenth centuries), Regency (early nineteenth century), and Victorian (mid‐ to late nineteenth century) periods. Aesthetic movements such as the Arts and Crafts movement (1880–1910/1920 country variations) and practitioners such as William Morris and Philip Webb’s collaboration on the Red House (1859–1860), culminating in the merging of architecture and interior with a desired impact on the inhabitants, could be viewed as a step towards the rise of modern design (Pile 2009). Emergent trends in early modernism, minimalism, and purism identified the line of decoration as a cluttered and disorderly venture to be erased, enabling the interior to become the “natural” outcome of building. This moral cleansing based around doctrines of truth and honesty overshadowed personal identification, leaving an “arid” environment in which the inner surface marked a new border at which settlement practices and decorative effects were considered unnecessary and counter to modern and progressive societal shifts. From our current perspective, the desire for a more professionalized approach has been made alongside an exploration and documentation of an expanding body of knowledge on interior constructs, and related practices of the environments we design and inhabit. The past 25 years have been an exciting time for the study and practice of interior design, based primarily around the emergence of new approaches to research and the use of new technologies. One driver has been the introduction of digital or computer‐based programs that have informed both design exploration and fabrication processes. This has done much to reinforce the co‐relationship between interior design and technological change. Correspondingly the growth in intellectual discourse has been equally important. Much of this work has shifted from simplifications of the past that lead to grand narratives in the field to an exploration of the specifics of interior design practice. To some extent their similarities are related around the increased decentralization of information within culture generally, including the advent of digital or online resources that challenge and engage the authoritative publications of the past and enable a wider counter “voice” to be included. This is not to discredit these older sources, but to affirm their ability to shift and change as they are approached through variously different cultural lenses and mediums of dissemination. At the risk of introducing another “grand narrative” it seems that the twentieth century scholarly development of interior design follows several phases. In the third quarter of the twentieth century the interior was slowly displaced from the dominating relationship of architecture, enabling it to be understood as something different. Philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1996) observed how, in a consumer‐orientated modern world, social and spatial change altered the

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domestic interior such that it no longer “personifies human relationships” but is a collection of “functional” expedients. He suggested that industrially or serially produced modern furniture (with all its flexibility) meant the individual was no longer defined by the furniture of the traditional family structure (­sideboard, bed, and wardrobe) but presented “a greater openness to social relationships.” Under this conception modern furniture is free as “functional objects” that bear little relationship to each other, in a sense that the modern interior is freer (from the past and familial traditions) but is “fragmented into its various functions.” Moreover, with the break‐up of form, the dissolution of the formal boundaries between inside and outside, and the loss of received meanings in “old” pieces of furniture, the modern technologically driven interior was no longer “given” but is instead “produced.” This shift in representation can be correlated with the concurrent rise in consumerism and technological innovation that supported it, and the consequences for the discipline: in the types of new spaces the profession designed and the rationalization of production methods available, but also wider dualities impacting on the profession to include sustainability and consumerist culture. Herman Miller and Knoll, for example, promoted this new narrative of consumption through interiors and furniture (Petty 2016). This analysis bears some relation to that occurring in the profession, for example John Turpin observed that Florence Knoll (Figure  19.1) and the Knoll Planning Unit developed a systematic approach to design of corporate interiors (Turpin 2013, p. 34). At the same time critics such as Diana Rowntree (1964) developed a form of writing that followed an early feminist position while still advocating the merits of modernism and functionality (Strong 2014). Under these conceptions, the decorative line recedes and becomes subject to industrial practice. Where once the inside reflected the inhabitants’ colonizing practices (Benjamin 1999), and perhaps a desire to efface or change the existing surface appearance, the introduction of industrialization into the home, while at first uncomfortable, eventually dominated (Sparke 2008). However, while there is no clear borderline or moment, despite the various period treatises on interior design including Pegler (1966), Saphier (1968), and Siegel (1968) there can be seen a gradient of slowly changing conditions. In contrast to this process, where the interior is being cleansed of human traces, decorators and stylists such as Elsie de Wolfe (1913), Dorothy Draper (1962), and Billy Baldwin (1972), understood their respective connection to the fashion system. Hodge, Mears and Sidlauskas suggest the enduring relationship between interiors/architecture and fashion (Hodge et  al. 2006). Moreover, some like de Wolfe also understood the role of dress and the interior to “modern woman’s search for self‐identity” (Sparke 2008, p. 83). Within architectural education such practitioners were not discussed within the curriculum, and many interior design/interior architecture courses also tend to shy away, possibly because of the term “decorate” and the implied amateur connotations. However, the importance of these practitioners has been



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Figure 19.1  Florence Knoll with Alexander Girard coffee table (c. 1945). © Knoll, Inc. Image courtesy of Knoll, Inc.

recognized by, among others, Sparke (2005), Taylor and Preston (2005), Blossom and Turpin (2008), and Massey (2008). What is evident from their recovered histories is that these decorative practitioners often have clearly articulated positions on space and inhabitation. The changing representation of women within society and, more specifically, the cultural perceptions of women within interior design contests the established perceptions of the discipline (Caan 2011, p. 87). The last quarter of the twentieth century saw the interior subject to new discourses as many second‐wave feminists began to examine the exclusion of women from the dominant modernist historical narratives. For example, within social and cultural studies feminist scholars such as Linda Nochlin (1971) questioned why there are no great women artists, whereas Luce Irigaray (1985) presented a Marxist reading of the commodification of women through their use and exchange value. Poststructuralist feminist Hélène Cixous (1976) opened discussion on how sexuality is linked to society and culture through

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language and other communication methods. More specifically within the discipline, Dolores Hayden’s feminist project, The Grand Domestic Revolution (1981), revealed the extent to which women contributed to design thinking in often radical ways, and challenged the basic premises that govern masculine modes of thought. Hayden’s theorized history identified a number of feminists intent on transforming the spatial design and material culture of American homes, neighborhoods, and cities. Notably it is through this work that ­dominant ideologies were challenged, including the consequences of industrialization such as “the physical separation of household space from public space, and the economic separation of the domestic economy from the political economy” (Hayden 1981, p. 3). Design historian Penny Sparke in her seminal publication As Long as it’s Pink: The Sexual Politics of Taste (1995) offered a gendered critique of modernism through the complexity of mass production, material change, and feminine culture. More recent collections of essays, such as Women’s Places: Architecture and Design 1860–1960 (Martin and Sparke 2003), focused on the contribution of specific women to design thinking and practice as well as the challenges brought about by spaces designed to further women’s visibility in the city and home. Other influences on both feminist and queer scholarship came from the likes of Judith Butler (2006[1990]), who developed theories of gender performativity that raised questions of identity, and provided space for a rethinking of history. This work and also that of Elizabeth Grosz (2001), Genevieve Lloyd (1986), and others questioned the way Western society has focused on reason and rationality, which has long been associated with the mind and masculinity, at the expense of irrationality and emotion, which has been associated with the body and femininity. With attention drawn to the body, Beverly Gordon’s ground‐breaking essay “Woman’s domestic body: the conceptual conflation of women and interiors in the industrial age” (Gordon 1996) considered the interchangeability of body and space, through a thoughtful reading of the cultural conflation of women and the interior, whereas Peter McNeil, in “Designing women: gender, sexuality and the interior decorator, c. 1890–1940” (McNeil 1994), connected the lived practice of “homosocial” interior decorators to their profession. McNeil argued that the interwar years marked the recognition of successful female‐owned decorating businesses, while at the same time gay male decorators were stereotyped as effete. Although published just into the twenty‐first century, Joel Sanders’s “Curtain wars: architects, decorators, and the twentieth‐century domestic interior” (Sanders 2002) traced the subordination of architecture and the gender ­division of labor that promoted the housewife as decorator, and “modern architects distanced themselves from the superficial excess of decorators.” This account of the architect/decorator divide touched anxieties about “the nature of masculinity, femininity, and homosexuality,” particularly the stereotypical cultural constructions of sexuality and the “macho” male architect, and again the cultural cliché of the gay interior decorator. The focus then was aimed not



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only at sexuality and space, but also at spatial structures relative to gendered, sexed, and raced bodies. The home as a site of architectural and cultural investigation was now on the agenda, and established through pivotal publications such as Not at Home: the Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture (Reed 1996) and Negotiating Domesticity: Spatial Productions of Gender in Modern Architecture (Heynen and Baydar 2005). By the early twenty‐first century an interest in gender and identity continued (Massey and Sparke 2013; Potvin 2010) while at the same time there was a search for the modern interior as a social and cultural outcome, particularly identified in Penny Sparke’s The Modern Interior (Sparke 2008), which examined the legacy of domesticity through both public and private spaces, and Charles Rice’s The Emergence of the Interior (Rice 2007), which, through Walter Benjamin, identified the “doubled interior” that he observed was both “a physical three dimensional space, as well as an image.” These two publications offered a critical reflection on the modern interior as both a cultural and social phenomena. Alongside this, postmodern theory has also enabled a rethinking of the role of the surface and decorative effects, arguing that it is not superficial or subservient to ideas of material truths and “honesty” (Bruno 2014; Leatherbarrow and Mostafavi 2002; Taylor 2003). That is, rather than seeing surface and decoration placed in the “negative” and “feminine” side of binary classification, it is now the subject of study in its own right. For example, in his analysis of surface (the way it is realized and understood) philosopher Andrew Benjamin (2006) proposes that it is more than the “process of its creation” and “can bring something about” such that it can “effect” – in the sense that it distributes programmable space, functional requirements, or architectural elements. Such an approach brought, for some scholars and educators, a legitimacy to engaging with both a decorative and ornamental approach to the interior, as much for its ability to function in an aesthetic manner as for its ability to shift perceptions of space (Taylor 2009). However, Julieanna Preston (2014) offers an interesting and novel method of examining interiors, by taking established positions and rethinking them through writing and experimental practice. This is significant since it detaches traditional identities of the discipline for the discovery of new meanings and approaches. Much of this work also assisted scholars to question the established body of knowledge and, in recent years, there have been several publications that have looked back at key people and texts in an attempt to gather relative literature and design innovations. Framed as both recovered histories and theoretical propositions many focus on eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century developments. Some, such as Taylor and Preston (2006), Briganti and Mezei (2012), Brooker and Stone (2013), and Taylor (2013b), were critical anthologies of previously published papers, whereas Hollis et al. (2007), Preston (2008), Kleinman et al. (2011), Brooker and Weinthal (2013), and Daou et al. (2015) affirmed new approaches and scholarship that emerged from themed

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conferences and specific calls for papers. Indeed Preston, commenting on the contemporary discourse within interior design, notes that “in the past five years this expanded field has been fueled by an unprecedented collection of conferences, exhibitions, symposiums and book publications aimed at international audiences. The authors, designers, artists and writers featured in these venues represent concerted efforts to see the interior design practice, including its theoretical explorations, link to contemporary discourse, media and modes of engagement” (Preston 2014, p. 198). Moreover Daou, Huppatz, and Phuong perceptively recognize what they term the “tension” between the “professional designers who design according to regulations, guidelines and ideological positions, in contrast to inhabitants who adapt and transform interiors ­ ­according to their everyday practices, needs and wants” (Daou et  al. 2015, p. 5). As supported by Heskett, the creation of environments that are situated within interiors, by their very nature, engage people in changing the environment into preferred states that other disciplines can largely exclude (Heskett 2005, p. 69). These publications commissioned new papers that further expanded the notion of the interior in a broad sense. While many of the contributors, and indeed thematic directions, tended to engage with the home and issues of the domestic, these were critical moments in formulating the professionalization of the discipline. Moving away from this and attending to individual platforms has done much to open an interdisciplinary approach whether through art practice, urban interventions, or narrative theory, such that the interior is both an agent of design and has agency in disciplinary development. The importance of this work is that it provides a chance to expand ontologies of the interior into urban situations, performance, and new histories/stories of the interior. The digital turn has provided another shift in perceptions about the interior. Not only in the way new technologies engage with existing spaces (Taylor and Zavoleas 2017), but in the way they are used to shift our understanding of space. Recent design teaching and practice is being enabled by computational approaches, ubiquitous computing, digital fabrication, data‐driven intelligence, manifesting, for example, in Internet of Things (IoT)‐enabled responsive environments, to the use of smart materials. Whether this is achieved through form finding via data and information, the extensive use of parametric modeling (Rhino, Grasshopper, Maya, etc.), or through the impact of machine learning providing real‐time interaction, our conceptual understanding of the interior is changing. Our relationship to lived space, if not “intelligent,” is beginning to collect data and respond to patterns of use within a real‐time scenarios such that space is no longer static. Already we are seeing interior architecture programs responding to this, but in ways that they define their practice as “spatial design.” Carlo Ratti’s Office 3.0 project, completed in 2017, demonstrates these approaches extending past the domestic environment into commercial environments, while also redefining notions of responsive and reactive i­nteriors, such as extensions beyond kinetic surfaces as discussed by Moloney (2011, p. 3).



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We are aware that some of the historical overview outlined above, aligns with that put forward by John Turpin in “Rethinking histories, canons, and paradigms” (Turpin 2013), in which he proposed four phases beginning with nineteenth century decorators’ interests in period styles and aesthetic practice through the Western tradition. A second mid‐century phase appears more concerned with the user’s interface with objects, in order to understand and propose design solutions. The third phase revolved around the so‐called death of modernism “as a style and epistemology,” and the emergence of postmodernism and its emphasis on difference, including both gendered and feminist perspectives. This latter concern is also made relative to the need for women to be viewed as equals in the workforce. The shift into interdisciplinary examination of the profession and its history is cited as the fourth phase. The slight difference we presented above is the concern for digital technologies and tools of production; however, as Turpin notes, the history of interior design is still being tested by other disciplines. The inclusion of digital technologies seeks to recognize the impact that technology has on design practice, and in turn the resulting interdisciplinary approaches within education and practice which will increasingly redefine the profession of interior design and related evolving disciplines. As suggested by Caan there is “knowledge embedded in both education and practice” (Caan 2011, p. 9). To take a reflective and interconnected approach “once we can better quantify and qualify the human experience of objects and spaces, we can align this new design knowledge with our educational and design processes” (Caan 2011, p. 9), with Caan positioning interiors as crucial to, and informing the dialogue across, design disciplines. Sparke also highlights the problematic or subjective definition of design, suggesting the changing nature and classification of design and design disciplines, with “porous boundaries” extending on the existing body of knowledge and taking it “into new territories” (Sparke and Fisher 2016, p. 3).

Shifting Practice The importance of these differing approaches in the early stages of disciplinary development in both historical and theoretical formulations is that they have immediately broadened our understanding of the interior as an interdisciplinary activity, while at the same time exposing shifts in practice and indeed the recognition of that practice. For example, it is evident that towards the end of the nineteenth century a cultural condition emerged that placed women at the center of the house and as arbiters of taste, decoration, and “homemaking” (Sparke 2008). At the time this was argued as “intuitive” knowledge, despite the many writings on taste and fashion in magazines and journals. To alleviate this “problem” publications resorted to providing sound principles and pseudo‐ scientific accounts of color and materials, the aim being to assign the sensual, intuitive femininity as the other of male rationality. Within this practice, Peter

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McNeil (1994) has argued that the emergence of post‐World War II modernism was “at the denigration of this profession and their cultural production.” Over the same post‐World War II period there was a drive to understand the role of interior design in a professional sense, particularly how it differentiates from other forms of “decorative” practice and architecture. Glenda Strong observes that the professionalization of interior design “exists in the larger context of the professionalization of women in design” (Strong 2014). She notes that the British journalist and critic Diana Rowntree (1964) was writing for a primarily female audience, although not pressured to be involved in what Annmarie Adams terms “feminine work” because of their sex (Adams and Tancred 2000). What is at stake here is that there seems to be an ongoing connection between the theoretical constructs and gender discourse. That is, the issues emerging with society were also played back through the discipline and vice versa. For many historians and theorists, any new perspectives, whether socially, culturally, or ideologically driven, have enabled the actions of the past to be represented through new interpretations. One of the key factors to enable new perspectives is an investment in research and discovery. As suggested by Brooker and Weinthal, interior design research has emerged as a result of several factors, including “the importance of interiors in relation to the enduring themes of contemporary society, and the changing perception of the subject within the hierarchy of creative disciplines” (Brooker and Weinthal 2013, p. 1). Brooker and Weinthal suggest the evolving nature of the discipline, which allows for the inclusion of emerging paradigms and is inclusive of tangential disciplines (Brooker and Weinthal 2013), which in turn impacts on the professionalization of interior design and the vocational courses and organizations that are developed and formed to support creative practice. While there have been many individual and collective research endeavors, it is worth mentioning one group in particular. Over the past 20 years the Modern Interiors Research Centre at Kingston University in the UK has held a consistent and innovative role through both themed conferences and publications. Led by design historian professor Penny Sparke, this center is a fertile ground of research and publication that has seen a diverse range of international researchers and contributors at its various seminars, conferences, and symposia. This highlights the dual role of interior design as a professional practice and place for professional research in tertiary institutions, as contributors to the professionalization of interior design.

Professionalization This chapter highlights some ways in which interior design thinking and practice have performed a dialogue with “architecture” and “decoration” and been expanded by changing cultural and social conditions. It is particularly relevant since architecture and the decorative arts have been taught as a professional, or



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at least artisanal, activity for considerable time. For example Woods (1999, p.  58) has noted that in the USA, architecture as a taught profession was included as a formal fee‐based course in the early nineteenth century at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Stretton (2013) outlined the situation in the UK relative to interior design’s place in the British educational system and the continued lack of any protected title. This, he notes, is despite the title of interior design or interior architecture being established in much of the ­developed work – in the USA, Canada, Europe, Pacific basin, the Middle East, and Far East (Stretton 2013, p. 61). In this informative history Stretton notes that this is not the case in countries such as the UK. Despite these early beginnings and ongoing issues, Brooker and Weinthal remind us that, in the development of early modernism, the interior was “­professionally integrated” into the built environment “and was no longer considered a distinct and unique entity” (Brooker and Weinthal 2013, p. 1). Moreover they suggest that this opinion has endured because of the “alleged unprofessional and unregulated status of the designer in some parts of the world” (Brooker and Weinthal 2013, p. 1). To some extent this point is critical, and is one that Grace Lees‐Maffei recognized when defining the term “professionalization” as “the process of developing an activity into a generally recognized profession, through the setting up of professional organizations, the articulation and monitoring of standards and codes of conduct, the institution of clear educational routes and means of assessment, networking and gate keeping” (Lees‐Maffei 2008). While this deals with the “status” question and standing in society, Lees‐Maffei also confirms the changing nature of the profession due to its intellectual and performative characteristics, a shift from taste to skill, such that “interior designers have necessarily asserted their expertise and authority, often working as advisers and practitioners” (Lees‐Maffei 2008). In the UK the profession of interior design is seen to emerge in the 1960s, “with the inauguration of tertiary‐level courses in the subject and a postgraduate course at the Royal College of Art” (Massey 2013, p. 25). Hugh Casson, who led these courses, commented at the time on the difficulties in the perception of interior design as a distinct profession, particularly by architects (Massey 2013, p. 25). These and other educational developments in the UK and USA continued, while new “governing” institutions were established. Among these institutions were the Interior Design Educators Council (IDEC), the professionally recognized association for interior design educators in North America, established in 1963. The stated purpose of the organization was to be “dedicated to the development and improvement of interior design education” (Harwood 2010, p. 1). This was followed by the Foundation for Interior Design Educational Research (FIDER; now known as the Council for Interior Design Accreditation, CIDA), which was formed in 1970, in part because of the publication of A Critical Study of Interior Design Education by IDEC in 1968, “the first comprehensive research on interior design education” (Harwood and Dohr 2015, p. 1). Harwood and Dohr state that “the study

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recommended appropriate curriculum content and proposed an accreditation program for interior design schools with the intent of educating professional interior designers in accordance with the report’s stated definition” (Harwood and Dohr 2015, pp. 2–3). Turpin states that at this time the profession of interior design sought to validate its services with the formation of FIDA and later established a qualifying examination, the National Council for Interior Design Qualification (established in 1974). He notes that “Interior Design had become a profession and sought state legislation for certification and licensure in the United States. Women played major roles in all of these developments in an attempt to validate their participation in and relevance to the public sphere” (Turpin 2013, p. 37). While there are many examples of women taking on these roles, it was Florence Knoll of the Knoll Planning Unit (1943–1971) who instigated a more systematic approach to the design of corporate interiors, which included an emphasis on the end users. Knoll’s working method not only transformed the nature of corporate space but also equated the importance of interior design with the building’s architecture (Tigerman 2007, pp. 61–62). Although working in fields traditionally associated with the “feminine,” such as interior design and textile design, she questioned and redefined the designations architect, interior designer, and interior decorator. Moreover, Knoll sought the use and recognition of the title of interior designer rather than interior decorator as the design services were focused on facilitating living and working rather than decorating (Tigerman 2007). Alongside the development of design schools, revised educational systems, and vocational training programs, the professional institutions were also reacting to the modern movement’s devaluation of terms such as “decoration” or “decorator,” by redefining their practice as design. By the turn of the twentieth century and as a result of the growing interest in design history research, new venues for dissemination of thoughts, ideas, and practice developments emerged. This included (in Australia) the RMIT‐based journal The Interior and the establishment of the Interior Design/Interior Architecture Educators Association (established in 1996), together with their various symposiums, conferences, and, from 2000, the Interior Design/Interior Architecture Educators Journal (IDEA Journal). The IDEA Journal follows the more established Journal of Interior Design, and preceded the more recent academic journal Interiors: Design, Architecture, Culture (established in 2010), which approaches the interior from a multidisciplinary, global perspective.

Future Anterior At the outset of this chapter we posed the relationship between disciplinary developments in interior theory and the corresponding shifts in professionalization, and used the line of decoration to open a discussion that soon



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broadened across many areas of cultural and societal change. What seems evident is that the post‐World War II period saw a rise in professional status coupled with the emergence of tertiary‐level educational programs. To aid this, several disciplinary texts such as dictionaries, planning guides, and professional practice confirmed a broad strategy aimed at raising the status of interior design practice and its acceptance by the architectural profession, as well as the world of business. In recent years the expansion of tertiary design programs that encompass a broader inter‐ or transdisciplinary approach to space, and the introduction of practice‐based doctoral research, has enabled a further shift from interior design/architecture to other forms of spatial practice. These shifts support the recognition and evolving identity of interior design, not only as a professional discipline but also in its relevance to the larger interdisciplinary dialogue across design and the built environment. It seems that the rapid development has done much to permit thinking beyond what might have been expected of the discipline or disciplines. Reaching into other areas of thought (philosophy, psychology, literature, social studies, gender, and so on) and embracing them has enabled critical reflection while advancing new interpretations and directions. While some still hold to the notion of the interior having some form of “inferior” position, or hold the discipline subject to architecture, Julieanna Preston’s feminist methodology has found a way to re‐examine surface through a range of material investigations that do not take for granted the role of a material in the interior, but offer a performative aspect that is interested in issues of subjectivity, ­identity, and the body (Preston 2014). Reflecting on the future of practice, Clive Edwards states that “predictions for the future of individual professions strongly suggest that most, if not all, will continue to be faced by more external regulation, increased competition from outside the field, intrusion of newer occupations, louder public demands for more high‐quality service at lower cost, and increasingly rapid and pervasive technological changes that drastically alter practice” (Edwards 2011, p. 62). To some extent Edwards is correct, but as demonstrated above there will be change from within, and it seems that this is ­currently being led by research practice. In discussing the professionalization of interior design, and the future of design practice, the impact of the digital on research and education will have far‐reaching implications across design disciplines. To consider interior design specifically, as IoT‐enabled spaces, for example, increasingly connect not only people but also disciplines, driven by computational processes, ubiquitous computing, and digital fabrication, new representations of space and in turn ways of living are created. No longer static environments, but data enabled (in  form generation, fabrication, and in use), one future scenario is perhaps being able to better “quantify and qualify the human experience of objects and spaces” to then “align this new design knowledge with our educational and design processes” (Caan 2011, p. 9).

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As the profession responds to changing cultural, societal, and environmental drivers, in a myriad of ways as suggested by Sparke and Fisher (2016, pp. 2–3), it is noted that many of these drivers are not necessarily new, with theorists, such as Papanek, highlighting several in the late twentieth century (1971). But how we can respond as designers, researchers, and as a profession is shifting, with the technology‐enabled toolkit that is increasingly available for customized, individualized, and localized solutions. Interior design provides a flexibility and, as discussed by Brooker and Weinthal, “an ambiguous dimension that begins with what may loosely be described as the ‘inside,’ it can be subject to quick change. Potentially this characteristic allows for it to be altered with ease, making the interior a suitable testing ground for emerging issues in many areas, including technology and representation. Most recently, the quickness with which technology can change is influencing the interior realm through new forms of digital fabrication and mediated simulation” (Brooker and Weinthal 2013, p. 4). The development of design disciplines in the twentieth century, and in turn the design profession and educational systems, has seen the evolution of more specialized design focuses (in part as a response to the growing complexity of design roles), but in reality designers have always worked across disciplines. As  argued by Penelope Dean, it is prevalent in design practice and research today (Dean 2016, pp. 21–22). It is difficult to avoid the wider or smaller scale considerations, such as the consideration of furniture and how a person moves through a space when designing an interior, or the consideration of the interior space the user needs for work tasks when designing a light or piece of furniture. They are interconnected as they all exist and support living in the environment and the human body. This interconnected perspective is further enhanced with technological advancements today, such as IoT and the impact on objects and environments. To look at the post‐World War II period of innovation, Achille Castiglioni in the 1950s and 1960s questioned the functional idea of the comfort of a house and contemporary life  –  and the objects and space needed to facilitate this. As exemplified in post‐World War II interiors, the emphasis shifted from mere aesthetics to user‐centered design – the understanding that design can improve an individual’s quality of life at home or work (Turpin 2013, p. 34). This user focus and designing across disciplines can be seen in designers such as Castiglioni and Eames. Key to their process was also embracing the technological and material innovations occurring at the time. Design is a response to not only societal shifts, but also technological innovation of the time. With the digital revolution we are in the midst of shifts in practice and how the profession is defined: “Emerging technologies are rapidly expanding what we conceive to be formally, spatially, and materially possible” (Iwamoto 2009, p. 4). We have touched on the discussion of aesthetics, and the connotations of ornament historically seen as the purview of the interior decorator. With the rise in digital technologies and fabrication, there is a concurrent increase in



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Figure 19.2  Zaha Hadid Architects. View of interior layers. Photo: © View Pictures/ UIG via Getty Images. Reproduced with permission.

“aesthetics of complexity” (Warnier et al. 2014, p. 38) that technologies such as additive manufacturing allow. This correlates with an increase in the use of ornamentation and the forms and patterns that interior designers can increasingly embed in designed spaces, which can be more customized or representative of place. As suggested by Iwamoto, the method of making ultimately informs the design aesthetic (Iwamoto 2009, p. 4). The late Zaha Hadid can be discussed in the use of these technologies; Hadid created new representations while also reflecting the digital impact on design practice (Figure 19.2). The shifting dialogues on representation and space, form, surface, and ornamentation reflect the “fluidity between design and construction” (Iwamoto 2009, p. 5) that is occurring within practice and design research with a speculative future focus. It raises questions on “how we might experience space and structure in the future” (Openshaw 2015, p. 201) and in turn how the profession is defined in practice.

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Design Education in Higher Education Vicky Gunn

Introduction Research from within and beyond design into the learning, teaching, and assessment of creative practice reached a new vitality in the first two decades of the twenty‐first century. Consequently, how students learn from design’s representatives in higher education is recognized as a valuable topic for research globally. Pedagogy‐focused publications and conferences, including international journals (English language), have flourished in this area of interest. The interconnections between higher education’s design studios and what happens more generally in the design domains has become the subject of observation, evaluation, and reconceptualization. This has been achieved through various explorations of the nature of art and design learning as well as specific articulations of design as a discipline distinct to other creative arts. The links between design practice and design education are beginning to be systematically analyzed. Questions are being asked as to whether the incoherence of design ­practice makes it suitable for a seemingly coherent undergraduate program of study. A new generation of conformist and anti‐conformist positions are being marshaled in the defense of whether design’s creativity is best served through radical and countercultural learning and teaching regimes, as opposed to pragmatic and neo‐liberal, work‐based pedagogies. As a result, a canon of scholarship and research is evolving regarding what happens in design schools and how design schools influence, and are influenced by, the wider environment. A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.



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This chapter explores whether the vocational nature of design is best served within the context of developing an academic profession as directed under university cultures and regulations. It also raises questions as to whether current educational research methods serve design’s needs well. In reference to this, it suggests that the current circulating assumptions about what should be taught and how students should learn are becoming more convoluted. As the required outcomes of a design education widen, the proximity between what might be considered design’s foundational wisdoms as elicited by the early years of an undergraduate program and the outcomes expected from the post‐graduation contexts appears to be rapidly diverging. In such a context, the discipline is being called upon to explore both how disciplinary boundary‐changing paradigm shifts currently being seen in design practice actually play out in design education in universities and art schools, and identify what further research is necessary to assist in robust decision‐making about the future of design education. Consequently, two threads, location of and research into design in higher education, are at the forefront of debates regarding design as an identifiable discipline (encapsulating graphic design, communication design, interior design, fashion, design, critical studies within design, social and services design, product design; architecture is not specifically included as it is deserving of its own ­chapter in such a conversation). This chapter looks at each of these threads.

A Vocational Education or an Academic Profession? The location of design schools within higher education is not without controversy. Design’s move from craft‐based to higher education is a relatively new phenomenon (Lord 2009; Souleles 2013) and concerns remain as to the ­efficacy of such a development. Practitioners in UK design consultancies have been found to view such design education as lacking (Furniss 2015). Design’s researchers also question whether design education as currently configured in higher education and the associated reduction in alternative pathways into the profession make it fit for purpose (Kimbell 2011; Smith 2015). Are studios in universities the most effective form of “incubator” of design expertise? If the outcome for students is ultimately to inhabit communities and industries at odds with the university sector’s aspirations for workforce creation (local versus global tensions) or democratic generalist criticality (individualist versus collective tensions), for example, what does this mean for the regeneration of distinct specialisms?

Design in Higher Education: At a Crisis Crossroads, Really? As design’s internal boundaries seem to dissolve and it navigates economic, professional, and technological adaptation, it is commonly characterized as in crisis (Rodgers and Bremner 2013). Such an interpretation extends to debates

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regarding the where and how of design education. Challenges to current design education approaches in higher education tend to fall into overarching discursive clusters broadly entitled: other‐worldly disconnections and under‐ resourcing. Perceptions of the other‐worldliness of academic study (disconnected from vocational practice through intellectual and physical abstraction) play out in terms of the seeming inconsistencies created when a vocational subject is located in a research‐intensive community. If one accepts that design amalgamates practical and conceptual wisdoms – materialism, visuality, forms of reason associated with making and doing  –  through a highly embodied, immediate learning environment of a practice‐based studio, the potential to undermine its educational ecology by placing it in a university is clear. After all, the academic arena is one in which specific forms of research expertise increasingly take precedence over practitioner status and teaching performance assessment is technocratic rather than relational. Yet design is associated with practice‐driven and relationally assessed processes. It is hard not to see how this might subtly disempower the design discipline through the marginalization of some of its key players (Trowler 2012, p. 77). Practice‐based doctoral studies, research through design, and practice‐oriented research–teaching linkages are ameliorating the tensions caused by this (Koskinen et al. 2011; Murphy and Jacobs 2014), but for some commentators these are not enough. Related to this is the differentiation of ideal design expertise development and engaging with the pragmatic needs emanating from the creative economy while at the same time acquiring the academic skills to challenge design’s own cultural practices (Manning and Mussami 2014). The material and philosophical ­contexts of the workplace do not always align with those of the universities. And those of the universities can seem incongruous to those of design. What should get preference? Also prevalent in design discourses are commentaries noting that academic capacity and resource within a university are insufficient to fulfill the emerging and changing experiences in design. This means under‐resourcing for both: • delivering the educational outcomes asked of design programs by the ­constituent bodies that specialisms in design serve once their students have graduated; • meeting the demands from students to engage in public and collective issues using their designerly qualities. These points have been noted explicitly about the burgeoning field of social design (Armstrong et al. 2014, p. 20) but could equally be raised regarding the necessary interlinks among design, creativity, science, and technology. They tend to be associated with the perception that universities, in particular, struggle with agility, especially when radical shifts in teaching practices are necessitated by evolving ways of thinking, making, and doing within practice beyond the academy (Furniss 2015).



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These general concerns miss a critical aspect of the location of design in higher education. Within creative arts and humanities higher education, improvements to how teaching practices, assessment, employer engagement, community engagement, knowledge exchange, and student learning needs are understood and organized in institutions have been made (De La Harpe et al. 2009; Granville 2015; Gunn 2009; Hickman 2015; Moriarty and Reading 2009). As part of this and broader, global, program reforms, design education has already started to advance. It is both rebalancing the provision in institutions to ensure that contemporary concerns in design practice are reflected through the curricular offer and recognizing the potential of repositioning design education more widely within universities (e.g. Boddington et al. 2016; Brave New Alps 2017; Fry et  al. 2013). Additionally, design schools within universities need not be solely (to the point of exclusion) concerned with ­providing candidates for design. As higher education has expanded, so have the career destinations of design programs’ graduates.

Design Education is About Paradox, Paradox, Paradox Underneath the two discursive clusters outlined above is a simple paradox. Design education needs to ensure the generation of vocationally oriented and forward‐looking specialist domain attributes at the same time as academic yet broad, often progressive, higher educational aspirations. Not only that, however, these need to also deliberately come together through specific pedagogic interventions which simultaneously mix ambiguity and loose yet nonetheless codified knowledges (practical wisdoms, content, and understanding) at a range of professional levels over an individual’s studies (undergraduate, postgraduate taught, graduate apprenticeship etc.), while responding at the same time to adapting student needs and motivations. This is less about a crisis in design per se and more about managing the complexities of twenty‐first century polymathery (Gunn 2013; Mittelstraß 2010). How this is achieved is a result of a shifting blend of abstract ­experiences, embedded practices, knowledge acquisition, investigation, and evaluation. How it is experienced is, in part at least, influenced by the nature of the design speciality in question and how its seemingly incoherent educational community of practice operates (Lave and Wenger 1991, 1998; Liem and Sigurjonsson 2014). Design learning occurs within situation and roles are clearly played by lecturers and students at a disciplinary and institutional level through at least two categories of relationship: first, what they mutually and exclusively privilege in practical and philosophical terms; second, how they engage with and materialize the speciality’s formal and informal concerns, material and visual cultures, and social inter‐relationships with peers and non‐peers (Costa and Murphy 2015; Gray 2013; Roxä and Märtensson 2009). Arguably, the amplified1 (if somewhat uncomfortable) synergistic energy ­created by this professional context requires confidence and evidence from

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design’s academics that paradox – rather than a simple binary of vocational or academic – is fundamentally core to, and sustaining of, design’s future. It is the case that in some higher education sectors there has been an element of contradiction closing through a growing separation of funding for those teaching design and those researching design. In the UK, this has been increasingly tied to career progression. Yet, what is becoming more and more clear is that the creative dialogue among research, practice, teaching, and learning is central to the health of design’s educational ecology. From this position, the profession is not separable from the research questions in need of an academic focus that it generates (Cheng 2014). Such a dialogism exists in industrial design, where the relationships among research–practice–teaching are closely interwoven, but how it plays out depends upon on the educational profile and strategy of a given design school, its location within a given mission group university, and the creative economy it primarily operates within (Liem and Sigurjonsson 2014). The same can be said, however, of social design, service design, data ethnography in design, and so on.

The Dysfunctional Design Research–Design Teaching Research Dichotomy The key problem of the location of design within higher education is not one of other‐worldliness, undercapacity, or lack of agility. It is the way in which the balancing of technocratic funding streams for research, research into teaching, and teaching (via research councils) and career progression (via reward and recognition systems) have come to preclude robust, pedagogically centered, holistic design research to enable evidencing the power of paradox in facilitating the development of creative practitioners. This is not to deny the essential evaluative activity occurring under the rubric of the scholarship of learning and teaching. Nor to undermine the usefulness of the growing body of qualitative research on design education. Rather it is to point out the incongruences that have arisen from the separation through funding streams of design research and research into design’s teaching methods and student learning. As a result, the potential of design’s own research methodologies, values, and attendant methods is largely unrepresented. This presents design with a significant gap in the extent to which it determines both appropriately representative research questions about and analyzing how its teaching systems function. Methodologies associated with social and services design, for example, alongside design ­ethnography, visuality, and materialism (Hicks 2010) could all be used to explore the impact of design’s pedagogic modes both within and beyond programs. Their methods for defining the boundaries of an inquiry, interrogating impact, and assessing outcomes would incorporate far more about the three‐­ dimensional nature of design learning than currently available. To comprehend such a situation, research funding systems in the UK provide a particularly pertinent model. As educational research funding has become



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the preserve of one research council (Economic and Social Research Council; ESRC) and design research falls predominantly under the requirements of another (Arts and Humanities Research Council; AHRC), the result has been skewed academic pragmatism. This is exacerbated further as technological innovations in design are generated in areas normally associated with science research funding (coding and algorithmic design specialisms are in particularly precarious teaching–research funding situations). As a consequence, design’s pedagogical researchers find themselves in a double bind. Many pedagogical questions could be addressed through human and digital design methodologies and methods but who would fund this work is ambiguous and the ­processes for gaining funds for it remain labyrinthine. We know that the funding councils are coy when it comes to funding pedagogical research. But can any single, non‐creative arts funder genuinely serve or respond to design’s needs sufficiently? After all, if funding calls focus on a register and themes which align to social sciences and sciences, they can seem devoid of an understanding of creative practices’ paradoxical non‐utilitarian, disruptive underpinnings which lead to usable innovations. In this double bind, our learning, teaching, and assessment research has done well to grow. It is hard to miss, however, that our foci have been determined more by what funds there are for pedagogic research (small scale, localized, fragmented short‐term options, often linked to quality and teaching excellence agendas) and what funds there are not (e.g. for longitudinal studies that integrate the relationships between design’s place in the creative economy, cultural change, and design teaching. This is leading us to constrain ourselves through assumptions more related to successful funding outcomes than disruptive inquiry – a sort of technology of the self. Rather than seeing design pedagogy as a creative practice in its own right; or a holistic part of design’s own professional context; or one which plays an essential role in the orientations and effectiveness of creative and cultural ecologies (especially those related to industrial strategies), design’s academics tend to get trapped between pursuing design practice research and pursuing educational research. To exemplify this, consider the case of design as an interdisciplinary specialism requiring relevant personal development at undergraduate and postgraduate levels (Friedman 2012; Moreira et al. 2016, p. 364). Thus, cross‐Atlantic reference is made to expanding current overall learning outcomes in design to incorporate those emerging from design’s place as a broadly constituted, worldwide practice, particularly its need to be effective in contexts demanding interdisciplinarity through interprofessionalism. From this, design’s higher educators are called on to align their curriculum with considerably complex areas of activity in design practice and conceptual wisdom in terms of: global, highly multifaceted, emergent yet urgent, societal and environmental tensions (Manzini 2016); the coalescence of traditional practices with innovative research methods; a shift to incorporate an ever‐growing body of design

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t­ heory‐centered interpretative and holistic frameworks (Engbers 2013; Souleles 2013); the relative ease or otherwise with which the relationship between design and the generation of hybrid subjects as translations of design methods and methodologies into other disciplines takes place (Boddington et al. 2016; Kimbell 2012); and the perhaps slightly more alarming prospect of the full dissolution of the design discipline into an alternative condition referred to as alterplinarity (Rodgers and Bremner 2016). From a research perspective, we know that one way to address the reciprocal relationships necessary to capture a theme such as interdisciplinarity through interprofessionalism is to inquire into how student learning in the various disciplines might lead to an understanding of the cultures from which and in which transfer and exchange need to happen to enable the relationships. The inquiry should necessarily reflect on how learning, teaching, and assessment influence the enhancement of these relationships in a range of situations, with diverse conditions. What is needed is evidence of how to compose programs of study that effect design student practices of reciprocity that, in the long term, are able to respond to complex, globally articulated questions. Cross‐location, longitudinal, social design research is perhaps a more robust way of building this evidence than localized, educational projects. The incoherence of this position gives rise to a more troubling observation too, one based on the emerging context of regulation and compliance in which design schools in European and US higher education find themselves. The division between research and teaching funding is enabling a rapacious march of highly questionable, unidimensional metrics to become the “thing” upon which a department’s teaching is judged.2 This is happening instead of looking from within design’s developing, technologically enhanced research methods: human‐centered, data‐design ethnography, relational metrics, participatory evaluation, assemblage, and multimedia narrative visualization.

Critical Themes in Contemporary Education Discourse About Design The environment from which design’s own research into its higher education has been undertaken is thus peppered with practical and conceptual constraints. As such, it is unsurprising that its educational discourse is vexed by two challenges: the limits of applying disciplinary conflations in understanding how and what design students learn (while acknowledging the intellectual economy of scale such a conflation offers) and managing the ever‐expanding expectations of what studying a design degree can achieve. Studio‐based learning (place, space, and process) and its role in fostering creativity in general has come under the spotlight and provides usable insights (Boling et al. 2016; Orr and Bloxham 2012; Orr and Shreeve 2017; Orr et al. 2014; Vaughan et al. 2008). As a cautionary reflection, however, these insights have commonly been reported within organizational contexts and scholarly



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literature which merge art and design and tend to homogenize the notion of creative practice in art schools (Lyon 2011, p. 26). From an educational development perspective, this amalgamation is particularly noticeable in themes which encapsulate significant state‐wide, enhancement agendas such as assessment and feedback, technology‐improved learning, widening participation, employability, sustainability, equality, diversity, and inclusion, and the incipient use of metrics to evidence the educational outcomes of programs. Thus studio‐centered curricula in general (whether fine art or design based) promise varied outcomes that enable individuals to operate in specialist creative contexts as well as being creative workers in less obvious design settings after graduating. Such curricula have been noted for their “signature pedagogies,” a conceptual mechanism for decoding learning and the paradigm shifts that are required by students to access sophisticated approaches in their disciplines. Commentary regarding signature pedagogies likewise attends to “art and design” endeavor as at least closely linked in terms of creative, visual, and material outcomes destined for the public domain (Kelbesadel and Korrensky 2009; Shulman 2005; Sims and Shreeve 2012). Additionally, from a sector‐wide ­perspective, threshold quality benchmark statements about “art and design,” used to guide universities as to the core aspects and standards of disciplinary learning, have been produced.3 These studies and the discourse they represent provide a significantly valuable body of work from which we have begun to make sense of art and design’s pedagogic methods and influences as they exist within higher education. Nonetheless, they do not always capture the phenomenological differences between fine art and design or within design itself (Motley 2017). The consequences of these variations for the acquisition of diverse forms of expertise are not yet adequately addressed. We are, as a consequence, also missing a robust way of analyzing how their material, cultural, and intellectual distinctions might change the way we determine research questions about design students’ learning. Alongside this has come a cross‐Atlantic flurry of activity on the nature of design pedagogy as well as studio‐based design student learning, teaching, and assessment.4 In these discussions, almost ubiquitous elements come together to give an overall architecture of design’s educational focus. These elements align with and expand upon the tendencies of expert designers as identified in the work of Cross (2004), Lawson and Dorst (2009) and Smith (2015). If one brings these two literatures into closer conversation, the central columns of design’s curricular edifice can be organized under the following interwoven outcomes: sophisticated visual literacy, fluency in overall and subdisciplinary materiality, ambiguity management, and social interactionism.

Sophisticated Visual Literacy5 Contemporary design has maintained and extended the role of visual practice in terms of both physical artifact production and expression of the apparently intangible (Inns 2011, p. 25). As such, the development of visual literacy still

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plays a central role in design students’ education. In particular, this refers to developing sophisticated approaches to creating and using visuals as a way of coming to an understanding by making things visual, or as a product of understanding which stimulates and mediates, and/or as a multifaceted method of communication (Eckert and Boujut 2003; Inns 2013; Lawson and Dorst 2009; Li et  al. 2016; Moreira 2017). Subdiscipline‐specific tools, methods, and choices of visualization are relevant here. How this diverse, complex literacy is learned in higher education remains underarticulated in educational research. What seems clear is that students acquire a level of abstract and ­practical wisdom within a visual regime (Shapiro 2003) peculiar to the discipline/subdiscipline in which they study. Thus, how visuality is organized or interpreted according to a set of typically implicit standards is a disciplinary learning arena in which students must learn to perform competently. Advances in technology mean that what it is to be a specialist in making and using visuality is changing. In a design education context, this is transpiring via a paradigm shift regarding how the visual should be understood. It is no longer primarily about apprehending the symbolism within visual culture and how it directs communities and individuals or managing ocular‐centric communication forms and their potential consumption. Students will increasingly be expected to grasp how technologically based virtual reality disrupts the relationship between the seeing person and the object, shifting orientation from viewing outside of an artifact to the broader process of a from‐within, embodied encounter (Julier 2006). This expands the designer’s portfolio of visual dexterity substantially, including the development of proficiency in anticipating the impacts of ambiguity and concretion that such holism is likely to generate. This change in the how of design’s interaction with human sensation is profound. It requires design’s educators to deliberately and systematically expose students to a mixture of ways of thinking (abstract, epistemologically diverse, and practical), practicing, and producing that are more immersive and less compartmentalizing in character than has perhaps been hitherto the case. How best to achieve this through curriculum change at a subdisciplinary level demands robust research that designers or educationalists have yet to produce.

Fluency in Overall and Subdisciplinary Materiality Acquisition of and engagement with overall and subdisciplinary materiality, when materiality can be defined in this context as composed from both ­integrated material and speculative thinking and demonstrable materials’ awareness, is quintessential to design education. In material and speculative thinking, the key areas of expertise involve understanding and manipulating the complex intellectually and emotionally visceral dialogue among materials, symbolism, abstractions as embedded in history and theory of design, strategic foresight, and a designer’s ability to form a physical or metaphysical interpretation (adapted from Carter 2004). Designerly models and methods of reason,



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particularly abductive reason as intelligent guessing (Lu and Liu 2012) and its associated form, speculative pragmatism, are central to but not the entirety of this (Dalsgaard 2014; Kolko 2010; Lawson 2004; Manning and Mussami 2014). Indeed, the role of speculative pragmatism, often associated with application of design thinking outside of design disciplines, must be understood in the wider context of disciplinary materialism rather than as a disembodied intellectual practice. To do this one needs to consider how learning is materialized as part of the orientation of the student’s creative will in the face of ­disciplinary and general learning, the space, place, and time of engagement, and their relationship with the visual objects to which they are exposed and those which they create. This makes the ideas and objects of design both epistemologically fluid (open forms) and concrete technically (closed forms) in nature (Ewenstein and Whyte 2009). Materials’ awareness is a part of this way of being–doing required by design’s students. As such, materials’ awareness includes relevant practical skills and more abstract historical, conceptual, environmental, and ethical considerations that form a circulating disciplinary quasi‐material canon in which and from which students are expected to learn. In this context, for example, design ­history and critical theory is one set of semi‐codified knowledge of which students require a grasp. It is semi‐codified because, although there is often an assumed explicit set of highly valued approaches to its content, additional tacit assumptions and value judgements operate as a consequence of the cultures of the student body and the visual, physical, and textual materials to which they have access and in which they are located. This notion of disciplinary materiality as an epistemological device for ­understanding design’s learning and teaching regimes in higher education is not currently common in the research literature on design studio‐based ­learning. However, such a conceptualization respects insights offered by neo‐ materialism in design critical theory that have emerged over the last decade. This work notes that both material and immaterial elements in relationship with each other contribute to social production (Fox and Alldred 2015, p. 399). It also affirms that simple social theory dualisms, such as mind/body, thinking/making, reason/emotion, material/cultural, are not satisfactory ­paradigms for the analysis of design’s disciplinary paradoxes let  alone what influences learning design’s disciplinary paradoxes in fixed‐term, studio‐based, curricular contexts. In this sense, “social making” is an exceptionally useful if somewhat underapplied heuristic for establishing the what of design learning in higher education.

Ambiguity Management Ambiguity as a resource for learning design is not a new insight (Gaver et al. 2003). Indeed, the American pragmatist John Dewey argued in 1910 that the genesis point of thinking was perplexity, confusion, or doubt (Dewey 1910).

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What we then did with our experience of that ambiguity made the difference between acceptance from inertia and pursuance from the impulse to reflect, challenge, understand and make perplexity, confusion, and doubt into “something” – a conceptualization, a sophisticated idea, a vision, perhaps. In this schema, nuanced meaning‐making thus has its origin in ambiguity. More recently, Aaron Stoller (2014, pp. 55–75) has revisited Dewey’s thinking on knowing and learning, drawing it together with what artistic communities have termed maker’s knowledge: reshaping knowing and learning as a creative action. In this Stoller recognizes that rationality, our capacity to think, is enlarged through making and doing – that types of reason, aesthetics, and certain mores, woven together, interact with ambiguity to generate creative action. Viewed as an essential threshold for students to engage with design’s wicked problems at the same time as acquiring persistence if not resilience in the face of uncertainty, ambiguity then has increasingly formed the basis of discussion about what creative pedagogies in higher education are and do (Orr and Shreeve 2017; Osmond and Turner 2010). On a practical level, tactics for embedding ambiguity into the curriculum tend to be described in terms of deliberative imprecision to encourage speculation, disruption of assumptions (and fixations), and an amplified sense of manipulating the unknown through protocols or social processes (Gaver et al. 2003; Smith 2015). However, we need to consider what ambiguity is also not in the design ­educational context. To do this, it is worth considering the following. Do the subdisciplines of design have a set of communal guiding ideals or themes which determine an expert’s projective structure for interpreting the wicked problems of design as well as shaping the way they engage socially (Alexander 1990, p. 335; Van Dooren et al. 2014, p. 62)? If so, design intent and the relevant design steps to materialize intent (referred to as an outcome of abductive reasoning by Lu and Liu 2012) will embody these ideals and influence how design synthesis occurs. If this is the case, ambiguity is balanced by tacit values which manifest in the way design practices proceed and needs to be analyzed in the light of widening comprehension of the quasi‐material canon of a given discipline outlined above. Ambiguity, then, is not about obscuring access to these ideals, but determining methods for students to evaluate their continued appropriateness in creative practices as specialisms as well as acting as creative agents in less design‐oriented careers. Additionally, design as a process, outcome, or product needs to avoid unnecessary levels of confusion during ­planning and adoption. How toleration of uncertainty is learned needs to be tempered with project management acumen.

Social Interactionism How students interact with one another, their tutors, their projects, and ­subsequently their employers and clients has seen significant expansion in the expectation of design program outcomes and the exploration of research into



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design learning and teaching regimes (Gray 2013). This represents a qualitative shift from a focus primarily (though not exclusively) upon learning the how to communicate aspects of design (Motley 2017). As soft skills and emotional intelligence have entered the higher educational lexicon, so have statements regarding what a design degree program can achieve by way of fostering collaboration, client empathy, and the normatively defined social skills of negotiation, facilitation, and distributed forms of leadership which depend on the capabilities of trust‐based influencing within social networks. Post‐thing design has added a significant, complex layer to this by drawing on the ideals of active social citizenship and proactive creative leadership to form threads within design education (Tonkinwise 2016). Immersive, scenario‐based problem‐ solving pushes against oversimplifying Post‐it design assumptions of how to identify a solution (Manzini 2016). Facilitative participation and innovative visualization are not sufficient (Lee 2014; Manzini 2016). The same can be said of the emergence of cross‐disciplinary practices (Fairburn et  al. 2016). This brings with it a portfolio of co‐operative, distributed, and embodied intelligences dependent on an explicit consciousness of how the subjective and intersubjective materialize within given contexts and projects to both enable and obscure the articulation of processes and outcomes. As design’s influence on culture has evolved, design education requires its students to learn how to trigger meaningful changes to ideas within groups as much as objects. Understanding the role of both the emotional studio and emotional intelligence has become an area of design pedagogy research (Jonson 2009). As has how interpersonal relations operate within a design school, their pivotal moments, and what interpersonal attributes the students transfer when they leave design school (Smith 2015). All four of these are aspirationally integrated through learning and teaching regimes which are typically brief‐based, studio‐centric, and crit‐assessed and claim a degree of approximation to a practice‐based professional environment (Lawson and Dorst 2009; Liem and Sigurjonsson 2014; Lyon 2011; Motley 2017; Smith 2015; Vaughan et al. 2008; Wang 2010). To address how these outcomes are achieved, this literature includes reflective and dialogical practice as a design education outcome, the roles of technology, assessment, collaboration, and retention in design studio contexts, and theory’s place in design learning (Liem and Sigurjonsson 2014; Pollen 2015). Design’s higher educational outcomes are, then, a heady brew. Arguably, each one of these threads within the design education ecology impacts on ­curricular cultures. How content within design school programs is defined, how studio briefs are composed, what is emphasized in crits, when learning encounters are timetabled and when left ambiguous, how credits and contact time are balanced all relate to the collective culture of a given design school and its conceptualization of relationships within and beyond the academy. The same can be said of how teaching is understood as both a method of program‐­ specific socialization and wider personal development, and what physical and

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intellectual contexts are necessary to achieve the quality‐controlled standards of a broad higher education. However, as a consequence of the mismatches in the research–teaching–practice nexus, design’s teaching academics and technicians have yet to provide a convincing disciplinary framework to demonstrate to design’s practitioners how higher education pedagogies provide the best conditions in which to secure these outcomes.

Revisiting Research on Design Teaching and Learning in the UK Given the observation above that there are dysfunctional effects of the relationship between design practice research and design teaching research, it is perhaps unsurprising that the literature on design teaching and learning specifically and higher education student learning generally is open to critique. Below, a duet of headlines is identified to problematize current design pedagogy in higher education research. These are not offered to nullify the research already done, which has informed practice and enabled designer educators to challenge their own teaching practices. Instead, they merely lay the ground for alternative research agendas. The headings are: static temporality of research outcomes in a changing discipline and mechanistic proxies for pedagogic effectiveness.

Static Temporality of Research Outcomes in a Changing Discipline Change in design’s curriculum over time is a particularly difficult aspect for current educational research methods to capture. How such change affects actual teaching practice, values, relationships, and content shifts is often assumed but under‐represented as a research topic within design itself. Instead, there has been a dependence on immediate psychological determinants and cognitive psychological research methods to understand student learning (Haggis 2009). These tend to restate past and current time‐specific conditions espoused by students without necessarily articulating emerging changes. There is a static, self‐reproductive, descriptive quality to this research. This is problematic as such a lack of evidence encourages perceptions of a lack of agility on the part of higher education. Of significantly more concern on ethical grounds, such research methods also embed unconscious biases into how we interpret student activity and fail to provide an adequate platform to ensure diversity is taken seriously. It also leaves design’s educators relying on descriptions of student practices that might not reflect how the students themselves are adapting in relation to changes coming into the discipline from practice and vice versa. To demonstrate what I mean here we need to consider how design as both an education



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and a professional practice has already changed. Simply put, it is possible to identify a tension in the demands on design pedagogy in terms of what our students should be making  –  meaningful things or meaningful cultures or both? There has been a significant rebalancing of emphasis around two distinct categories of disciplinary orientation: one focused on product‐craft and product‐craft ecologies, the other focused (in simple terms) on holistic interaction processes and pluralism (Fleming 2013; Furniss 2015; Press and Cooper 2003). In this latter case, these processes are created and informed in part through designers’ visuality as a narrative and interpretative craft and emergent sociocultural strategies in the face of human‐centered, complex problem‐­solving as the output (Fry et al. 2013; Manzini 2015; Manzini and Rizzo 2011). Each approach is underpinned by slightly different ways of making meaning and, consequently, they are oriented towards different forms of value creation. Each approach requires slightly different outcomes from design students: the former being centered on the designer producing value and checking it through involvement with the end user, the latter emphasizing value co‐creation ­facilitated by the designer with the user being involved from inception in speculative modes of interaction (Muller et al. 2006; Redström 2006). One is still often conceptualized in terms of expert‐led, the other as a less definably hierarchical practice in which the formal expertise of the designer is not always easy to identify (Armstrong et al. 2014; Manzini 2015). They each accentuate a slightly different understanding of aesthetics, shifting our view from classical object aesthetics to participatory, relational aesthetics (Bourriard 2002; Holt 2015, p. 146). How we manage and judge the learning of these, emerging over time, phenomenologically distinct approaches to design is an incipient research theme for design education completely absent from broader research on student learning. The disruption of what is given primacy in terms of value within a given design discipline and how such disruption changes the nature of what is required within higher education design programs requires explicit and close investigation.

Mechanistic Proxies of Pedagogic Effectiveness Arguably the biggest problem for design educators in terms of potential educational research methods and literature on student learning to use is the dependence on psychological and qualitative approaches to explore critical thinking as the core outcome of undergraduate degree programs. What this means is that the dominant “proxy” for pedagogic effectiveness in the educational development literature is not creativity or originality. Nor are the embodied nature of aesthetics’ development, visual literacy, or the haptic quality of working with materials represented (Lambert 2011). Studio‐based design learning, perhaps uniquely representative of collaborative, spatial, sensory encounters with materials, tools, and techniques to generate speculative

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pragmatism, higher order criticality, and artifacts (Heywood 2009), requires holistic methodologies to underpin the design of appropriate educational research methods. Educational research is often centered, however, on explaining and mechanizing teaching methods which appear to support sufficiency of understanding in the disciplinary context in the light of immediate, subject area predetermined, outcomes. This is implicit, for example, in two key areas of learning and teaching enhancement research that have come to be influential within UK and US higher education: • constructive alignment and the oversimplification of learning outcomes as both a production and a measurement mechanism (Davies 2012); • academic literacies and the problematic lurch into coaching (Gunn 2014). Both these approaches are educationally well intentioned but neither serves design as a specialism adequately. Arguably, both have evolved from a desire to resolve longstanding problems relating to the student experience of learning in higher education. They have tended to combine oversimplistically hidden and tacit knowledges with access points to a given discipline whose paradoxes should be smoothed over to ensure that alienation is minimized. In so doing, they have asserted the amendment of disquiet over the agency necessary for creative practices. As an aside, these approaches have also conflated gestational disquiet with the identification of disadvantages in the intersections of our diverse students’ identities. Structural disadvantages systematically applied within institutions in a manner that excludes minority groups and the complexity of acquiring the materiality of a discipline are two distinct phenomena, fixing the latter is quite a different proposition than fixing the former, even though the two are undoubtedly connected. In general, the weakness in each of these strands of educational development in higher education relates not to the original research or to its findings but to how, in implementation, they tend to close contradictions and control ambiguity. They imply that intellectual disquiet and risk‐taking, as well as the emotionality of unpredictability in the face of ill‐defined problems, can be ameliorated. This may be the case where practical organization of the curriculum is concerned. In terms of simultaneously overcoming intolerance to uncertainty via student agency and managing disciplinary materiality, however, design research needs to illustrate how enabling constraints (structural constraints that evoke student agency) can deliberately be factored into programmes of study and doing this without reinscribing inequalities (Manning and Mussami 2014). In actuality, both constructive alignment and academic literacies have emerged out of our underdetermined conceptualization of how learning cultures and contexts are affected by teaching methods and reciprocal relationships (Entwistle 2007; Maclellan 2015; Marton 2007; Gunn 2014). In simple terms they reflect a form of solutionism on the part of educational researchers. Higher order



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critical thinking (epistemological positions) is siloed and measured to identify variations in understanding (Maclellan 2015). Configured variations in understanding become the focus. These in turn then become the (p. 427) basis for identifying potential cognitive milestones that require scaffolding (Smith 2015, p. 79). The trouble with sufficiency of understanding in this sense is that it reflects an established framework of what is currently salient and what is currently incidental (static temporality as mentioned above). That is, students who accurately identify salient points of understanding are showing sufficiency rather than creativity of learning in terms of ways of thinking and there is not yet convincing clarity on how teaching methods and relationships achieve this. Additionally, designerly creativity is not just disembodied design thinking with predictable outcomes. Rather it is a response to a brief or problem from a complex amalgam of abductive reason, aesthetics, and embodied making of things and ideas. The integration of thought and materiality linked through sensory perception, particularly but not exclusively visual, distinguishes design as a discipline. Consequently, it will quite often transform the incidental into something salient. To illustrate this, one needs only explore how precedent objects, perceived initially as irrelevant, can come to be bound to a seemingly unrelated project or design situation through reasoning abductively (Boling et  al. 2015, p. 4). At present, robust research methods for measuring the ­development, if not acquisition, of abductive reason through making processes and objects are lacking.

Recommendations for Research on Design Education in Higher Education Perhaps now that design is achieving a critical mass of educational research, the discipline needs to stand back and reconsider what research about its learning and teaching regimes it needs. To do this it should not primarily be swayed by the “technologies of self” attached to the demands of crisis rhetoric, research funding pragmatism, or the availability of research methods currently used in higher education literature. Instead it should explore an approach to pedagogic research based on articulating and measuring relationships that generate learning. This calls for a resurgence of research methods dedicated to exploring the quality of relationships between specific disciplinary requirements, changes in practices outside of the academy, and fostering broader, aspirational outcomes. It needs more integrative thinking in terms of five interwoven threads: 1. How we have come to understand design‐centric, disciplinary creativity and innovation as it is articulated through both design education and design practice (practically and theoretically). 2. The role of disciplinary materiality and our undergraduate and postgraduate pedagogic cultures, their emergence from and their impact on disciplinary

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structures, research dispositions (which in turn tie into research themes as non‐neutral cultural agendas), working practices, and other social practices. 3. How to analyze the fused yet identifiable elements of studio‐based student learning and demonstrate how they influence student learning of designerly logic and reason, aesthetics, practical wisdoms, cultural norms, and ethical stances. This is especially complex and current educational research ­methodologies have failed to address the materialism of learning. Design’s educational researchers need to draw on insights that have emerged from neo‐materialism to assemble a robust materialist social inquiry (Fox and Alldred 2015, p. 406) that brings together: a.  Psychosocial – particularly creative willfulness, where creative will refers to a drive within someone’s singularity as well as an energy that emerges via associations with a collective. In this sense, creative will represents the combination of identities and desires of students in relation to their learning and which are materialized via the embodied triad of thinking, m ­ aking, and doing. b.  Reciprocal  –  intersubjectivities and other sociocultural exchange mechanisms, including those related to intersectionality as identified in equality and diversity literature. c.  Structural – formal and informal learning and teaching regimes and their capacity to foster uncertainty toleration and integration of abductive, inductive, and deductive forms of reason in a diverse body of students. d.  Sensory and haptic – interaction with space, place, object, and visuality. 4. Bearing in mind outcomes from 1–3, ways of clarifying more robustly the most effective ways to encourage student engagement with the global ­questions that are tenaciously demonstrating that unidisciplinarity cannot solve the world’s big issues. 5. Identifying how design’s own research methods in higher education, in turn, can be harnessed to demonstrate the longer term impact of its teaching as demonstrated by the reciprocal relationships its students go on to build in order to effect responsible design either in a creative practice or as a creative worker in wider society. As unidimensional metrics become the “thing” upon which design’s teaching will be judged by funders, robustly identifying impact through multidimensional research methods is both urgent and necessary.

Conclusion The place and pace of acquiring design at an accredited higher education level of expertise needs to be both independent (enough) of and part of the wider creative ecology. Learning encounters driven by the discipline of design must co‐exist with complex research and interdisciplinary conditions at the same time as being experienced as “un”‐disciplined to foster open‐ended creativity from within the specialisms. The harnessing of creative will, pragmatic speculation, and visual and materials fluency into a coherent whole, however, needs to



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occur at the same time that students also continue to develop a broader range of generalist personal and professional attributes. Managing participatory learning environments through studio‐based projects at the same time as ensuring design’s categories of knowledge and wisdom are inculcated to an appropriate standard is being achieved, but enhancement would also be ­welcome. Identifying how best to enhance is the research matter at hand. It is clear that, if there is to be a convincing evidence base from which to make substantive changes to design pedagogies, a more systematic approach to ­ design teaching research is required as design continues to evolve.

Notes 1 See Moreira et  al. (2016) for a relevant discussion around amplification of ­practice and/or mindset in design education. 2 The development of outcomes‐based, metrics‐dependent forms of quality assessment/evaluation of learning and teaching in higher education has seen a marked increase in the last five years. In the UK this has taken a particular form in the design of the English‐based Teaching Excellence Framework and, at the time of writing, art and design were identified as a pilot cluster for the disciplinary form of the Teaching Excellence Framework. 3 UK subject benchmarks for art and design were reviewed in 2016–17: http:// www.qaa.ac.uk/docs/qaa/subject‐benchmark‐statements/sbs‐art‐and‐ design‐17.pdf (accessed 30 August 2018). 4 For example, Tovey (2015), Uluoglu (2000), Percy (2004), Britt (2013), Cennamo et al. (2011), Visser et al. (2017), Drew et al. (2002), Osmond and Turner (2010), Smith (2015), Boling and Smith (2014), Boling et al. (2016), and Motley (2017). As well as special issues of journals such as the Journal of Learning Design, vol. 6 (2013) (www.jld.edu.au/issue/view/26.html) and Art, Design and Communication in Higher Education, vol. 12 (2): New Perspectives on Design Learning, Thinking and Teaching. 5 I am particularly grateful for conversations with Mafalda Moreira during her doctoral studies at Glasgow School of Art regarding this area of design education.

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Design Against Consumerism Paul Micklethwaite

Design and the Crisis of Unsustainability Design always has an audience. There is always someone who is being designed for. For the privileged few, that person may be the designer herself, who designs in the hope that others share her priorities and taste. More usually, the designer has in mind a target user of her product or outcome, as she seeks to address, or even solve, an evident problem or challenge. In the worst case, the unlucky designer must focus only on the consumer of her product, and design for point of sale and purchase, with little regard for the long‐term value or impacts of a product. In this scenario, a client commissions the designer to simply deliver a product that can be sold. The consequences of this conventional account of to whom designers are answerable and accountable are now clearly evident in the emerging crisis of unsustainability. The unsupportable exploitation of resources which characterizes the modern industrial era is fed directly by an ever‐accelerating consumer culture. This is no longer a “first world” phenomenon. High‐impact consumer lifestyles are desired globally, in the majority world of “the other 90%” (Bloemink 2007) just as much as in the established industrial nations of Europe and North America. While per capita energy and resource consumption and carbon emissions remain higher in the old industrial economies, burgeoning middle classes in other parts of the world contribute to the global spread

A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.



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of aspirational fast‐consumption lifestyles.1 In serving this growing audience of global consumers, most designers and producers of products are therefore complicit in ever‐increasing levels of collective unsustainability.

Consumer‐driven Design Designers and manufacturers may satisfy themselves that they are simply giving people what they want, or ask for. The proliferation of disposable products, designed to be used perhaps only once and then discarded, is explained by the apparently incontestable modern need for convenience. Such is the pace of our lives, and the preciousness of our time, that avoidance of the smallest unnecessary effort seems justifiable. We therefore design products to suit. Disposable coffee cups, carrier bags, pens, razors, barbeques, and nappies are now entirely unremarkable. Although attempts may be made to recover and recycle some of the constituent material value of such products, these are rarely convincing, as in the oft‐cited example of coffee capsules (BBC 2016). Producers and consumers appear to be complicit in an undeniably short‐termist contemporary material culture. If everything is disposable, or has a replacement cycle far shorter than the material qualities of the product would suggest (as in the case of mobile phones, which we are encouraged to replace at least every 24 months), there is little incentive to think long term. Yet long‐term thinking is precisely what sustainability asks for. The development of our consideration of time, and the extension of our habitual time frame to include more than the present and the immediate future, is a key dimension of sustainable thinking. This is at odds with modernity’s commitment to rapid and ongoing change. In which case, where lies the responsibility to tackle unsustainable levels and modes of consumption? The truth is, this is most easily understood as a collective responsibility. Just as mainstream politicians purport to lead us, but in fact often simply reflect back public opinion, designers give consumers what we appear to want, based on what we have bought in the past. As consumers we can feel exploited and under‐served by producers and brands that seem to pursue the profit motive above all else. Yet still we buy their products. The success of the consumerist system can be expressed very simply in terms of how much is produced and sold. Other notions of value are secondary, evident in the fact that most products do not include the true costs of their production or disposal. So called “externalities” such as exploitative labor and environmental damage are rarely factored into the price we pay for an item as a consumer. Equally, a high purchase price is no guarantee that such considerations have been included. This is a situation of which we are all too uncomfortably aware. We are not surprised by events such as the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building in Bangladesh, which has been described as the worst ever industrial incident in the garment industry.2 Exploitative labor conditions are core to the logic of

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globally distributed manufacture. We know that this goes on, but feel impotent to respond. Whatever our role in the system – designer, manufacturer, retailer, consumer, regulator – we all feel we are not best placed to initiate change.

Sustainable Consumption? Counter to this feeling of disempowerment, which leads in many cases to ­disengagement from the issues which trouble us, is the notion of sustainable consumption. It is useful to distinguish consumption from consumerism. Consumerism relates primarily to the purchase and acquisition of a product, i.e. shopping. The “green consumer” considers environmental and social concerns when deciding what to buy. Resources such as The New Green Consumer Guide (Hailes 2007) help us to choice‐edit by recommending what we should (and should not) eat, and the best (or least worst) products with which to clean ourselves, our clothes, and our homes. In most cases, the focus of green ­consumerism is on our purchasing behavior  –  what we buy, how, and why. Consumption, however, is a broader concept relating to our behavior throughout the life cycle of a product: Consumption is not only purchasing, but developing routines and rituals of use and modifying the product concretely or symbolically … consumption involves the selection, purchase, use, maintenance, repair, disposal and recycling of any product or service, as opposed to their design, production and marketing. (Bhamra et al. 2011, p. 429)

Consumerism can be thought of as relating only to product selection and purchase, with little regard for product use and beyond. Consumption includes a much greater range of activities, performed over a greatly extended time frame. For many products, the impacts of the consumption phase of the product life cycle can far exceed those of the production phase. The most significant decisions in the case of some products are therefore those made after the point of acquisition. How we own and use a product often has a significant bearing on the impacts across its life cycle. Designers seeking to address concerns of ­sustainability therefore need to consider behavior and use, sometimes more so than production. Sustainable design, if it is to have value, requires sustainable consumption. There is little merit in aspiring to create a sustainable product if its user does not recognize and act on its potential to support ­sustainable behavior. There is no such thing as a definitively sustainable material, only strategies for greater or lesser degrees of sustainable material use. Equally, there is no such thing as a definitively sustainable product, only enablers of patterns of more (or less) sustainable behavior. These preferable patterns of behavior are enabled not just by products, but also by services, as an alternative to acquisition being the precursor of use.



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Sustainable consumption has been defined as: The use of goods and services that respond to basic needs and bring a better quality of life, while minimising the use of natural resources, toxic materials and emissions of waste and pollutants over the lifecycle, so as not to jeopardise the needs of future generations. (Holdsworth 2003, p. 1)

This definition clearly echoes the oft‐cited definition of sustainable development in the famed Brundtland Report (United Nations 1987), switching the emphasis to how we use and consume resources in the form of manufactured goods. The question “how much is enough?” is increasingly being asked by, and of, consumers overburdened by escalating patterns of consumption (Wallman 2013). Herein is an embryonic backlash against the saturation of the modern consumer by forces that seek only to add to our burden. A culture in which we gain identity largely by what we buy was famously satirized by the artist Barbra Kruger in her untitled 1987 work bearing the slogan “I shop therefore I am.” The direct critique of consumerism intended by the original artwork was undermined when it was directly appropriated by Selfridges department store in London for its 2007 winter sale, with the involvement of Kruger herself (Hooper 2007). How should we interpret the intention of this later use of the slogan? If we read it as a declaration of the emergence of the self‐aware, confident, ironic hyperconsumer, then the satire in the original is clearly dead. As Jonathan Chapman tells us, “ask a developed world human to stop consuming and you might as well ask a vampire not to suck blood … consumption is not just a way of life, it is life” (Chapman 2015, p. 31). It is also the dominant aspiration for the majority of the world’s population who live beyond the self‐proclaimed “developed” world. This, then, is the challenge for sustainable design – how can we meaningfully address concerns of sustainability in an emerging global context that is increasingly defined by an individual quest for the satisfaction of material desire?

Cradle to Cradle Design The Cradle to Cradle design protocol (McDonough and Braungart 2002) has been influential in introducing the topic of sustainability to designers. Its model of two distinct material cycles, into which are separated biological and technical nutrients, to allow successful recovery and reuse of the value of materials, ­provides a way of putting into practice a heightened awareness of material wastefulness and scarcity. This has coincided with a co‐ordinated collective effort from consumers to recycle our waste and unwanted products. Our profligate use of materials has come under close scrutiny as an opportunity for more holistic thinking, with the goal of moving from a linear to a circular materials economy. Waste is a design flaw. It is also a human invention – there is no waste in natural systems; the surplus from one process feeds the beginning

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of another, as when the decomposition of dead vegetation provides nutrients for a new cycle of regeneration. Cradle to Cradle certification recognizes products that meet criteria in five quality categories  –  material health, material reutilization, renewable energy and carbon management, water stewardship, and social fairness.3 These considerations go beyond the usual concerns of manufacturers, which focus on cost and profitability as the key determinants of market competitiveness. At the time of writing only one product has achieved the highest level (platinum) of Cradle to Cradle certification – a poplar shingle siding and wall‐covering panel made from reclaimed tree bark. This is a relatively simple product, which is flattened, kiln dried, and precision squared for direct application on residential, commercial, and institutional buildings.4 Assessment of more sophisticated products such as office chairs is much more complex, which perhaps explains why they have yet to achieve the highest levels of certification.5 The Cradle to Cradle design protocol has had a second incarnation in the Circular Economy project of the Ellen Macarthur Foundation. A circular economy is one that is restorative and regenerative by design, and which aims to keep products, components and materials at their highest utility and value at all times, distinguishing between technical and biological cycles.6

The Circular Economy uses the same language as Cradle to Cradle because it expresses the same model of a two‐part non‐linear materials economy. Celebrity endorsement has brought the idea into the business mainstream, and numerous popular consumer brands are supporters of the scheme. Cradle to Cradle has a mainly business audience. Circular Economy speaks more directly to consumers through brands they recognize. It is a good example of the power of sustainability advocacy as celebrated sailor Ellen Macarthur, like the actor Leonardo DiCaprio, uses her media profile to raise awareness of and promote engagement with an agenda which has a poor public image. Public figures gain authority from their achievements in fields such as sport and entertainment, influence which can then be used to drive change in quite different domains. Our media culture privileges those voices that appeal to the largest audience, no matter where those voices come from. The rise of the “celebretariat,” famous primarily for being famous, sees unlikely figures apparently wielding influence at the highest political levels. Macarthur and DiCaprio represent a vanguard of celebrity champions who can communicate, with more success than traditional campaigning groups, a sustainability message to mainstream consumers.

Greenwash Companies typically seek to accommodate these broader environmental and social concerns into their existing operating model, thereby looking to “green” their products and brand identity. In doing so they run the risk of applying



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greenwash in its many forms, from vague expressions of good intentions (use of the term “eco‐friendly” on a cotton tote bag, exemplifying the popular anything‐but‐plastic attitude) to uncorroborated technical claims. A new passenger aircraft that is advertised as being “greener” because of its improved fuel economy and more efficient design is making great capital of marginal gains – see sustainability communications agency Futerra’s “10 signs of greenwash,” specifically no. 5/10 (Figure 21.1), “Best in class? Declaring you are slightly greener than the rest, even if the rest are pretty terrible,” and no. 3/10 “Suggestive pictures. Green images that indicate a (un‐justified) green impact e.g. flowers blooming from exhaust pipes” – in this case, the plane’s silhouette is shown using images of lush tropical foliage (Futerra 2008, p. 5). A “trash robot” educational kit promotes “green creativity” to transform an unwanted plastic drinks bottle or aluminum can into a symbol of reuse. Despite its strong pro‐environmental messaging, it does so by providing a range of new plastic parts and stickers with which to customize an empty drinks container. Not only does this seem a fairly empty pro‐environmental gesture, it provides very little scope for creativity, as we are given clear instructions what to do in order to produce exactly what we see in the images on the toy’s box (see “10 signs of greenwash,” no. 4/10 “Irrelevant claims. Emphasising one tiny green attribute when everything else is un‐green,” and 6/10 “Just not credible”) (Futerra 2008, p. 5). The sustainability statements of globally distributed manufacturers of consumer electronics can be equally difficult to take seriously, when we consider the inherent unsustainability of their operating model – especially if the company maintains its own proprietary product take‐back and materials recovery scheme, avoiding any independent scrutiny. Even promising ideas such as an “Ecofont,” which offers the possibility of significant reductions in use of printer ink and toner, to have any real effect, must be accompanied by a commitment to think deeply about what we print and why. Eco‐efficient products, like low‐fat chocolate bars, can unwittingly lead to a rebound effect whereby an increase in use or consumption negates any potential gains. Greenwash can apply to misguided patterns of user behavior, just as much as the ways in which products are marketed and promoted. The environmental impacts of a car journey to a recycling collection site will directly counteract the potential environmental benefits of any associated material recovery (Maynard and Cherrett 2006). Driving to the recycling collection point to donate our waste may not actually be very worthwhile. It may even do more harm than good, especially when we factor in the subsequent transportation of recyclate from the collection point to potentially distant reprocessing facilities. Cradle to Cradle seeks to make “nature” (i.e. the non‐human world and its systems) the ultimate client, or audience, of the designer. Designing for a market or user provides an immediate focus, but this should not distract from a greater accountability to our planet’s ongoing capacity to support human life and wellbeing. Failure to recognize this responsibility results in a design approach that can be most easily characterized as one of abuse. This is not abuse of an “other,” but of ourselves and our own prospects of comfortable

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Figure 21.1  10 signs of greenwash. Source: Futerra (2008) The Greenwash Guide, p. 5. © Futerra Sustainability Communications. Reproduced with permission.



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survival. This expanded notion of accountability to our future selves should not however override concern for our present wellbeing: The so‐called “green bullet” was developed as the successor to the older M855 ammunition, hence its extended title: 5.56 mm M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round. … The bullet is the same weight and shape as its M855 predecessor, so it fits existing weapons. Importantly, though, it swaps out the traditional lead core for copper, ensuring that bullets do not contaminate the food chain or water ­supply – just their intended target.7

This turn to environmentally considered munitions includes explosives that eventually become manure, thereby regenerating the environment that they initially destroy.8 The position here is that weaponry is necessary in the short term, but that should not stop us thinking about ecological impacts beyond its immediate direct use. In its ultimate form, the notion of nature‐as‐client would require us to design our own extinction (a path we are perhaps already unwittingly on due to anthropogenic climate change). A workable definition of sustainable consumption does however incorporate a full commitment to ­ human preservation. Nature‐as‐client should not be interpreted as without human presence. What all examples of greenwash have in common is exaggeration of the pro‐ sustainability credentials of a product. As with academic plagiarism, lack of malicious intent is no defense. An incidence of greenwash may be full of positive intent. What may be missing is the sustainability literacy to judge when an attempt to move in the right direction is meaningful. The journey towards a more sustainable model of production and consumption may be incremental rather than immediately transformative  –  transformation can perhaps result from cumulative incremental change – yet each false step leads us away from the desired direction of travel. Greenwash is the badge by which we recognize eco‐modernism, the belief that we need only to slightly redirect our present course of overconsumption, commonly manifest in the strategy of eco‐­ efficiency. Tony Fry calls this “sustaining the unsustainable” (Fry 2009, p. 190), as we focus our energies on making a flawed system less bad rather than ­envisioning an alternative that puts sustainability at its heart. For Fry, as for Stuart Walker (2014), the prefix “eco” fails to meaningfully modify either “efficiency” or “modernism.” It may in fact do harm by misleading us that we are set on a path of improved sustainability (or “sustainment,” Fry’s preferred term) when we are not. Greenwash may be deliberate or unwitting. In either case, it indicates a failure to grasp the extent of the challenge of unsustainability, and what might be considered a meaningful response. Charter (2016) argues that there needs to be more engagement with circular economy thinking among consumers and users of products and materials, not just designers and manufacturers. Charter points out that consumers and users do not recognize the technical language of Cradle to Cradle and Circular

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Economy, and the subtle differences among refurbishment, remanufacturing, and recycling. Terms such as waste and repair are generally understood by consumers, however. There is therefore a task to raise awareness among users of products around more sustainable patterns of consumption, with a view to driving behavioral change. Charter also identifies the challenge of gaining ­consumer trust in producers’ product‐related environmental information and pro‐sustainability claims. Eco‐labelling provides easy opportunities for misinformation and deception. A walk around a trade show for “eco” or “green” technology products shows that some kind of environmental claim can be made for almost any product. The unlikeliest examples can have at least one eco‐credential, as when nuclear power generation is championed as being low‐ carbon and therefore not contributing to climate change. When we find these claims unconvincing, we should label them greenwash.

Designing for Sustainable Consumption One common device used to support us in making more sustainable consumption decisions is the presentation of information via eco‐labels. Eco‐labels simplify what is often complex and imperfect data. They are inherently reductive. As such they can ably serve greenwashing, allowing a manufacturer to ­emphasize one element of a product’s performance in isolation from a holistic consideration of the whole‐life impacts of production, use, and disposal. An eco‐label is a shortcut, replacing deep consumer thinking about a product and how we may go on to use it. Reassured by the eco‐label’s clear communication of rigorous scrutiny, we trust in the judgment of others we hope know better than we do. Not all eco‐labels are what they seem, however; see “10 signs of greenwash,” no. 8/10 “Imaginary friends. A ‘label’ that looks like third party endorsement … except it’s made up” (Futerra 2008, p. 5) (Figure 21.1). Although our expectation as consumers is that an eco‐label represents some form of independent or external scrutiny of a company or product, a label may be entirely proprietary – devised by a manufacturer for their own use. Confusion abounds as to the strength, and even the meaning, of many of the eco‐labels that ­decorate the products we buy. Presentation of information does not ensure consumer trust or understanding (Horne 2009). An exception is the label of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the acceptance and success of which is ascribed to the fact it was developed with involvement of all key stakeholders  –  consumers, producers/marketers, and government and other agencies. FSC has significant brand recognition, such that FSC‐certified timber may be more recognized for that logo than that of its supplier.9 A company committed to sustainable production and consumption may choose its own direct route of communication with potential customers. Freitag is the celebrated Swiss manufacturer of bags and accessories made from



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salvaged truck tarpaulin. Building on its success as a producer of consumer products remade from materials in an existing waste stream, Freitag now produces clothing made from biodegradable textiles made in Europe. Responding to the globally distributed nature of most current manufacture and supply, across all sectors, all of the production stages of the company’s F‐ABRIC take place within 2500 km of the factory in Zurich.10 In imposing this constraint on where its fabrics are made, Freitag is following the principle of bioregionalism enshrined in the notion of a fibershed.11 A fibershed builds a regional textile and labor system based on local knowledge, production, and consumption. It drastically reduces material options – if you produce in Europe, you cannot use cotton. Freitag clothing is made from hemp, flax, and modal, all of which are grown in Europe. Unlike cotton, be it organic or non‐organic, cultivation of these fibers does not require large volumes of water. Relocalizing how we make things allows greater co‐ordination and control of the processes involved. Small‐scale production also allows more effective vertical integration, the ­combination in one organization of stages of production that might normally be performed by separate firms. The sustainability story of Freitag clothing is compelling. Framed as a response to the question “Do textiles really have to be shipped across the world three times over before they reach us?,”12 the company’s move into clothing speaks directly to our concerns as consumers motivated by the challenging questions posed by sustainability. Freitag’s established brand identity is based on the manufacture of durable products made from reused salvaged materials. Their existing single‐issue sustainability story of a creative but essentially reactive response to waste is now extended by a much more holistic vision of a sustainable materials economy. Freitag bags were never cheap. Their clothing seems even more expensive in comparison with what we are used to paying for jeans or a T‐shirt. Yet this relatively high price simply reflects the true cost of producing to high quality, locally, with due attention paid to the usual e­ xternal costs of manufacturing such as low‐wage labor and environmental pollution. The apparently high price of a Freitag garment indicates the true cost, and inherent value, of its means and mode of production. Freitag ­therefore promotes a broader range of values to its customers than we usually see from a clothing company. It also notably avoids the jargon of sustainability, and instead speaks to us directly in terms that are immediately meaningful. Tesla, the electric vehicle manufacturer and solar technology company, has overt pro‐sustainability intentions. Combining zero emissions in use with high performance, Tesla promotes its cars as “accelerating sustainable transport.”13 The company’s move into solar energy generation infrastructure indicates a holistic approach to the challenge of moving away from the current non‐­ renewable fossil fuel energy economy. Yet as a response to the challenge of designing sustainable mobility, electric vehicles are not the transformative

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solution that Tesla claims. John Thackara (2005, 2015) reminds us that transport is not the  only way to look at mobility. Universal personal vehicle use, even if it fully decarbonizes, cannot deliver the sustainability transition that we seek. An  electric motor vehicle is still a motor vehicle. A Tesla is still a car, physically and symbolically. Replacing the vehicle drive technology and energy source is likely to offer only incremental improvement over what we have now. The impacts of motoring derive not just from vehicle emissions in use, but from the distributed physical support network of roads and fuel stations that allows us to refuel and drive without restriction across huge territories. Car culture is based on individual ownership and use of hugely costly physical assets (vehicles) that lay idle most of the time. Manufacture and provision of this oversupply of grossly underutilized resources cannot be sustainable, in any form. A transition from individualism to collectivism, represented in this case by a shift from automobile culture to mass public transport, is a central tenet of our understanding of what is required for a turn to sustainability. More interesting are those products whose sustainability benefits were not foreseen by their creators, and may still not be recognized by their users. The Internet application Skype is widely used for personal and business communications, allowing people remote from each other to connect easily and cheaply. Where we may once have traveled to meet someone, we can now use Skype to video call them. Communicating over the Internet is clearly not quite the same as doing so in person, yet we accept the limitations of the medium because it offers a viable alternative to either traveling or not being in contact with someone who is far away from us. Insofar as it reduces physical travel, Skype can be considered an environmental product. Yet this is an incidental benefit – “Skype was not created with an environmental mission in mind” (Stanhope 2011, p. 2). Skype’s positioning and marketing are free of any reference to “eco” or “green” credentials, yet they are there, and to a greater degree than many products that overtly use those labels. Freitag, Tesla, and Skype represent three contrasting approaches to designing for sustainable consumption. The first two seek a holistic response to sustainability in their (quite different) product categories, although it is argued here that one is more convincing than the other. Skype presents incidental, perhaps unwitting, sustainability. As a result, it may actually be more effective in bringing about transformational change than products that overtly champion sustainability. We must of course also factor in to our assessment the impacts and resource consumption of the physical network of equipment that constitutes the Internet on which Skype relies (Micklethwaite 2014). “The cloud” is simply a term for other people’s computers; there is nothing ethereal about it. App‐as‐solution designing must acknowledge its dependency on ­digital networks, and the problematic aspects of digital culture. Bhamra et al. (2011) examine how existing products are currently used, as the basis for application of a number of potential design strategies for more sustainable patterns of behavior. These strategies sit on a continuum, from



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simply giving information through to unapologetic coercion. The user moves from being fully autonomous and in control at one end of the spectrum to completely disempowered, perhaps even deceived, at the other. This of course raises ethical concerns, as we wrestle with the question of whether the end (more sustainable patterns of user behavior) justifies the means (prescribing behavior and taking away users’ decision‐making). The final level of coercive control is given the name “clever design,” the goal being to get us to “automatically act environmentally or socially without raising awareness or changing user behaviour purely through innovative product design” (Bhamra et  al. 2011, p. 431). The example is given of an integrated toilet and washbasin that reuses water from hand‐washing to flush the toilet, thereby optimizing resource use in a familiar scenario. In this case, the user does not need to even think about sustainability, never mind commit to a new pattern of behavior or mode of living. This sustainability‐by‐stealth is different than the incidental sustainability of Skype in that it is fully intended and designed. It also differs from Skype in that it does not change our existing behavior – we are not asked to do anything different than what we are used to doing. Skype, in contrast, does require quite different behavior from us – if we use it in place of a face‐to‐face meeting (with all its transportation and other impacts). As a result, use of Skype has greater potential transformative impact, in terms of encouraging more sustainable patterns of behavior.

Sustainable Consumption in a Consumer Society? Examples are given above of products that offer the potential for more sustainable patterns of consumption and use. Yet how easily can we realize this potential within a context of structural unsustainability? We often feel locked in to prescribed patterns of consumption that can easily override our good intentions to act differently. These examples can be mundane – we must buy pre‐ packaged multiples of a product of which we want only one, or accept additional protective packaging to carry a hot drink back to our seat on a train. Opting out becomes an act of individual resistance, and may not be allowed by dutyholders who have a responsibility to enforce more pressing agendas such as health and safety. Other examples are more significant  –  we must drive a luxury car as part of our professional identity, or travel internationally for our work. In these cases opting out is even more difficult, as it strikes at core ­expectations of what is required of us by our place in society. Most commonly, we must battle manifestations of the dominant value of consumer culture – convenience. It is in the name of convenience that we produce more and more of what we do not really need, at the expense of what Stuart Walker talks about in terms of “meaning.” Walker’s model of the quadruple bottom line identifies economic considerations as means rather than ends, and of lower value than the three kinds of meaning that an understanding

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and pursuit of sustainability must address: personal, practical, and social (Walker 2014, p. 42). This is counter to the orthodox view of the economic imperative for design and consumption. Walker’s call for an alternative, more meaningful material culture is a direct challenge to consumer‐driven design, and ­consumer‐ based consumption. The implications of this are significant, and require us to wrestle with “the complexities and contradictions involved in trying to ­consume more sustainably while living in a consumer society” (Peattie and Collins 2009, p. 111). Victor Papanek, in Design for the Real World, was famously critical of industrial design that responds only to the demands of consumer culture. He urged designers to instead address six priority areas of more urgent need, including “Design for the Third World,” “Systems design for sustaining human life under marginal conditions,” and “Design for breakthrough concepts” (Papanek 1984[1971], pp. 234–247). Papanek’s call is as relevant now as it was at his time of writing. Probably more so, as our culture of consumerism has ­accelerated beyond what Papanek might have envisaged. Despite good intentions, most “sustainable design” is greenwash (at worst) or tokenism (at best). It addresses details without recognizing the bigger systemic problem. As such it is symptomatic of a culture that is trapped between recognizing the enormity of issues such as climate change and being unable to change our current collective course (Dovers and Handmer 1993). Tweaking a system that is inherently driving unsustainability is not the answer. Tony Fry places Cradle to Cradle in this category of well‐intended but inadequate responses to the degree of challenge posed by unsustainability: While this model, based on mimicking the cycling of nutrients in organic systems is progressive, in itself it is no solution. In fact it can even obstruct perceptions of relational connections because it does not question what is produced and what, in turn, the product itself might design. (Fry 2009, pp. 189–190)

Eco‐design, no matter how successful in its own terms, will always be an expression of eco‐modernism and incremental change. Fry instead discusses the “futuring agency” of designed products – the extent to which they themselves direct human behavior and courses of action via their in‐built affordances, scripts, and values. This ongoing product agency is what we should attend to as designers, beyond the immediate demands of functional performance and satisfying explicit present needs. On this view, there can be no sustainable consumption in a consumer society. The project for sustainable design is therefore to propose alternatives to consumer society as we know it, which address the structural unsustainability of our present way of life. This goes way beyond conventional product design. A product is a manifestation of the values of its context of production. Designers need to address the causes (contexts) of unsustainable design, rather than its symptoms (products).



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The examples given above – Freitag, Tesla, Skype – all operate within a consumerist paradigm. In each case, we deal with commercial enterprises in order to meet our needs. Examples given by Thackara (2015) and Manzini (2015) in contrast showcase communities and groups creating “a replacement economy from the ground up” (Thackara 2015, p. 8). Crucially, this new economy is based on different notions of value than those propagated by the purely financial logic of conventional economics. Communalism replaces individualism. These examples are not inherently based on buying and selling; they do not simply serve consumerism. Mobility is a useful example. Mobility is the ability to move, and freedom of movement is considered to be a basic human right. Yet hypermobility, particularly via planes and cars, has significant environmental impacts. Tesla responds to this challenge by seeking to address the impacts of how we travel. Addressing accelerating hypermobility also requires us to rethink our attitudes towards travel – not just how we travel, but why we do so. Skype, perhaps unwittingly, challenges our presumed need for personal mobility. Speed is expensive in terms of energy and resources – the faster we travel, the more fuel we use. The same applies to distance – the further we go, the more resources we use. Slow and local travel therefore has lowest impact. Hence discussions of sustainable mobility often focus on bicycle use, and the shared bike schemes which exist in cities around the world. Bikeshare schemes may be community based or government run. They provide access to non‐motorized transport for short distances via an integrated system of bikes and docking points. These systems seem unable to operate without support from volunteers or direct funding – sponsorship and user charges are reported to have covered “barely half the costs” of London’s cycle hire scheme; the shortfall coming from corporate sponsorship and public money (Topham 2013). Bikeshare schemes are seen as worthwhile, however, because of the individual and collective benefits they can bring. They are promoted by emphasizing the potential contribution to our health and wellbeing of (i) exercise for the individual and (ii) reduced motorized traffic for the community. Encouraging people to use these schemes requires shifting perceptions of safety and convenience. Cycling is safer than other modes of transport once we include the health benefits. It is also often quicker and more reliable, particularly in cities. The introduction of a bikeshare scheme therefore involves the design not just of its equipment and infrastructure, but of the service and its communication. While the bike itself becomes the symbol of the scheme, the model of mobility it supports is the most significant contribution. Cycling is in general promoted as a positive alternative to driving. Communal cycling schemes have the potential to amplify the benefits by serving shared interests. We should acknowledge the limits to cycling, in terms of viable distance and degrees of accessibility, yet it provides a useful model for rethinking how and why we travel, which we might seek to apply more broadly.

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Sustainable Design and Contemporary Design History This chapter argues that the most important and overarching theme for contemporary design is sustainability. Can we say the same for design history? Sustainability has recently been identified as “a significant lacuna in design historical scholarship.”14 Today, sustainability is an essential parameter in all design practice, education, research and mediation. However, this “green revolution” is a glaringly white spot on the design historical map, still awaiting its scholarly historicization.15

A related recent conference sought to address this oversight. Entitled “Making and Unmaking the Environment,” the Design History Society Annual Conference 2017 set about “opening a new agenda for the field of design ­history,” namely the interplay of design cultures and notions of environment.16 A paper which provided historical context for an examination of new examples of industrial upcycling by leading consumer brands offers “a way of discussing and evaluating sustainable design strategies in historical perspective” (Zimring 2017). The Design History Society conference represents a promising shift in attention towards sustainability by the design history community. The question now is – how should we continue to address this “lacuna” in relation to contemporary design culture? How do the issues explored above inform contemporary design history? The sustainability agenda problematizes every aspect of our visual and material culture, which is to say every aspect of our designed world. Sustainability requires us to rethink our theories and practices of design. Adding the prefix “sustainable” alters the meaning of a term or thing, often insupportably. If we find the phrase “sustainable aviation” unconvincing, this highlights the inherent unsustainability of aviation as we know it. “Sustainable transport,” as exemplified by Tesla, describes incremental improvement of our current transport system and culture, through the redesign of its vehicles and infrastructure. This falls short of a deeper reconsideration of our need for mobility, and means of delivering it which may differ significantly from current practices. Use of the suffix “for sustainability” implies a more radical shift in approach. Rather than seeking to simply “green,” or make more ethical, our present products and practices, “for sustainability” asks us to think beyond incremental improvement or eco‐efficiency, and act in the service of sustainability. Rather than looking to embed sustainability into our practice, we seek to embed our practice within sustainability. Sustainability prioritizes context over object. In Design for the Real World, Victor Papanek advocated an approach to design that is “ecologically responsible and socially responsive” (Papanek 1984[1971], p. 346). This remains a useful mantra for designers seeking to address sustainability. Papanek’s work may be an important touchstone in relation to design for the under‐served, but his position in general twentieth century design history remains marginal,



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despite efforts to animate his legacy such as creation of the Victor J. Papanek Foundation in Vienna.17 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi distinguishes “domains” and “fields” in relation to creative practices. A domain comprises “a set of symbolic rules and procedures” used to produce knowledge. A field comprises “all the individuals who act as gatekeepers to the domain. It is their job to decide whether a new idea or product should be included in the domain” (Csikszentmihalyi 1996, pp.  27–28). Design history, as both a domain and a field, has not yet foregrounded sustainable design. Theorists and practitioners of sustainable design have not had recognition in those terms within design history. The new emphasis on sustainability across almost all areas and levels of our political, industrial, and consumer culture suggests this should change. What does all this mean for design historians? Design history has focused primarily on consumer culture and the most popular and celebrated products and designers. The consumer and the connoisseur have been the authorities most listened to by design historians. The broader notion of consumption introduced earlier in this chapter, which pays attention to the entire product life cycle rather than just practices of design and consumption, has been neglected. The design, acquisition, and display phases of the product life cycle have been the focus of design history. The longer term view required by an interest in sustainability has not yet been much in evidence (Massey and Micklethwaite 2009). Does design history therefore need to be rewritten? John Heskett suggests we reject simplistic histories of design that present “a neat chronological succession of movements and styles” each superseding what went before, in favor of a process of layering in which new perspectives are added over time to what we already know (Heskett 2005, pp. 6–7). This layering is, moreover, not simply a process of accumulation of successive strata of analysis. In applying new perspectives to the content of design history, we seek to modify our understanding of the role, significance, and function of what survives. Rewriting our histories of design in order to supplement them with due concern for sustainability does not require us to expunge what has already been written, and ­celebrate alternative exemplar designs and designers. Heskett is not advocating a revisionist approach that redacts existing design histories, purging the design historical record of examples which we now think fall short. We need, rather, to nuance what has already been written in order to understand the deeper dimensions of the production and consumption of our material and visual ­culture. It is unfair to judge the past by the conventions or standards of the present. The core unsustainability of the industrial era, and its modernist ­worldview, can now be acknowledged and critiqued, with a view to making a transition to sustainability which learns from, rather than dismisses, the past. The relationship between design history and sustainability can be thought of in several ways. The phrase “sustainable design history” implies that we look for new dimensions of our existing history, and find new exemplars, thereby “greening” the present historical narrative. “Design history and sustainability”

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suggests that we consider the relationship of design history to ideas of sustainability, and ways in which the latter challenges the former. “Design history for sustainability” goes further, and requires us to direct our consideration of history to the pursuit of sustainability as a present and ongoing goal. On this last view, the point of design history is to inform current attempts to design for sustainability. Design history then becomes an instrumentalist undertaking, of value insofar as it supports present designing. Such instrumentalism is resisted by those active in the field of design history, who argue that their subject should not be valued only insofar as it informs or contextualizes design practice (Fallan 2010a, b). Yet, sustainability is a pressing contemporary agenda. Sustainable design as a domain focuses on contemporary, often transformational and speculative, design practice. The design historian should be mindful of how their work can best feed that practice. Do the methods of design history need to be revised? How do design historians work? What do they consider? What do they do? The examples of sustainable design practice considered above go beyond product design, into design of services and systems. This reflects the holistic view required by design for sustainability, and the complexity of untangling present unsustainability. The key to pro‐sustainable change is often primarily attitudinal and social, rather than technological (Jackson 2005). A new product is not, alone, the answer. How does design history consider non‐object‐based design practices, particularly in relation to sustainability? There is also the question of who does, and writes, design history? Are design practitioners directly involved in the interrogation of the past of design, beyond their own personal contribution? Or is their engagement with history always mediated by gatekeepers such as design historians, for whom designing may be an unfamiliar and unknowable practice? A distinction between history–theory and studio practice persists in how design education is experienced by many design students. Tutors may attempt to blur these boundaries, aiming at the goal of practice‐­ relevant theory and theory‐informed practice that is contained in the notion of praxis. Yet we all too easily lapse into reinforcing this distinction along tribal lines, more recently between makers and non‐makers. Stuart Walker constantly advocates for the role of experimental and exploratory making as design ­ research  –  generating new knowledge in tangible form (Walker 2016). Walker represents a model for the integration of design, history, and sustainability. Not content simply to interrogate history and culture, albeit through a new lens, Walker puts this analytical work to use in the service of new design for sustainability.

Conclusion – A Sustainable Future? The term “sustainability” is now used widely to denote anything relating to social or ecological agendas, and any actions aligned to these concerns. Anything with good social or environmental intent is labeled “sustainable.” Sustainability



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is a state to which we should aspire; a balance between human activities and the Earth’s planetary systems. Sustainable development is a process that seeks to redirect our current system of production and consumption towards greater sustainability (Dovers and Handmer 1993, p. 217). Eco‐design, as a strategy, seeks to use products as a lever for more sustainable behavior. This chapter has discussed approaches to design for sustainable consumption which do not require us to distance ourselves from the dominant paradigm of consumerism as we know it. Yet eco‐design offers only incremental change. More radical approaches to sustainability are needed if we are to challenge the continuation of the unsustainable status quo. Among these is the option to not design any new thing, but to seek the more successful integration and use of what we already have in terms of material culture. Product‐based responses to sustainability risk falling into the trap of product‐as‐solution designing, which rarely succeed in solving anything. They often simply create a new problem that is even harder to solve. Design for sustainability is therefore design against consumerism. In a context where most design is design for consumerism, enacting design for sustainability is a huge challenge. Sustainability requires a paradigm shift for a contemporary human culture that is squarely based on economic principles of industrial production and intellectual ideals of modernity. Encouragement comes from examples that take a local and communal perspective on the challenges of sustainability, and are driven by active citizenship rather than passive consumerism. Choosing to design no new thing might, on this view, sometimes be the most enlightened design decision. We need to move away from designing objects that serve ends which are not fully recognized or acknowledged, and thereby do little good, or more harm than good. We instead need strategic interventions into the status quo that mindfully address our present context of unsustainability. That these examples seem to us strange, perhaps even regressive, says much about the values of contemporary consumer society. Self‐organization and resilience are key characteristics of preindustrial cultures. The challenge for us now is to introduce these characteristics into our industrial and postindustrial cultures, depending on where we are in the world and how far down the road of industrial economic development. Sustainability requires holistic thinking and a broad worldview. It therefore requires us to resist the individualism and atomization of consumer society, in which we become insignificant parts of a whole over which we are unable to exert any real influence. Stuart Walker’s quadruple bottom line (Walker 2014, p. 42) gives us a model to follow this new path, establishing new non‐­economic priorities and a personal and collective pursuit of meaning and value.

Notes 1 http://www.tsp‐data‐portal.org/TOP‐20‐CO2‐emitters‐per‐capita#tspQv Chart.

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2 https://cleanclothes.org/safety/ranaplaza. 3 http://www.c2ccertified.org. 4 http://www.c2ccertified.org/products/scorecard/bark_house_poplar_ bark_shingle_siding_and_wall_covering_panel_exterior_use. 5 Herman Miller chairs have achieved bronze and silver certification: http:// www.c2ccertified.org/innovation‐stories/herman_miller. 6 https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular‐economy. 7 http://designandviolence.moma.org/green‐bullets‐u‐s‐military. 8 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6081486.stm. 9 http://www.fsc‐uk.org/en‐uk/about‐fsc/what‐is‐fsc. 10 https://www.freitag.ch/en/fabric. 11 http://www.fibershed.com. 12 https://www.freitag.ch/en/fabric. 13 www.tesla.com. 14 http://www.backtothesustainablefuture.net/about. 15 http://www.backtothesustainablefuture.net/about. 16 www.makingandunmaking.net. 17 http://papanek.org.

References BBC (2016). Is there a serious problem with coffee capsules? https://www.bbc.co. uk/news/magazine‐35605927 (accessed 15 October 2017). Bhamra, T., Lilley, D., and Tang, T. (2011). Design for sustainable behavior: using products to change consumer behavior. The Design Journal 14 (4): 427–445. https://doi.org/10.2752/175630611X13091688930453. Bloemink, B. (2007). Design for the Other 90%. New York: Cooper‐Hewitt National Design Museum. Chapman, J. (2015). Emotionally Durable Design: Objects, Experiences and Empathy, 2e. London: Earthscan. Charter, M. (2016). Sustainable Innovation 2016: Key Lessons – Circular Economy Innovation & Design. Farnham: The Centre for Sustainable Design. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. London: Harper Perennial. Dovers, S.R. and Handmer, J.W. (1993). Contradictions in sustainability. Environmental Conservation 20 (3): 217–222. Fallan, K. (2010a). Design History, Understanding Theory and Method. London: Bloomsbury. Fallan, K. (2010b). Design studies: a reader (book review). Journal of Design History 23 (1): 110–112. https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epp054. Fry, T. (2009). Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice. Oxford: Berg. Futerra (2008). The Greenwash Guide. Futerra Sustainability Communications.



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Hailes, J. (2007). The New Green Consumer Guide. London: Simon & Schuster. Heskett, J. (2005). Design: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holdsworth, M. (2003). Green Choice: What Choice? Summary of NCC Research into Consumer Attitudes to Sustainable Consumption. London: National Consumer Council. Hooper, M. (2007). Catch of the day: is the Selfridges joke on us? The Guardian (27 December). https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/artblog/2007/ dec/27/catchofthedayistheselfri. Horne, R.E. (2009). Limits to labels: the role of eco‐labels in the assessment of product sustainability and routes to sustainable consumption. International Journal of Consumer Studies 33: 175–182. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1470‐ 6431.2009.00752.x. Jackson, T. (2005). Motivating Sustainable Consumption: A review of evidence on  consumer behaviour and behavioural change. Guildford: Centre for Environmental Strategy, University of Surrey. Manzini, E. (2015). Design, When Everybody Designs. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Massey, A. and Micklethwaite, P. (2009). Unsustainability: towards a new design history with reference to British utility. Design Philosophy Papers 7 (2): 123–136. Maynard, S. and Cherrett, T. (2006). Transport impacts of household waste ­recycling centres. Waste and Resource Management 159 (1): 13–21. https:// doi.org/10.1680/warm.2006.159.1.13. McDonough, W. and Braungart, M. (2002). Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. New York: North Point Press. Micklethwaite, P. (2014). Immaterial culture? The (un)sustainability of screens. In:  Media and the Ecological Crisis (eds. R. Maxwell, J. Raundalen, and N.L. Vestberg), 19–39. New York: Routledge. Papanek, V. (1984[1971]). Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change, 2e. London: Thames and Hudson. Peattie, K. and Collins, A. (2009). Guest editorial: perspectives on sustainable ­consumption. International Journal of Consumer Studies 33: 107–112. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1470‐6431.2009.00758.x. Stanhope, N. (2011). The incidental effect: exploring new methods in behaviour change. www.shiftdesign.org.uk (accessed 24 August 2018). Thackara, J. (2005). In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Thackara, J. (2015). How to Thrive in the Next Economy: Designing tomorrow’s World Today. London: Thames & Hudson. Topham, G. (2013). Barclays to end sponsorship of Boris Johnson’s London bike hire scheme. The Guardian (10 December). https://www.theguardian.com/ politics/2013/dec/10/barclays‐set‐to‐ditch‐boris‐bike‐sponsorship (accessed 24 August 2018). United Nations (1987). Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. United Nations.

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Walker, S. (2014). Designing Sustainability: Making Radical Changes in a Material World. London: Routledge. Walker, S. (2016). Design for meaningful innovation. In: The Routledge Companion to Design Studies (eds. P. Sparke and F. Fisher), 395–408. Abingdon: Routledge. Wallman, J. (2013). Stuffocation: How We’ve Had Enough of Stuff and Why You Need Experience More Than Ever. Horley: Crux Publishing. Zimring, C. (2017). Upcycling in historical perspective. Making and Unmaking the Environment Design History Society Annual Conference, Oslo. www. makingandunmaking.net.

22

Guilty Pleasures Taste, Design, and Democracy Malcolm Quinn

But, I will say that the carpet is wrong. Adolf Loos (1898a)

Introduction What is the relationship between design and taste in the twenty‐first century? Anyone addressing this question is faced with a continually expanding ­definition of design1 accompanied by a diminished sense of the usefulness of judgments on “good taste” and “bad taste.” Distinctions of taste are associated with connoisseurship and thus with design objects or particular lineages of design practice, rather than being aligned with a new emphasis on the social significance of design practice and the social responsibility of the designer. Discriminating judgments on individual design objects do not seem to fit well with a current focus on product life cycles and design for the circular economy. It could therefore be said that the “problem of taste” in contemporary design has become the problem of how to eliminate binary distinctions of good taste and bad taste from design discourse. In an interview in 2017, Deyan Sudjic, co‐Director of the Design Museum in London, questioned the relevance of a connection between design and judgments of taste:

A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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There was an exhibition in the early days of the museum at the Boiler House [sic], which was called Taste, and Stephen Bailey [sic], the then‐director, thought it would be a good idea to put things he approved of on easels, and things he didn’t like on dustbins. You can’t run a museum containing only things you like. Design is not an object or a thing. Design is not taste. (Deyan Sudjic, quoted in Marsh 2017, p. 32)

I will return to Sudjic’s comments on the Boilerhouse Gallery exhibition on “Taste” in 19832 in my conclusion, but for the moment it is simply worth noting that, in this interview, Deyan Sudjic sees an emphasis on taste in design as something that belongs to the past. Nonetheless, the displays in the Design Museum in 2017 have included one devoted to “Choice and Taste,” which has guided visitors to think about the difference between choices that, on the one hand, “are heavily influenced by practical considerations, such as how well a product performs a specific function, or its value for money” and, on the other, choices that are “a matter of personal taste, with users opting for a favoured colour, material or style.” While it is useful to consider specific questions of taste as related to more general issues of choice within the world of goods, these visitor guidance notes on “Choice and Taste,” which divide general questions of economic value from the idiosyncrasies of personal taste, sideline the social dimension of judgments of taste. In this display, judgments of taste are presented as a matter of personal inclination and accorded little or no social value. Questions of good and bad taste, it is assumed, can be safely defined as a matter of “each to his own taste,” and in this way the central social importance of design can be foregrounded and established. If we follow this line of thought, the history of design becomes, in part, a history of the restrictions and boundaries imposed by taste. In recent scholarship on interior design, for  example, distinctions between good and bad taste are seen as having ­determined the evolution of the practice of interior design as well as having gendered the discipline and thus defined the relationship between interior design and architecture; the “concept of taste is central to the historical and contemporary definition of interior design and of the interior designer. Historically, interior design has been identified with feminine taste, and this has led to its marginalization, especially by architects” (Sparke 2012, p. 9; see also Sanders 2002). In the wake of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of taste as set out in his canonical book Distinction (Bourdieu 1984), discussion of taste in design may be assumed to refer to the co‐option of design objects willy‐nilly within patterns of consumption through which individuals evaluate each other and legitimize a social position. This raises further questions. Is it necessary for design disciplines to define their condition “after taste” in order for them to develop and flourish? Are judgments on the quality of design objects only truly made through their inclusion within everyday patterns of consumption which also include choices of favored artworks, hairstyles, sports, music, and food? More generally, is it possible to arrive at a satisfactory “post‐taste” definition of the social meaning of design?



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In this chapter, the foregoing questions, which indicate some of the issues that might initially arise when the social practice of design is discussed in the context of the social practice of taste, are reconsidered within a framework set by the historically determined “project” of middle‐class taste. My discussion initially proceeds by showing how the terms on which we now discuss design and taste are set by an opposition between two alternatives. The first of these alternatives is the notion of perfecting bourgeois culture through modernist design that emerged in the late nineteenth century. The other is the rejection of this notion of cultural perfectibility “by design” as unethical, implausible, and unlivable in the second half of the twentieth century. This introduction to the terms of a critical debate on design and taste is followed by a shift of focus from the designer and the design writer to the consumer, in a discussion of the everyday reality of the search for a cultural ideal through distinctions of taste in our encounters with the world of goods. A description of the perfection of the union of the designer and the petit bourgeois consumer in Roland Barthes’ classic essay on the Citroën DS is followed by a comparison between Pierre Bourdieu’s twentieth century account of an “aristocracy of culture” as a kind of false nobility (Bourdieu 1984) and the philosopher David Hume’s description of the refinement of taste in the eighteenth century (Hume 2008[1742], 2008[1757]). Bourdieu offers an account of how taste engenders a false ­nobility that conceals the reality of ordinary consumption. Hume shows how, through the social practice of taste, ordinary consumption becomes the domain in which the idea of nobility can be transformed on terms that suit the bourgeoisie. This historical examination of “the bourgeois revolution” in taste is important to discussions of design and taste for two reasons. First, because for Hume the perfection of a practice of taste depended on the rejection of imitation and falsity through judicious comparisons of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. This link between the perfection of taste and the rejection of imitation was later reprised in the morally charged opposition between modernism and kitsch. The second reason why this historical account is required is because Hume’s idealization of commerce in his essays on taste isolates metropolitan conceptions of refinement and good taste from the ignoble imperialist origins of capitalism. A link between the perfection of taste and the rejection of imitation that emerges as a tenet of bourgeois cultural idealism in the eighteenth century, and which is taken up in the project of perfecting bourgeois culture “by design” in the nineteenth century, may then be seen not just as contingently unethical or unrealizable, but as fundamentally undemocratic. Finally, it should be noted that, throughout this chapter, the relationship between design and taste within the realm of free democratic choice is mapped out by describing limits to the cultural idealism of bourgeois taste. The first of these limits is identified in a relationship of the tastemaker to the algorithm (in which individual refinement through taste is sidelined and becomes irrelevant), and the second by the evacuation of the powers of discernment and discrimination in kitsch (in relation to which the refinement of bourgeois culture is seen to be impossible).

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“The Refinement of an Industrialist’s Wife” Distinctions between “good taste” and “bad taste” are at the foundation of notions of perfectibility in design, and so are also the basis of the past 50 years of challenges to these notions of perfectibility. This is reason enough not to simply banish discussion of taste to the margins of design discourse. Binary distinctions between “good taste” and “bad taste,” which properly belong to what has been called “bourgeois taste,” have transformed our understanding of social status and social value and thereby the social character of design activity. This transformation begins with the pseudo‐moral problem that is posed by distinctions between good and bad taste. These distinctions promote forms of cultural idealism within commercial society that give rise to definitive statements such as “the carpet is wrong,” quoted in my epigraph from the architect and writer Adolf Loos (in the original, Loos’s judgment is “Aber für heute sei schon gesagt, daß der Teppich unrichtig ist”). Notions of “right” and “wrong” carpets and “good design” versus “bad design” seem to describe moral boundaries between the discriminating pleasures of good taste and the indiscriminate pleasures offered by the world of goods. However, what also needs to be acknowledged are the actual moral problems that may be caused by this kind of cultural idealism. An example of the latter is offered by Victor Papanek in his polemic Design For the Real World, where Papanek gives an account of a low‐ technology radio receiver that used a recycled tin can, transistor, earplug, wire, paraffin wax, and wick, which was designed by Papanek and George Seeger to be used in parts of the world without a good power supply and using locally sourced materials (Papanek 1972; see also Clarke 2016). Papanek observed that when he discussed the design for the radio in a lecture at the Hochschule für Gestaltung, Ulm,3 in 1966 the professors of the School strongly objected and suggested that he should paint his can light gray on the grounds of taste (Figure 22.1). Papanek replied: painting it would have been wrong. For one thing, it would have raised the price of each unit by maybe one twentieth of a penny each, which is a great deal of money when millions of radios are built. Secondly, and much more importantly, I feel that I have no right to make aesthetic or “good taste” decisions that will affect millions of people in Indonesia, who are members of a different culture. The people of Indonesia have taken to decorating the tin can radios by pasting pieces of coloured felt or paper, pieces of glass, and shells on the outside … In this way it has been possible to by‐pass “good taste,” design directly for the needs of the people and “build in” a chance for the people to make the design truly their own. (Papanek 1972, pp. 164–165)

What was being challenged in Papanek’s proposals for “design for the real world” (Papanek 1972) was a situation in which designers were faced with two options. The first option was to choose a humanist social transformation



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Figure 22.1  Ulm School of Design (1953–1968), architect Max Bill. Source: Hans G. Conrad/René Spitz (Rechteinhaber), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:1955_Foto‐HansGConrad_HfGUlm_Architekt‐MaxBill.jpg. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution‐Share Alike 3.0 Unported.

accomplished through distinctions between good objects and bad objects and good design and bad design. The second option was to choose social regression through kitsch, which could be equally identified with the home‐made, the ethnic, and the mass produced. The fact that these two options seemed self‐evident to the professors of the Hochschule für Gestaltung depended not so much on a Bourdieusian emphasis on the role of taste in the maintenance of a social hierarchy, but on the particular characteristics of bourgeois taste and how these characteristics make bourgeois taste distinct from aristocratic taste. These characteristics of bourgeois taste include habits of discernment and ­discrimination based on personal evaluations of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The habits and attributes of the social practice of taste are the basis on which we begin to negotiate the world of goods by establishing a connection between the things we love (or the things we dislike) and the affirmation of others. If these same characteristics are used to understand the relationship between design and taste, we can see that the opposition between Victor Papanek and the professors of the Hochschule describes a specific kind of design history that includes the functionalist utopia within a hegemony of bourgeois taste and places a number of diverse design activities at the periphery. This peripheral

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activity is best described using an account of the limits of the cultural idealism of bourgeois taste; in other words, the instances where this idealism can be seen to “come apart at the seams.” A history of design that begins with these limits allows us to place discussion of design and discussion of taste in parallel through an analysis of their common relationship to questions of free choice and free agency in democratic societies, in an era where choice itself is increasingly a matter of design. What stands in the way of this analysis now is the same thing that obstructed Victor Papanek in the 1960s, which is that bourgeois taste offers a humanist idealism that has concealed its peculiarity and its historical uniqueness under its normalizing agency. Distinctions of good and bad taste offer a choice that is made in the absence of explicit rules, but which simultaneously imposes a set of restrictions on free choice by evoking another, ethically loaded, choice between self‐management (good taste) and self‐indulgence (bad taste). This moral distinction between self‐management and self‐­ indulgence is what separates a tin can in light gray from one covered in ­appliqué decoration, shells, and sequins. One reason that the normalizing agency of middle‐class cultural idealism has endured is because it has become embedded within commercial society and economic life. When, in 2017, two US law professors, Amy Wax and Larry Alexander, wrote an op‐ed piece for the Philadelphia Inquirer decrying “the loss of bourgeois habits” and the need to reinstate “the bourgeois cultural script,” the outcry that followed the publication of this article obscured the manner in which what Wax and Alexander offered as a specifically cultural ideal was a readily recognizable and highly specific set of tools for “preparing people to be productive in an advanced economy” (Wax and Alexander 2017). Although what Wax and Alexander promoted was a distinctly pre‐digital idea of an advanced economy with its golden age fixed between 1940 and 1960, they nonetheless articulated core elements of a “bourgeois cultural script” in which cultural idealism is equated with individual pragmatism and individual pragmatism with economic efficiency. The habits of discernment and discrimination that we have come to associate with good taste are a crucial aspect of this attempt to extract cultural ideals and individual virtues from the necessities of commerce. These same habits of discernment and discrimination are also the stock‐in‐trade of those who write about design, as Alice Twemlow points out in the introduction to her history of design criticism (Twemlow 2017). The application of these habits in writing about design has a long history. When Adolf Loos introduced the notion of “the refinement of an industrialist’s wife” (Loos 1897, p. 57) in his essay on “The Christmas exhibition at the Austrian Museum” in Die Zeit, it was in order to distinguish self‐confident middle‐class taste from the vulgarity of the parvenu who imitates royalty. Loos did not wish to destroy middle‐class culture but rather sought a means to perfect it, to continue the bourgeois revolution by means of the avant‐garde. His essay comments on a collaborative interior design in the Imperial Royal Museum of Art and Industry (present‐day University of Applied Arts Vienna) by the painter Heinrich Lefler, the sculptor



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Hans Rathausky, and the architects Franz Schönthaler Jr. and Josef Urban. This collaboration purported to offer “the first glimpses of modernism in the decorative and applied arts to appear on Viennese soil” but Loos describes it as “none other than our old friend the German Renaissance room, presented in a modern light” (Loos 2013, p. 53). The modernist version of refinement that Loos sets up as a cultural ideal is the benchmark for his judgments on good and bad taste, including the following comments on a window design by Heinrich Lefler: “The Cinderella has a bit of harmony because the stained glass is used only where it is absolutely necessary, for example, on the faces. But Sleeping Beauty, on the other hand is simply inexcusable” (Loos 2013, p. 55). For Loos, beauty could be disclosed through the recognition of the function of objects, as is exemplified in his account, in his essay on “Chairs” (Loos 1898b), of an “ugly” desk that is actually a “beautiful” billiard table: Look, what a lovely desk! Desk? But it’s ugly. Actually, it’s not a desk at all, it’s a billiard table. Oh, a billiard table. Yes, of course, it is a beautiful billiard table. (Loos 1898b, p. 32)

On these grounds, Loos railed against the uniform styling of interiors and the addition of spurious ornamentation to the objects of capitalist society, and promoted the idea of an autonomous, reflective, and personalized practice of taste. In this way, he affirmed distinctions between good and bad taste by emphasizing, first, the definitive break with aristocratic taste that middle‐class taste had offered, and, second, the possibility of the refinement of this taste into a cultural ideal through an attention to the function of objects. In this situation, rather than attempting to find a position “beyond taste” or “after taste,” design criticism can benefit from a focus on the specific characteristics of distinctions between good taste and bad taste and the cultural and social advantages that they have offered. Rather than simply asserting that the cultural capital of those who write about design legitimizes their habits of discernment and discrimination, we can say that these same habits of discernment and discrimination are legitimate only insofar as they can be seen to extract new forms of cultural idealism from the necessities of commerce. This is the reason that discussion of kitsch presents problems for those who write about design,4 not because kitsch is a lower class phenomenon but because kitsch is the terminus of bourgeois cultural idealism. The postmodern research program of “Learning from Las Vegas” was the paradoxical idealization of this terminal condition as a form of scholarship (Venturi et  al. 1977). If, for a modernist such as Adolf Loos, the vulgarity of “fake diamonds, fake fur coats and a fake leather collar” (Loos 2013, p. 52) threatened the possibility of “the refinement of an industrialist’s wife,” the postmodern design and architecture of Michael Graves, Ettore Sottsass, Robert Venturi et  al. entertained the idea that the

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aspiration towards a uniquely middle‐class kind of refinement through functionalism was accompanied by difficulties and contradictions that could have no resolution. These difficulties are very clearly revealed in the relationship between two design collectives, Archigram and Archizoom. The British design collective Archigram, formed at the Architectural Association in the early 1960s, followed in the wake of the crisis of the functionalist object by offering cultural idealism and a commercial idyll by means of the image, notably images of a “Plug‐in City” and a “Walking City.” In contrast, the Italian design collective Archizoom (formed in 1964) made a “Mies Chair” combining Mies Van der Rohe chrome tubes with Le Corbusier cowhide pillows, a “Safari Chair” upholstered in animal skins, and the psychedelic “Superonda” sofa and “Dream Beds.” These objects demonstrated the implausibility of the cultural idealism created by distinctions of taste, rather than isolating this idealism in the image, as Archigram had done. As the architect Bernard Tschumi has put it, Archizoom “were saying their purpose was not to show the way to the next step but rather to verify where the system was going – in other words, to articulate a critical, sometimes cynical voice about the negative outcomes of the era” (Tschumi and Eisenman 2013, p. 101). For Archizoom, the refinement of an industrialist’s wife was a cultural problem to be faced, not a cultural goal to be sought after. This analysis of the problems of the cultural idealism embodied in distinctions of taste can also be applied to a general discourse about the world of things. To give one example, in an article on the 20th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, the novelist Hilary Mantel warned us that we should not succumb to the illusion that the nobility are like us “but with better hats” (Mantel 2017, p. 3). This pithy observation allows us to recognize an ­aspiration to “the better hat” as an aspect of a cultural ideal that belongs to commercial society and not to the aristocratic taste that preceded it. As long as the possibility of “the better hat” is in play, we cannot assume that meaningful discussion of design ought to take place without reference to distinctions between good and bad taste. At the same time, “the better hat” describes the boundary between bourgeois and aristocratic taste that is encountered when the social practice of taste meets with the excess of luxury or with the imitation of this excess. In an article entitled “Luxury for the alpha male” in The New York Times, Alex Williams interviewed members of the Stefano Ricci luxury goods dynasty, offering the following comment: Even when the client requests push the boundaries of good taste, the company is happy to satisfy them  –  up to a point. One well‐heeled Ukrainian client, for ­example, asked the label to design a crocodile trench coat with a mink collar in a custom shade of lemon yellow to match his Harley‐Davidson. “We convinced him, and he got it in black,” Filippo said. (Williams 2017, p. 16)

What this anecdote reveals is that, even if the judicious exercise of taste is placed at the summit of bourgeois cultural idealism, it can easily be relegated



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to a subsidiary or service role that negates this same idealism. The super‐ wealthy, on the other hand, do not idealize their cultural activities. Over the past 300 years, distinctions between good and bad taste have come to define a practice of taste that is distinct from aristocratic taste. These distinctions, as I have mentioned, measure out a social space based on a relationship between what I love (or what I hate) and what is socially esteemed. Judgments of taste depend on the possibility of a reflection on experience that sets satisfaction against dissatisfaction. To take one example offered by the philosopher David Hume in his A Treatise of Human Nature, if I hate my enemy but nonetheless take pleasure in the fine qualities of his voice, this impartial reflection on the relationship between my satisfaction in his voice and my dissatisfaction with him as a person ought to make me more certain about everyone else’s agreement on the qualities of a good voice (Hume 2007, pp. 303–304) (Figure 22.2). This method of estimation, Hume argues, is quite different from the careless use of “the language of taste,” which is stuffed with grand but empty terms such as “elegance” and “simplicity” that are supposed to compel the agreement of others (Hume 2008, pp. 134–136). If I can make the transition from the careless use of a language of taste to the careful use of a practice of taste, then the pleasure I take in my enemy’s singing voice becomes information that I can use to produce a social orientation for myself, as the kind of person who is capable of testing out a range of pleasant and unpleasant sensations in order to arrive at a discriminating judgment. In this way, the practice of taste becomes self‐reinforcing, as it defines a set of good examples, contrasted with a set of

Figure 22.2  1955 Citroën car. Source: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/632055. Public Domain (CC0‐1.0).

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bad examples, that exemplify the refinement of particular methods of discrimination and their associated values of urbanity and civilization. It is this aspect of taste that has carried the greatest implications for consumers and designers. As consumers, we cannot step outside the world of goods, but, through exercising our taste, we can claim to be able to trust ourselves before we trust the brands, products, and services that surround us. Designers may then incline towards solutions that offer the consumer the opportunity to exercise their powers of discrimination and in this way the fantasy of personal taste is constructed and affirmed. Attempts to marginalize the social power of taste by declaring it to be a matter of “each to his own taste” simply describe the “default setting” of bourgeois taste, namely that an inability to distinguish between what I like and what is generally esteemed has historically been defined as the basis for cultural choices that exhibit “bad taste.” Anyone who has used the phrase “guilty pleasure” to account for a situation in which they find themselves enjoying a film, a television program, or a piece of music that they think others may not hold in high regard is at the same time reminding us of their “guilty” awareness that there may be a difference between what they love and what is generally valued.5 The confession of a guilty pleasure also expresses a relationship between self‐ abandonment and self‐control, which is the formula of good taste. Taken together, good taste and bad taste express a relationship between experiencing pleasure in the world of goods (“this is what I like”) and being in control of that experience (“other people like this/do not like this”). However, this also means that there is a line between bad taste and good taste that divides self‐ indulgence in a situation of free choice from individual self‐management through good taste. When J.S. Mill gave an account of “intellectual taste” in 1863, he made the following famous observation: It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides. (Mill 1863, p. 14)

It is important to note that J.S. Mill is not simply telling us that Socrates prefers different and better things than the fool, but rather that only Socrates can evaluate whatever it is that the fool is satisfied with. If we recognize “each to his own taste” as a “default setting” as I have done, it will become apparent that moving beyond this position and being in control of our experience of pleasure in the world of goods might have implications for my sense of personal autonomy and my status as an individual who is able to make responsible and ethical choices. It might then be assumed that, although “each to his own taste” seems to be the most democratic position to adopt, the personal and ethical risks that accompany it justify our describing it as a “bad” option and the more elitist position of feeling guilty about your pleasures as “good”



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and socially beneficial. This is the reason why, in a commercial society, discussions on ethics can be conducted by comparing brands of training shoes or varieties of food. The argument for the social usefulness of distinctions between good and bad taste that I have just outlined depends on choosing commerce as the place of judgment and a free choice as the means. These two are related insofar as the continuing multiplication of choice within the world of goods (this list now includes, inter alia, Marcel Breuer chairs, human kidneys, electric cars, and sex robots) ensures both the continuing necessity of managed choices and the possibility of making those choices experimentally, in the absence of rules of taste that are laid down by others. It is this experimental and exploratory character of good taste that defines bourgeois taste and marks an important difference from aristocratic taste. When Roland Barthes famously described the Citroën DS as an object that, when displayed, is explored with “an intense, amorous studiousness … the moment when visual wonder is about to receive the reasoned assault of touch” (Barthes 1973, p. 97) he was analyzing the combination of the exploratory and the sensual with the rational and the experimental in bourgeois taste, which tests out a range of pleasurable sensations in order to arrive at a discriminating judgment. By means of this judgment, base sensations of pleasure in looking at objects or touching surfaces are transformed by a pleasure in discrimination, a pleasure in “hitting the mark” that is worthy of general esteem. While it should not be forgotten that Barthes described his essays on the Citroën and other aspects of postwar culture in France as being outdated as early as 1970 (Barthes 1973, pp. 9–10) his account of petit bourgeois advancement relates to a ­history of distinctions between good and bad taste that first developed in seventeenth century Europe, which became incorporated into literary and ­ ­philosophical debates in the eighteenth century and became part of common discourse with the flourishing of industrial capitalism in the twentieth century. For the Citroën DS to be “the very essence of petit‐bourgeois advancement” (Barthes 1973, p. 97) as Barthes claimed, it had to represent the possibility of a personal happiness that can be attained by making the right choices. What is noteworthy in Barthes’ account of petit bourgeois taste is that it describes social advancement as a matter of feeling, testing, and judging. However, in describing the DS as an object that is at once tailored to petit bourgeois taste “the dashboard looks more like the working surface of a modern kitchen” (Barthes 1973, p. 96) and as a divine object that is prostituted to the common touch, Barthes gives us an insight into the paradoxes that traverse middle‐class taste. Barthes’ notion of a perfect marriage between automotive design and bourgeois sensibility also raises the specter of a free judgment in the absence of rules that seems, nonetheless, to be ruled by design. On the other hand, if there were implicit rules of design that fitted the DS to the experimental and sensory characteristics of bourgeois taste, this also demonstrated their hegemony and the apogee of their social value in Europe during the middle years of the twentieth century. These are the values, the “basic cultural precepts [that]

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reigned from the late 1940s to the mid‐1960s” that Professors Wax and Alexander see as now being placed under threat (Wax and Alexander 2017). Bourgeois taste begins to come apart at the seams when the design of choice does not cohere with the specific complex of exploratory, sensual, rational, and experimental elements that defines the practice of taste, resulting in a situation where designing choices seems to limit the social value of judgments of taste rather than affirm them. While the doctrine of “each to his own taste” conceals rather than solves the problems of the management of choice, the possibility of making those choices “in a bourgeois manner” is also under threat. If the problem of how to manage our choices has become ever more taxing, this nonetheless might seem to ensure the continuation of the feeling, testing, and judging approach to taste described by Roland Barthes. However, the notion that a huge field of possible choices (including, for example, the millions of objects available from the single source of amazon.com) can be self‐managed by means of judgments of good and bad taste has now been challenged by the advent of algorithms that can supplement the self‐management of choice. This has led the writer Michael Bhaskar to declare that, in the age of the algorithm, human tastemakers are needed more than ever (Bhaskar 2016). Although Bhaskar champions the tastemaker, his argument builds an opposition between, on the one hand, a perceived need for choice to continue to be managed by tastemakers in a classically bourgeois fashion, and, on the other, the data sifting of the algorithm. But this opposition between the tastemaker and the algorithm implies that the battle for bourgeois taste is already lost, because here the social value that Barthes described as attributable to the individual consumer who exercises good judgment is absent. Instead, we are faced with a socially valueless choice between two kinds of “assistant” to the contemporary consumer, a human tastemaker and an algorithm. In more advanced technologies, the relationship between the algorithm and the product is even closer, and in this way the relative positions of the consumer and the object of consumption are altered. In an article on the “June intelligent oven,” “[l]oaded with a camera, temperature probe, Wi‐Fi, and algorithms,” Mark Wilson notes that the “June attempts to eliminate what you have to know, by adding prompts and options and UI [user interface] feedback.” He concludes: June is a product built less for you, the user, and more for its own ever‐impending perfection as a platform. When you cook salmon wrong, you learn about cooking it right. When the June cooks salmon wrong, its findings are uploaded, aggregated, and averaged into a June database that you hope will allow all June ovens to get it right the next time. (Wilson 2016)

Here the relationship between the consumer, the algorithm, and the object means that we cannot say that “the oven is wrong” in the same way that Adolf Loos said that “the carpet is wrong,” because Loos’s distinction between right and wrong was based solely on the possibility of functional perfection within a



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world of human users. Instead, Wilson describes an experience that is divided between the feeling of being a user (the traditional route to the refinements of taste) and the feeling of being used by the machine to refine its own operability. Perhaps the best way to describe our current situation is not simply as the ­banishment of distinctions between good and bad taste to the margins of design discourse but as an increasing asymmetry between these distinctions and the design object, which in turn generates the need for new design interventions in the field of free choice (prompts and options and user interface feedback). This is not the same as a simple plurality or variety of tastes but rather the alternate appearing and vanishing of the possibility of a judgment of taste in relation to objects. If we accept that writers such as Barthes offer us a canonical description of the experimental, “testing” method of bourgeois taste, we can now track or trace the points where the social power of this kind of judgment fades away or runs out. The points where we can identify the appearance or disappearance of these distinctions in contemporary life also disclose the manner in which these distinctions first began to appear in European society, as an alternative to aristocratic taste. The next section traces the historical evolution of distinctions between good and bad taste that were later reflected in the notion of the perfectibility of culture by design.

Taste and the Bourgeois Revolution The distinctions between good taste and bad taste that scholars and curators may now wish to eliminate from discussion of design are also the legacy of a bourgeois revolution that established forms of social value that did not depend on the birthrights of the nobility. As Penny Sparke has noted: The word “taste” is sometimes used on its own, as an absolute concept, and sometimes joined by the epithets “good” or “bad.” The reasons for this are ­historically rooted. In the preindustrial context, when it was only the aristocracy that had the wherewithal to engage in possession and display of artworks and luxury items in their interior settings, there was no need to add a qualifier to the term. (Sparke 2012, p. 15)

Sparke has written extensively about the relationship of design and taste (Sparke 2011). Here she emphasizes, with reference to the work of Rémy G. Saisselin, that, while the nobility conferred status on the things that they owned, the opposite was true of the bourgeois, for whom objects conferred status on their owners. However, it is also crucial to focus on how distinctions between good taste and bad taste have transformed the notion of social status itself into something that depends on a possibility for personal and social change that is indicated by a discriminating judgment. Since we now tend to look at aristocratic taste through the lens of the bourgeois revolution, it is worth remembering

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that, for the aristocracy at the time of the bourgeois revolution, the acquisition of taste took place within a hierarchy in which the theory and practice of ­politics was placed at the summit. As has been mentioned, those who were “born to rule” transferred this power and status onto the objects that they owned. For this reason, a danger for the aristocrat who had returned from the Grand Tour was appearing to be a trader in the kind of objects that conferred social value on the bourgeois; the danger for the bourgeois was in not being able to gain access to a commercial idyll through distinctions between good and bad taste. What separates the danger for the aristocrat from the danger for the bourgeois is the notion of social mobility. Since the eighteenth century, good taste, or a capacity for discriminating judgment in the world of goods, has enabled a form of social mobility that can be contrasted with two static positions  –  first, a position of excessive consumption that was assumed to belong to aristocrats as their birthright, and, second, a position of scarcity that was assumed to belong to the poor as a necessity. This social movement between the two fixed positions of excess and scarcity has given us cultural ideals as shaped by distinctions between good and bad taste. As Giorgio Agamben has pointed out, with reference to the discussion of taste by Jean de La Bruyère in the seventeenth century, “the person of bad taste is the person who ‘loves what is short of the right point or beyond it’” (Agamben 1999, p. 17). La Bruyère’s words show an early phase in the development of distinctions between good and bad taste, in which the observer is given a limited power to decide at what point an object has attained perfection. Later, in David Hume’s writing on taste, the difference between those who “get it” and those who do not attains greater social significance. In his essay “Of the standard of taste” of 1757, Hume identifies the kind of person who would accord equal value to the work of the hack writer John Ogilby and that of the poet John Milton, as mistaking a molehill for a mountain (Hume 2008, p. 137). The focus is now on the difference between individuals whose pleasures are obtained from self‐­ ­ management and the projection of an individual cultural destiny and others whose lack of perspective and undisciplined approach to seeking pleasure within the world of goods might lead them to choose an inferior cultural product. Hume’s writing is crucial to an understanding of bourgeois taste, both because he challenged aristocratic rule in the political sphere by suggesting that trade was the key focus of political attention (Hont 2005, p. 9) and because he offered a framework for accommodating the idea of nobility within the world of goods through the perfection of a practice of taste. Hume saw the possibility for good taste to confer a kind of inverted social nobility based on claims for the value of socially responsible acts of self‐­ representation within the domain of free choice, which sacrifice individual appetite in the name of better judgment. If we consider this social dimension of judgments of taste, we could see taste as more than a personal matter and may be led to consider how judgments of taste divide choices that demonstrate autonomy and effective self‐management within the world of things, from



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choices that disclose a lack of self‐control and a tendency to be led by attachment, emotion, and desire. In his essay “Of the delicacy of taste and passion,” written in the middle of the eighteenth century, Hume saw a sense of taste and fine discrimination as providing us with autonomy and an individual vantage point in the world of commerce: The good or ill accidents of life are very little at our disposal; but we are pretty much masters what books we shall read, what diversions we shall partake of, and what company we shall keep. Philosophers have endeavoured to render happiness entirely independent of every thing external. This degree of perfection is impossible to be attained; but every wise man will endeavour to place his happiness on such objects chiefly as depend upon himself; and that is not be attained so much by any other means as by this delicacy of sentiment. When a man is possessed of that talent, he is more happy by what pleases his taste, than by what gratifies his appetites, and receives more enjoyment from a poem, or a piece of reasoning, than the most expensive luxury can afford. (Hume 2008, p. 11)

The important point to note here is that the line of demarcation between the pleasure of reading a book and the pleasure of indulgence in the most expensive luxury that you can afford is obtained by defining a sphere of culture as an idealized sphere of control, within which free choice can be used to demonstrate ethical responsibility and through which individual preferences can become a good taste that is esteemed by others. It is worth contrasting Hume’s views on the noble characteristics of good taste with the concept of taste as an “aristocracy of culture” espoused by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in the middle of the twentieth century. Bourdieu’s Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Bourdieu 1984) was based on surveys conducted in France in 1963 and 1967–1968 (Bourdieu and de Saint Martin 1976; de Saint Martin 2015) initially as a study of 692 persons later developed into accounts of 1217 social “types” (e.g. “grand bourgeois,” university teachers, nurses, male executives). What Bourdieu offered in Distinction was a new way of analyzing taste according to the relationship between cultural capital (the capacity of dominant groups to impose standards of evaluation in taste), habitus (the embodied attitudes and dispositions that generate a shared practice of taste), and field (the social sites or zones that set parameters for the practice of taste). Bourdieu’s interest was in showing how social order is maintained through the acceptance of cultural hierarchies, which establish dispositions and attitudes through which our perceptions of the world are organized. For Bourdieu, the aristocracy of culture consisted of a hierarchy of “legitimate taste,” “middlebrow taste,” and “popular taste,” in which greater nobility was attached to apparently more refined and cultured tastes, and was revealed in “how the cultivated disposition and cultural competence … are revealed in the nature of the cultural goods consumed, and in the way they are consumed” (Bourdieu 1984, p. 5). In one sense, both Bourdieu and Hume are engaged in the same project of analyzing bourgeois taste, with Hume

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writing at the point where a middle‐class consciousness of taste is beginning to be positively affirmed and consolidated and Bourdieu analyzing taste at a much later phase, in the wake of industrial capitalism and mass consumption. However, Bourdieu and Hume offer entirely different definitions of the social characteristics of bourgeois taste. In the passage from his essay “Of the delicacy of taste and passion” quoted above, Hume is careful to distinguish the philosopher who seeks autonomy from the world from the wise man who can live within the world of goods while at the same time attaining a position of nobility within it, by becoming the guarantor of his own happiness through distinctions of taste. Hume distinguishes the personal happiness that is attainable through the acquisition of good taste from two less palatable alternatives, the first in which individuals become dependent on the happiness delivered by luxuries that can be purchased at the highest prices, and another in which philosophers attempt to reach bliss through an impossible renunciation of commerce. Pierre Bourdieu, on the other hand, was convinced that the aristocracy of taste in fact depended on a philosophical renunciation of the world of goods. This renunciation, he argued, relied on the separation of an elevated sphere of judgments of aesthetic quality from consumer preferences (Bourdieu 1984, p. xxix). Where Bourdieu describes a “false nobility” of bourgeois taste, Hume’s writing on taste describes the transformation of the concept of nobility on terms that suited the bourgeoisie. For Hume, the perfection of a practice of taste depends on the rejection of imitation and falsity through judicious comparisons of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. In the analysis of the evolution and development of middle‐class taste, we have to separate the imitation of the aristocracy (which inhibits the refinement of taste) from the pragmatic idealism of the bourgeoisie (through which this refinement is accomplished). In this regard, Hume reminds us that anyone with a modest income can appear noble in the inverted mirror of taste. On the other hand, being noble about living in the world of goods has never been an aspiration of the aristocracy. For this reason, it can be argued that Bourdieu’s idea of bourgeois taste, paradoxically, does not take account of what is specifically bourgeois about taste, namely its transformation of the idea of nobility and its reconceptualization of social hierarchy within a commercial idyll. Bourdieu’s account of the person of poor taste who “loves what is short of the right point or beyond it” depends on the idea that the petit bourgeois, for example, might make a category error in taste, mistaking “light opera for ‘serious music,’ popularization for science, an ‘imitation’ for the genuine article”(Bourdieu 1984, p. 321). This aligns with his definition of the aristocracy of taste as a false nobility that conceals the reality of what Bourdieu calls “ordinary consumption.” If we contrast Bourdieu’s analysis of petit bourgeois taste with Barthes’ essay on “The new Citroën,” written a decade before Bourdieu’s surveys of tastes, in Barthes’ essay we see something closer to the idea of taste advanced by Hume (Barthes 1973). For Bourdieu, the aristocracy of taste is a set of cultural hierarchies that delimit the characteristics and



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possibilities of consumption, whereas, for Barthes, taste embodies the possibility of a social mobility which is enacted by means of ordinary consumption. It can also be argued that Bourdieu’s account of taste abstracted the capacity for judgment (what Bourdieu called cultural capital) from the situation of judgment (the world of things) in a manner that did not take account of how the social value of judgments of taste depends on a relationship between the probability of self‐indulgence and the possibility of self‐management. The opportunities for happiness and the threats to personal and moral integrity that are yoked together within the idea of free choice are also the means by which the middle classes have used distinctions between good taste and bad taste to turn the problems of free choice into opportunities for social mobility. If there is a hierarchy that is specific to judgments of taste, it is the one established by J.S. Mill’s comments on Socrates and the fool, in which the higher categories of taste are those that have traded self‐indulgence for self‐management. However, it is also important to note that David Hume’s idealization of commerce in his essays on taste also straddled a dividing line between “the illiberal imperial origins of capitalism and its liberal metropolitan conceptions” (Ince 2017, p. 5). If taste created a commercial idyll, it did so by reflecting the more‐or‐less distant barbarities of slavery and empire into more proximate metropolitan moral distinctions between good taste and bad taste (Gikandi 2011, pp. 99–100). In his essay “Of the standard of taste” Hume offers us his judgment on the barbarous elements that can be discerned in the “rough heroes” of Homer’s Iliad (Hume 2008, p. 152). Here Hume suggests that the sentiment of displeasure that he feels when confronted with these ancient heroes is evidence of the impartiality of his assessment of Homer’s greatness. Hume’s displeasure, which he experiences as the privileged citizen of a modern commercial society in which his judgment takes place in the absence of rules, provides him with the supposed moral advantage afforded by an impartial practice of taste. It also establishes a link between the practice of taste and the progress of civilization that, in the twentieth century, was developed within debates that set the progressive tenets of modernism against the regressive tendencies and the anti‐civilized evils of kitsch (Greenberg 1968).

Conclusion: What Would the Oven Prefer? In my introduction to this chapter, I cited Deyan Sudjic’s phrase “Design is not an object or a thing. Design is not taste.” In contrast to this banishment of taste to the margins of design discourse, I have argued instead that we ought to take account of how the history of design is bound up with distinctions between good and bad taste. This is because of the way that modernism and functionalism continued the program of perfectibility and refinement and the cultural idealism initiated by bourgeois taste in its break with aristocratic modes of life. Also, as the display on “Choice and Taste” in the Design Museum

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shows, the past half‐century of reactions against modernism and functionalism in design have not finished with bourgeois cultural idealism so much as split bourgeois cultural idealism from bourgeois economic determinism and consigned idealism to the domain of personal choice. The question of taste can perhaps be “parked” in the context of design curation and museology, but the link between the perfection of taste and the rejection of imitation and falsehood is hard to banish from the domain of free democratic choice, because it seems to offer us autonomy and control within the world of goods. In the twentieth century, this opposition between perfection and imitation was developed within a series of debates on modernity, modernism, and kitsch. Gillo Dorfles, in the introduction to his well‐known series of essays on kitsch published in the late 1960s, asserted that kitsch “scorches our hands, leaving permanent ‘aesthetic scars’” (Dorfles 1968, p. 11). This edited collection also contains an essay by Hermann Broch, first published in 1933, which declared that the “sentimentalization of the finite” in kitsch was inimical to democracy and which described the producer of kitsch as “an ethically base being, a malefactor who profoundly desires evil” (Broch 1968, p. 76). Stephen Bayley, in his reflections on Broch’s essay in the publication accompanying the Boilerhouse exhibition on Taste of 1983 to which Deyan Sudjic refers, noted that, while comparisons between Germany in 1933 and Britain in 1983 were invidious, there was “something common between each age” (Bayley 1983, p. 29). What Bayley noted was the increasing irrelevance of public standards of taste in the postwar era due to an increased diversity of choice: by the 1970s even thoughtful people of good‐will realised that the concept of “good design” was itself an expression of Taste and that “good Taste” itself was not sufficiently broad a concept to acknowledge the reality of the world of the modern, international consumer. (Bayley 1983, p. 30)

Bayley added that some designers “have been quick to exploit this diversity,” asserting that, at that time, Alessandro Mendini and Ettore Sottsass had “made a sophisticated form of Kitsch into a chic cult” (Bayley 1983, p. 30). Bayley nonetheless asserted that, in the face of an increasing diversity of choice, it was important to consolidate the relationship of design and taste by setting out some basic principles of design that could also be seen as rules of taste. These included intelligibility of form, a coherence and harmony between the form and details, materials matched to function, and the use of available technology to unite construction and purpose. This, he concluded, was “why a Raleigh safety bicycle is timeless and why a 1957 Cadillac is dated” (Bayley 1983, p. 31). It is this division of objects into worthy and unworthy examples according to the dictates of taste that is rejected by Deyan Sudjic in the latest iteration of the Design Museum: “The whole idea of design as being about taste is an idea I think we’ve grown beyond” (Marsh 2017, p. 32). It might be better to say, first, that for Bayley to declare a Raleigh safety bicycle as worthy of inclusion in



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the pantheon of design objects and to give a 1957 Cadillac a lesser status was a gesture towards the embrace of perfectibility by design and the rejection of imitation; second, that Mendini and Sottsass had already incorporated a rejection of this position in what they had produced; and, finally, that the relationship of Bayley to Mendini and Sottsass describes a specific kind of design history. This design history, as I have shown, is a history that includes aspects of design activity within a hegemony of middle‐class taste and places a number of diverse design activities at the periphery. The materials of this history are various, and include judgments on design objects that need to be considered on equal terms with design objects themselves. Neither the placement of “good” objects on plinths and “bad” objects on dustbins in the Boilerhouse exhibition of 1983 or the Design Museum’s “Choice and Taste” display in 2017 has fully engaged with the legacy of the perfection of bourgeois culture through design. However, it can also be observed that designers and design curators cannot so easily choose the terms of social engagement. If the “June intelligent oven” was added to the “Choice and Taste” display at the Design Museum, one would have to go beyond the binary of “value for money” and “personal taste” and encounter the possibility that, nowadays, cultural idealism is not being pursued by consumers or designers but by corporations, through the technical perfection of the object by means of the human user. The existence of the user as either “a person of taste” or as a person of no taste whatsoever is neither here nor there. In fact, for an intelligent oven that was in the business of refining its operability, a pathological user who exhibits social regressive tendencies may well be preferred, as the economic value of their data could be greater. There is more than one way to prepare people to be productive in an advanced economy, and the humanist model of social transformation conducted through an individual practice of taste may not be the most efficient.

Notes 1 Jonathan Bean, in a review of The Routledge Companion to Design Studies (P. Sparke and F. Fisher eds., 2016) in the Journal of Design History (2017), comments that contributions to the volume reveal a situation in which “As design’s remit increases, the boundaries of design studies become ever blurrier. This expansion to the critical consideration of new forms of design practice stands in clear contrast to the scholarly traditions of design history, but the long shadow of connoisseurship remains evident” (Bean 2017, pp. 243–245). 2 The Boilerhouse Gallery, funded by the Conran Foundation, was the first incarnation of the Design Museum and was established in a basement space at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1982, with Stephen Bayley as its director. For a short history of the gallery and an account of some aspects of Stephen Bayley’s exhibition on “Taste” in 1983, see Farrelly (2017).

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3 For an account of the cultural politics of the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm see Peter Kapos (2016), a publication accompanying the exhibition “The Ulm Model” at Raven Row Gallery, London (5 October–18 December 2016). 4 Ruth Holliday and Tracey Potts, in the conclusion of their book Kitsch! Cultural Politics and Taste, note that “Contending with kitsch’s powerful default settings … has been a more strenuous undertaking than we were able to imagine at the start if this project” (Holliday and Potts 2012, p. 241). 5 For commentary on the topic of guilty pleasure see Jennifer Szalai (2013) and Adam Sternbergh (2014).

References Agamben, G. (1999). The man of taste and the dialectic of the split. In: The Man Without Content, 13–27. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Barthes, R. (1973). Mythologies. London: Paladin. Bayley, S. (ed.) (1983). Taste. London: The Conran Foundation. Bean, J. (2017). Review of the Routledge companion to design studies. Journal of Design History 30 (2): 243–245. Bhaskar, M. (2016). Curation: The Power of Selection in a World of Excess. London: Piatkus. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (trans. R. Nice). London: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. and de Saint Martin, M. (1976). Anatomie de Goût. Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 2 (5): 2–112. Broch, H. (1968). Notes on the problem of kitsch (1950–1). In: Kitsch, An Anthology of Bad Taste (ed. G. Dorfles), 49–57. London: Studio Vista. Clarke, A.J. (2016). The humanitarian object Victor Papanek and the struggle for responsible design. In: The Responsible Object: A History of Design Ideology For the Future (ed. M. van Helvert), 145–162. Amsterdam: Valiz. de Saint Martin, M. (2015). From ‘Anatomie de goût’ to La Distinction: attempting to construct the social space. Some markers for the history of research. In: The Routledge Companion to Bourdieu’s Distinction (eds. P. Coulangeon and J. Duval), 2–15. London: Routledge. Dorfles, G. (ed.) (1968). Kitsch, An Anthology of Bad Taste. London: Studio Vista. Farrelly, L. (2017). Temporary contemporary, the Boilerhouse at the V&A: lecture. http://www.liz‐farrelly‐visits.org/2017/06/29/lecture‐temporary‐contemporary‐ the‐boilerhouse‐at‐the‐va (accessed 3 September 2017). Gikandi, S. (2011). Slavery and the Culture of Taste. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Greenberg, C. (1968). The avant‐garde and kitsch (1939). In: Kitsch, An Anthology of Bad Taste (ed. G. Dorfles), 116–126. London: Studio Vista. Holliday, R. and Potts, T. (2012). Kitsch! Cultural Politics and Taste. Manchester: Manchester University Press.



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Hont, I. (2005). Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation‐State in Historical Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hume, D. (2007). A Treatise of Human Nature, vol. vol. 1 (eds. D.F. Norton and M.J. Norton). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hume, D. (2008[1742]). Of the delicacy of taste and passion. 10–13. In: David Hume Selected Essays (eds. S. Copley and A. Edgar), 10–13. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hume, D. (2008[1757]). Of the standard of taste. In: David Hume Selected Essays (eds. S. Copley and A. Edgar), 133–154. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ince, O.U. (2017). Between commerce and empire: David Hume, colonial slavery, and commercial incivility. Social Science Research Network. https://ssrn.com/ abstract=2971323 (accessed 3 September 2017). Kapos, P. (2016). Art and Design: The Ulm Model. London: Raven Row. Loos, A. (ed.) (1897). The Christmas exhibition at the Austrian Museum. In: Creating Your Home With Style: Taste is Timeless (trans. M.E. Troy 2013, 47–57. Vienna: Metroverlag. Loos, A. (ed.) (1898a). The interiors in the rotunda. In: Creating Your Home With Style: Taste is Timeless (trans. M.E. Troy 2013, 22–30. Vienna: Metroverlag. Loos, A. (ed.) (1898b). Chairs. In: Creating Your Home With Style: Taste is Timeless (trans. M.E. Troy 2013, 31–39. Vienna: Metroverlag. Loos, A. (2013). Creating Your Home With Style: Taste is Timeless. trans. M. E. Troy. Vienna: Metroverlag. Mantel, H. (2017). The princess myth. The Guardian (26 August), pp. 2–4. Marsh, S. (2017). Objects reveal a lot about the way we live, who we are, what we value. The Guardian (18 February), pp. 31–32. Mill, J.S. (1863). Utilitarianism. London: Parker, Son and Bourn. Papanek, V. (1972). Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change. London: Thames and Hudson. Sanders, J. (2002). Curtain Wars. Harvard Design Magazine 16, pp. 14–20. http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/16/curtain‐wars (accessed 1 January 2018). Sparke, P. (2011). As Long as It’s Pink: the Sexual Politics of Taste. Halifax: NSCAD Press. Sparke, P. (2012). Taste and the interior designer. In: After Taste (eds. K. Kleinman, J. Merwood‐Salisbury, and L. Weinthal), 14–27. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Sternbergh, A. (2014). All of the pleasure, none of the guilt. The New York Times (7 February). https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/magazine/all‐of‐the‐ pleasure‐none‐of‐the‐guilt.html?mcubz=1 (accessed 3 September 2017). Szalai, J. (2013). Against “guilty pleasure”. The New Yorker (9 December). http://www.newyorker.com/books/page‐turner/against‐guilty‐pleasure (accessed 3 September 2017). Tschumi, B. and Eisenman, P. (2013). I do not mind people being innocent, but I hate when they’re naive. Log 28: 98–108.

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Twemlow, A. (2017). Sifting the Trash: A History of Design Criticism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Venturi, R., Brown, D.S., and Steven, I.S. (1977). Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wax, A. and Alexander, L. (2017). Paying the price for breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture. Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News (9 August). http:// www.philly.com/philly/opinion/commentar y/paying‐the‐price‐for‐ breakdown‐of‐the‐countrys‐bourgeois‐culture‐20170809.html?arc404=true (accessed 3 September 2017). Williams, Alex. 2017. “Luxury for the alpha male.” New York Times International Edition, (12 August), p. 16. Wilson, M. (2016). This $1,500 toaster oven is everything that’s wrong with  Silicon Valley design. https://www.fastcodesign.com/3065667/this‐ 1500‐toaster‐oven‐is‐ever ything‐thats‐wrong‐with‐silicon‐valley‐design (accessed 3 September 2017).

Index

Aalto, Alvar, 196 Aarnio, Eero, 58 Aboubacar, Fofana, 100 Actor Network Theory (ANT), 242, 248, 252–254 Adam, Ken, 361 Diamonds Are Forever (1971), 361–362 Adams, Annmarie, 402 Adamson, Glenn, 18 Adobe Photoshop, 9–11, 379 Advanced Research Projects Agency Network packet switching network (ARPANET), 312 Agamben, Giorgio, 470 Ahmed, Sara, 176–177, 331, 338 Aksoy, Asu, 184 Alaïa, Azzedine, 92–93 Aldrich, Michael, 183, 186 Aldus Pagemaker, 378 Alexander, Larry, 462, 468 Allen, Doug, 244 Amies, Hardy, 361 Anti_Fashion, 294 Appadurai, Arjun, 221

Appleyard, Brian, 54–55 Araujo, Luis, 254 archeology, 32, 269–270 Archigram, 183, 464 Archizoom, 464 Arcidi, Philip, 347–348 Armani, Giorgio, 342 Armitage, David, 261–262, 264 Arnould, Eric J, 244–248 Arsel, Zeynep, 244 Art Deco, 57, 360, 366 art history, 32, 77, 95, 221, 303 Art Nouveau, 174 Arts and Crafts movement, 264–266, 307, 395 Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), 417 Arvatov, Boris, 56 Ash, Garton, 18, 24 Askegaard, Søren, 246, 251–252 Atkinson, Harriet, 308 Attfield, Judy, 273, 377 Atzmon, Leslie, 219, 228–229 Auden, W H, 236 Aynsley, Jeremy, 304, 308

A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945, First Edition. Edited by Anne Massey. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

480

◼ ◼ ◼ I N D E X

Bainbridge, William Sims, 139 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 362 Baldwin, Billy, 396 Balla, Giacomo, 35 Ballard, James Graham, 316–318 Banham, Mary, 308 Banham, Reyner, 2, 182–183, 308–309, 313 Barac, Matthew, 185 Barker, Linda, 319 Barraclough, Geoffrey, 13 Barry Bucknell’s Do It Yourself (first broadcast, 1957), 376 Barthes, Roland, 285, 307–309, 459, 467–469 Baudrillard, Jean, 44–45, 112, 131–132, 148–149, 217, 226, 247, 367, 395 Bauhaus, 36, 307, 337 Bayley, Stephen, 203, 474 Beaton, Cecil, 363 Bel Geddes, Norman, 57 Belk, Russ, 244–245 Bell, Quentin, 285 Benedikt, Michael, 142 Benjamin, Andrew, 399 Benjamin, Walter, 174, 285, 399 Bennett, Peter, 307 Bennett, Tony, 229 Benton, Tim, 313, 319 Berry, Christopher, 354–355, 368 Betsky, Aaron, 333 Bhabha, Homi, 81 Bhamra, Tracy, 446–447 Bhaskar, Michael, 468 Bitner, Mary Jo, 244 Bleecker, Julian, 63 Boateng, Ozwald, 94, 97 Boddy, Trevor, 144–145 Bond, James, 361 Boorstein, Johnathan, 333 Boradkar, Prasad, 219, 228–229, 243 Bossé, Jay, 328–331, 340 Boucher, Andy, 64 Bourdieu, Pierre, 458, 471–473 Boym, Svetlana, 33, 180 Bradley, Dale, 141 Brand, Stewart, 275–276

Braudel, Fernand, 219 Braungart, Michael, 269 Breuer, Marcel, 467 Brik,Osip, 36 Bringolf, Jane, 336, 344 British Museum (London), 21 Broch, Hermann, 474 Brody, David, 253 Brody, Neville, 310 Brooker, Graeme, 402–403, 406 Brown, Bill, 219, 223–225, 231, 236 Buckminster Fuller, Richard, 59, 112, 115, 271, 277 Butler, Judith, 398 Buttress, Wolfgang, 197 Caan, Shashi, 401 Callon, Michael, 252–253, 255 Calloway, Stephen, 365 Campbell, Heidi, 146 Cardin, Pierre, 58 Carson, Rachel, 58 Casson, Hugh, 403 Castiglioni, Achille, 406 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 87, 262–263 Changing Rooms (1996–2004), 376 Chapman, Jonathan, 439 Chareau, Pierre, 169 Charter, Martin, 443–444 Charter Society of Designers (CSD), 375 Chatterton, Paul, 67 Chen, Kuan‐Hsing, 78–82 Circular Economy, 439, 457 Cixous, Hélène, 397–398 Clarke, Alison, 174 Clarke, Danny, 231 Clerkin, Clark, 231 Cochoy, Frank, 252–254 Colombo, Joe, 58 Colomina, Beatriz, 218 Colonial Revival, 33 Computer‐aided design and manufacturing (CADCAM), 299, 380, 383–384, 388 Consumer Culture Theory (CCT), 4, 243–252 Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), 294

◼◼◼ INDEX 481

Council for Interior Design Accreditation (CIDA), 163, 403 Council of Industrial Design (CoID), 300, 305–306, 309 Coupland, Douglas, 270 Cradle to Cradle (C2C), 269, 439–441, 448 craft, 1, 14, 56, 87, 331 Crang, Mike, 143 Crawford, Lucas, 341 Crawford, Matthew, 378 Cross, Nigel, 52 Crowley, David, 306, 310 Cruickshank, Leon, 389 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 451 cultural studies, 223, 248 Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition, 173 Daou, Dolly, 400 Darwin, Robin, 306 Davis, Fred, 285 Dawkins, Richard, 315 Day, Lucienne, 194 Day, Robin, 194 Dean, Lionel Theodore, 384 Dean, Penelope, 406 de Cronin Hastings, Hubert, 305 de Kooning, Willelm, 36 de La Bruyère, Jean, 470 Deluze, Gilles, 247 Descartes, René, 140–141, 148, 340 Descola, Phillipe, 247 design co‐design, 2, 52, 388 communication, 189, 203 fashion, 1, 3–4, 91–107, 189, 203, 284–297 graphic, 1,3, 9, 11, 16, 37, 114, 380 history, 2–4, 11–12, 14–17, 22–23, 76–77, 88, 229, 240, 247–251, 253, 255, 260–266, 269–271, 273, 276–278, 302–304, 315, 326, 334, 345–346, 450–452, 461 industrial, 23, 114, 380 interior, 1, 4, 114, 157, 161, 167, 174, 185, 393–407 methods and methodology, 2, 416 open, 360–363, 388–390

product, 16, 189, 203, 380 service, 189, 416 studies, 2, 229, 247, 249, 326, 334, 345–346 thinking, 2, 25 Design Council, 306, 309–310 Design Museum (London), 15, 203, 457, 473–475 De Stijl, 36, 46 de Vries, Femke, 300 de Waal, Edmund, 221 Dewan Architects, 126 Dewey, John, 421–422 de Wolfe, Elsie, 396 Diaconu, Madalina, 166 Dickens, Charles, 39, 319 digital culture, 3, 146–147 Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS + R), 159 Dilnot, Clive, 26, 240, 247 Dior, Christian, 286–287, 292–293 Dissanayake, Ellen, 378 Doan, Petra L. 340 Dodd, Sam, 253 Dohr, Joy H. 403–404 Dolce and Gabbana, 93 Dorfles, Gillo, 474 Douglas, Mary, 270–271 Dower, John, 11 DP Architects, 129 Draper, Dorothy, 396 Dunne, Anthony, 62–64, 67 Eames, Charles and Ray, 406 East German Central Institute of Design, 273–274 Eberhard Zeidler, Bregman and Hamann Architects, 121 Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), 417 Edelkoort, Lidewij, 294–295 Edgerton, David, 15 Edinburgh International Festival, 191 Edwards, Clive, 405 Ehrlich, Paul and Anne, 58 Elkins, James, 77 Ellen Macarthur Foundation, 439 Empire (2015‐), 366 Epstein, Royce, 343

482

◼ ◼ ◼ I N D E X

Errington, Sherry, 77–78 Ettlinger, Or, 141 Exposition Universelle, Paris (1900), 192 F + A Architects, 128 Fallan, Kjetil, 243, 254 Farr, Michael, 306 Fehn, Sverre, 196 Festival International de la Mode Africaine (FIMA), 104 Festival of Britain, London (1951), 57, 193–194 Fisher, Fiona, 2–3, 406 Fiske, Neil, 359 Flood, Catherine, 16, 231–234 Fofana, Aboubacar, 100–102 Forde, Kate, 304 Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), 444 Formia, Elena, 277 Forrester, Jay Wright, 59 Foucault, Michel, 131, 247, 347 Foundation for Interior Design Educational Research (FIDER), 403 Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, 403 Frascara, Jorge, 52 Frauenfelder, Mark, 378 Freeman, Elizabeth, 334 Freitag, 444–446, 449 Friedan, Betty, 176 Fry, Tony, 60, 67, 263, 274, 327, 346, 443, 448 Fuad‐Luke, Alistair, 277 Futerra, 441 Futurists, 36, 56 Galliano, John, 93 Games, Abram, 194 Garland, Ken, 306 Garner, T, 347 Garton Ash, Timothy, 14 Gaultier, Jean‐Paul, 93 Gauntlett, David, 378 Gaver, Bill, 64 Geertz, Clifford, 246 Gehry, Frank, 195 Gelber, Stephen, 375 Geographic Information Systems (GIS), 200

geology, 32 geopolitics, 222 Geraci, Robert, 143, 147–148, 150 Gerdes, Kendall, 335, 343 German Office for Measurement and Product Testing, 273 Gerritsen, Anne, 219–222 Gibson, William, 141 Gilroy, Paul, 81 Gordon, Beverly, 398 Gothic Revival, 32, 36 Gould, Nicholas, 266–267 Graeber, David, 241, 243, 245, 247, 251, 253 Graham, Mark, 333 Grandin, Temple, 227–228 Graves, Michael, 463 Gray, Ann, 235 Great Exhibition, London (1851), 191–192 Greenberg, Clement, 36 Greenfield, Adam, 234–5 Grindon, Gavin, 16, 231–234 Gropius, Walter, 36, 337 Grosz, Elizabeth, 149, 153, 398 Gruen, Victor, 112, 116–118, 132 Gruppo, 9999 277 Guattari, Felix, 247 Guins, Raiford, 270 Guldi, Jo, 261–262, 264 Guth, Christine, 21, 26 Hackney, Fiona, 14, 377 Hadid, Zaha, 195, 407 Halberstam, Jack (aka Judith) Halberstam, 337 Hall, Peter, 219, 229 Hall, Stuart, 247 Halperin, David M, 334 Hammer, Robert Dead of Night (1945), 357–360, 362–365, 368–370 Haraway, Donna, 150, 234 Hård, Mikael, 271–272 Hardin, Garrett, 58 Harvard University, 230 Harwood, Buie, 403–404 Hayakawa, S. I. 365

◼◼◼ INDEX 483

Hayden, Dolores, 398 Hayles, Katherine, 219, 235 Heatherwick, Thomas, 197 Hebdige, Dick, 292, 305, 315 Heidegger, Martin, 54, 219 Hellman, Mimi, 226–227 Herzog & de Meuron, 194 Heskett, John, 400 Hiemstra, Erin, 341–342 Highmore, Ben, 268–269 Hindle, Tim, 61 Hine, Thomas, 359 Hochschule für Gestaltung, Ulm, 460–461 Hodge, Brooke, 396 Hofer, Johannes, 34 Hoffmann, Josef, 196 Holl, Steven, 165–166 Hopkins Architects, 201 Hoppen, Kelly, 319 Horan, Thomas, 145 Houze, Rebecca, 307–308 Hume, David, 459, 465, 470–473 Huntington, Samuel, 76–77 Huppatz, D. J. 260–261, 307, 400 Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), 9–10, 27, 142 IKEA, 173–174, 182 Illustrator, 9–10 Ilyin, Natalia, 33 Imperial Royal Museum of Art and Industry, Vienna, 462 Independent Group, 1–2 Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique, 366 Interior Design Educators Council (IDEC), 403 Interior Design/Interior Architecture Educators Association, 404 International Committee for Design History and Design Studies (ICDHS), 84–85 International Federation of Interior Designers (IFI), 393 International Olympic Committee (IOC), 191 International Style, 337 Irigaray, Luce, 397

Italian Radical Design, 277 Iwamoto, Lisa, 407 Jackson, Andrew, 377 Jacob, Sam, 36 Jacobs, Jane, 116–117 Jacobs, Wendy, 227–228 Jameson, Frederic, 4, 45, 112, 130–131 Jobling, Paul, 305 Johnson, Jim, 243 Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), 312 Jones, Amelia, 1–2 Jones, Ann Rosalind, 225–226 Jones, Michelle, 319 Jørgensen, Finn Arne, 254, 272 Julier, Guy, 19 Jump, Amy, 318 Kanazawa (Japan), 9–10, 18 Kandinsky, Wassily, 56 Kapoor, Anish, 195, 201 Kassarjian, Harold, 245 Kaur, Jasleen, 231 Kawakubo, Rei, 343 Keats, John, 315 Keen, Andrew, 381 Kellerman, Aharon, 141 Kelly, Jessica, 305–306 Kennedy Violich Architecture (KVA), 169–170 Kikuchi, Yuko, 21 Kimbell, Lucy, 17 Kingston University, 402 Kirk, Andrew, 276 Kneale, James, 142 Knight, Frank, 55 Knoll, Florence, 227, 396, 404 Knott, Stephen, 373, 377 Koetter, Fred, 113 Kōichi, Iwabuchi, 78–79 Kopytoff, Igor, 270 Kruger, Barbara, 439 Kubrick, Stanley, 45, 114 Barry Lyndon (1975), 45 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), 361 Kundig, Tom, 168–169

484

◼ ◼ ◼ I N D E X

Kurman, Melba, 151–153 Kurzweil, Ray, 55 Labrague, Michelle, 276 Lasegue, Charles, 34 Latour, Bruno, 225, 242–243, 247–250 Lauren, Ralph, 343 Leadbeater, Charles, 381–383 Le Corbusier, 112, 115–116, 300, 316, 319, 337 Lee, Ang, 83 Lees‐Maffei, Grace, 260–261, 403 Lefler, Heinrich, 462–463 Light, Jennifer, 146 Lippard, Lucy, 44 Lipson, Hod, 151–153 Liver Birds, The (1969–1979), 178 Lloyd, Genevieve, 398 London College of Communication (LCC), 331 Loos, Adolf, 460, 462–463, 468 Love, Heather, 335 Low Impact Living Affordable Community, 67 Lucsko, David, 272 Lupton, Ellen, 379, 383 Lury, Celie, 65 Mace, Ronald, 336 MacGregor, Neil, 221 Maldonado, Tomas, 59, 277 Malevich, Kazmir, 56, 113 Malle, Louis, 43–44 Lacombe Lucien, 43 Malpass, Matt, 63 Man About the House (1973–1976), 178 Mandeville, Bernard, 355 Maniaque‐Benton, Caroline, 276 Mantel, Hilary, 464 Manzini, Ezio, 24, 65, 449 Marenko, Betti, 235–236 Margolin, Victor, 51, 53–54, 261–262 Markussen, Thomas, 65 Marshall, Justin, 384 Martin, Leslie, 305 Marx, Leo, 35 Mary Tyler Moore Show, The (1970–1977), 177–178

Mason, Paul, 389–390 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 227 Massey, Anne, 263–264, 274, 357 material culture, 218–220, 223, 261, 437 Mathu, Eluid, 96 Matthew, Robert, 194 Maugham, Syrie, 360 Mauss, Marcel, 247 Mazrui, Ali, 96 McAtee, Cammie, 227 McCall, Anthony, 159–160 Line Describing a Cone, 160, 166–167 McCartney, Stella, 203 McCloud, Kevin, 319 McCracken, Grant, 300 McDonough, William, 269 McDougal, Julian, 307 McLuhan, Marshall, 315 McMillan, Michael, 180 McNeil, Peter, 398, 401–402 McQueen, Alexander, 294 Mears, Patricia, 396 Meikle, Jeffrey, 274 Mendini, Alessandro, 474–474 Merleau‐Ponty, Maurice, 225 Michael, Mike, 64 Micklethwaite, Paul, 263–264, 274 Milan Design Feira, 191 Mill, John Stuart, 466, 473 Miller, Daniel, 179, 247 Miller, Elizabeth, 65 Miller, Herman, 396 Miller, Peter, 221 Millionaires’ Mansions (2016), 366 Milton, John, 470 Mitchell, William J. 144–145, 149 Mitew, Teodor, 219, 235 Moderna Museet (Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm), 339, 345 Moloney, Jules, 400 Mondrian, Piet, 36 Morris, William, 65, 265–267, 319, 395 Moses, Robert, 114 Mourgue, Olivier, 361 M’Sa, Sakina, 95, 102–104, 107

◼◼◼ INDEX 485

Murray, Jeff, 244 Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA), 230 Are Clothes Modern? exhibition, 295 ITEMS: Is Fashion Modern? exhibition, 295–296 Musk, Elon, 55 Narotzky, Viviana, 272 National Centre for Craft and Design in Sleaford, UK, 385 National Council for Interior Design Qualification (NCIDQ), 404 Naylor, Gillian, 306–308 New York World’s Fair, 57, 114, 126 Ngxokolo, Laduma, 99–101 Nietzsche, Fredrich, 54 Nochlin, Linda, 397 Nolli, Giambattista, 112 North Carolina State University, 336 Oakley, Peter, 367 Obata, Gyo, 119 Ogilby, John, 470 O’Guinn, Tom, 245 Oldenziel, Ruth, 271–272 Olowu, Duro, 95, 97 Olson Kundig see Kundig, Tom Organization of Lesbian and Gay Architects and Designers (OLGAD), 347–348 Oropallo, Gabriele, 277–278 Orr, David, 262, 278 Ozanne, Julie, 244 Pacey, Philip, 376–377 Pallasmaa, Juhani, 165 Palmowski, Jan, 13, 18, 23, 26 Pamuk, Orhan, 234 Papanek, Victor, 59, 277, 406, 448, 450–451, 460–462 Parrinder, Monika, 20 Parsons School of Design, New York, 296 Patmore, Derek, 318–319 Pavitt, Jane, 14 Perec, Georges, 157 Perez‐Gomez, Alberto, 165–166

Pevsner, Nikolaus, 305–309 Phuong, Dinh Quoc, 400 Plange, Mimi, 104–107 Plant, Sadie, 150 Plato, 140–141, 148 Poiret, Paul, 93 Polanski, Roman, 44 Chinatown (1974), 44 Popova, Ilya, 56 popular culture, 32, 43, 79, 114, 270, 284–285, 338 Portman, John, 116 Poster, Mark, 142 Potts, Tracey, 174 Prada, 364–365 Preston, Julieanna, 166, 399–400, 405 Price, Cedric, 209 Pugin, A,W.N. 33, 314 Quinn, Bradley, 55–56 Rabanne, Paco, 58 Raby, Fiona, 62–64, 67 Race, Ernest, 194 Ranciere, Jacques, 67 Rathausky, Hans, 463 Ratti, Carlo, 400 Rea, Herbert, 192 Reeves, Stuart, 64 Reilly, Paul, 306 Reynolds, Simon, 43 Rice, Charles, 399 Richards, James Maude, 305 Ricoeur, Paul, 247 Riello, Giorgio, 22, 220–221 Rietveld, Gerrit, 196 Rising Damp (1974–1978), 178 Ritzer, George, 313 Robins, Kevin, 184 Rocamora, Agnes, 314 Rockefeller Jr, John D. 36 Rococo Revival, 33 Rodchenko, Aleksandr, 56 Rosner, Victoria, 185, 226 Rothfel, Hans, 26 Rothschild, Henry, 306 Rowe, Colin, 113 Rowntree, Diana, 396, 402

486

◼ ◼ ◼ I N D E X

Royal College of Art, London, 300, 403 Rubin, Gayle, 347 Ruskin, John, 264–265 Russell, Gordon, 300, 306 Saarinen, Eero, 227 Sadler, Stephen, 277 Sage, John Philip, 331–333 Saha, Kshudiram, 162–163 Said, Edward, 75–76 Saint Laurent, Yves, 42, 44, 93 Saisselin, Rémy G. 469 Samuel, Raphael, 41–42, 48, 357 Sanders, Joel, 398–398 Sandino, Linda, 15 Scanlon, Jennifer, 304 Scarpa, Carlo, 169, 196 Scarry, Elaine, 249 Schatzki, Theodore, 250 Scholze, Jana, 19 Schönthaler Jr, Franz, 463 School of Visual Arts, New York, 300 Schwartz, Peter, 63–64 Schwartz Cowan, Ruth, 267 science fiction, 57, 63 Scott, Felicity, 276 Scruton, Roger, 147 Seddon, Jill, 305 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 334, 347 Seeger, George, 460 Selfridges department store, London, 342–344, 439 Seller, Susan, 304 Sennett, Richard, 175, 377 Sese Seko, Mobutu, 96 Sherry, John, 245 Shih, Shu‐mei, 78, 82–83 Shove, Elizabeth, 250, 254 Sidlauskas, Susan, 396 Silverstein, Michael J, 359 Skype, 446–447, 449 Smith, David Woodruff, 163–164 Socarides, Charles, 341 Society of Industrial Artists (SIA), 375 Sombart, Werner, 355 Somerset House, London, 231 Sontag, Susan, 45

Sottsass, Ettore, 462, 474–475 Sparke, Penny, 2–3, 398–399, 401–402, 406, 469 Speight, Sadie, 305–306, 309 Spohr Readman, Kristina, 13, 15, 18, 23, 26 Staley, David, 57 Stallybrass, Peter, 225–226 Stanford University, 333 Stebbins, Robert, 374 Stoller, Aaron, 422 Stretton, Graham, 403 Strong, Glenda, 402 Studio Job, 369–370 Sudjic, Deyan, 196, 310, 457–458, 473 Superstudio, 277 Tatlin, Vladimir, 56 Taylor, Diana, 326–327 Tesla, 445–446, 449–450 Thackara, John, 446, 449 Thill, Brian, 268 Thomas, Juliette, 366, 368 Thompson, Craig J, 244–248 Thompson, Emine Mine, 143–144, 149 Thompson, Michael, 38–39, 270 Thomson, Ellen Mazur, 304 3D printing, 65, 151–152, 380, 383–384, 387–388 Tick, Suzanne, 337, 344 Toffler, Alvin, 36 Tonkinwise, Cameron, 64, 249–250, 252 Toogood, Faye, 342–343, 347 Toulis, Tad, 383 Traganou, Jilly, 14 Transformative Consumer Research (TCR), 247 Trentmann, Frank, 221–3 Trischler, Helmuth, 263 Trompette, Pascale, 254 Tschumi, Bernard, 464 Tsutsumi, Maiko, 20 Turkle, Sherry, 147 Turner, Fred, 276 Turpin, John, 396, 401, 404 Twemlow, Alice, 309, 312, 462

◼◼◼ INDEX 487

Ulrich, Neal, 333 UNESCO, 192 University of Applied Arts Vienna, 462 Unver, Ertu, 384 Urban Design Group (UDG), 202 Urban, Josef, 463 Usherwood, Barbara, 304 Utility Scheme, 273 Vaccaro, Jeanne, 331, 335 Van de Velde, Henry, 174 van Toorn, Jan, 65 Veblen Thorstein, 353 Venice Biennale, 191–192 Venturi, Robert, 463 Victoria and Albert Museum (London), 15, 193, 306 Alexander McQueen, 294 Disobedient Objects exhibition, 16, 231–234 Dundee development, 193 Olympic Park, 200 Rapid Response Collecting initiative, 15, 17, 25 You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels, 1966–1970 exhibition, 276–277 Virilio, Paul, 143 visual culture, 260 Wagenfeld, Malte, 166 Walker, Stuart, 443, 447–448, 452–453

Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia exhibition, 276–277 Wallendorf, Melanie, 245 Warde, Alan, 241 Watabe, Chiharu, 11, 15 Waugh, Evelyn, 316 Wax, Amy, 462, 468 Webb, Philip, 395 Weinthal, Lois, 402–403, 406 Weiser, Mark, 61–62 Wheatley, Ben, 318 Whistler, Rex, 363 Whiteley, Nigel, 273 Wilde, Oscar, 333 Wilk, Richard, 241 Williams, Alex, 464 Willis, Anne‐Marie, 274 Wills, Sara, 267 Wilner, Sarah, 245 Wilson, Elizabeth, 285, 356 Wilson, Mark, 468–469 The Wizard of Oz, 157–159, 161, 166, 169 Wood, Joanna, 366 Woodham, Jonathan, 319, 374–375 Woods, Mary N. 403 World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), 59–60 Yoshimi, Takeuchi, 79 Zimring, Carl, 271, 274 Zumthor, Peter, 164–165, 167 Zwinger, Theodor, 34

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