Elizabeth Resnick - The Social Design Reader

THE SOCIAL DESIGN READER

This book is dedicated to the memory of my colleague, mentor, and friend

Albert J. Gowan (19342017)

Professor Emeritus, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston
Author of Victor Papanek: Path of a Design Prophet

THE SOCIAL DESIGN READER

Edited by
Elizabeth Resnick

CONTENTS

Elizabeth Resnick

Cameron Tonkinwise

Victor Margolin

Alison J. Clarke

Elizabeth Resnick

Ken Garland

Ken Garland

Victor Papanek

Clive Dilnot

Nigel Cross

Victor Papanek

John Heskett

Richard Buchanan

Katherine McCoy

Nigel Whiteley

Andrew Howard

Jan van Toorn

Anthony Dunne

Elizabeth Resnick

Victor Margolin and Sylvia Margolin

Jorge Frascara

William McDonough and Michael Braungart

Kate Fletcher

Ann Thorpe

Daniela Sangiorgi

Lucy Kimbell

Lucy Kimbell

Erling Bjgvinsson, Pelle Ehn, and Per-Anders Hillgren

Guy Julier

Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall

Cinnamon Janzer and Lauren Weinstein

Pedro J. S. Vieira de Oliveira and Luiza Prado de O. Martins

Luiza Prado de O. Martins

Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders

Ezio Manzini

Ahmed Ansari

Terry Irwin

This collection of seminal texts simply could not have been possible without the very generous support of all the contributors to this effort: Ahmed Ansari, Erling Bjrgvinsson, Gui Bonsiepe, Scott Boylston, Max Bruinsma, Michael Braungart, Richard Buchanan, Sharon Burdett, Valerie Casey, Jonanthan Chapman, Alison J. Clarke, Nigel Cross, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Decolonising Design, Clive Dilnot, Carl DiSalvo, Kees Dorst, Anthony Dunne, Pelle Ehn, Joost Elffers, David Evans, Terence Fenn, Kate Fletcher, Jorge Frascara, Alastair Fuad-Luke, Nick Gant, Ken Garland, John Heskett, Per-Anders Hillgren, Jason Hobbs, Stefan Holmlid, Andrew Howard, Gordon Hush, Terry Irwin, Tim Jackson, Cinnamon Janzer, Guy Julier, Lucy Kimbell, Ilpo Koskinen, Diana Krabbendam, Klaus Krippendorff, Kalle Lasn, Ezio Manzini, Victor Margolin, Katherine McCoy, William McDonough, Ivica Mitrovic, Chantal Mouffe, David Oswald, Rev. Nicolette Papanek/Victor Papanek, Luiza Prado de O. Martins, Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders, Daniela Sangiorgi, Michiel Schwarz, Ann Thorpe, Cameron Tonkinwise, Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall, Jan van Toorn, Pedro Vieira de Oliveira, Lauren Weinstein, and Nigel Whiteley.

There are a few individuals who deserve special thanks for their encouragement and advice during the book project: Lisa Abendroth, Fatima Cassim, Audra Buck Coleman, Annelys de Vet, Ariel Guersenzvaig, Terry Irwin, Jackie Malcolm, Massimo Santanicchia, and Victor Margolin for his patience with my questions and frequent requests for advice.

I am indebted to my editor, Rebecca Barden, for giving me this unique opportunity to create The Social Design Reader . I wish to thank her editorial assistant, Claire Constable for keeping me on track and for all the small things she helped me with during the course of this project.

And, I am very grateful and thankful to my husband, Victor Cockburn, and my adult children, Alex and Elana, who all endured my distraction and frequent spells of anxiety with encouragement and grace.

FIGURES

TABLES

The Social Design Reader is an anthology of key writings written over the past fifty-five years by leading proponents, researchers, and practitioners shaping the emergence of socially responsible design as a concept, as a nascent field of study, and as a developing discipline within professional design practice.

During the past thirty-five years, there has been a tsunami of books published on the subject of designexpounding on its critical nature, its history, its technology, and its continuously evolving culture of professional practice and significant practitioners. Art and design libraries (typically housed in colleges and universities) have archived many of the important international design magazines and academic journals from the early twentieth century to the present day. With the rise of the internet and the demand for easily accessible research materials to build a history of design culture and activity, there has been a vigorous movement toward anthologizing historically significant texts and articles previously published in design magazines and academic journals that are simply not accessible to the public, as many such publications are either out-of-print or housed in private libraries or collections that are very expensive to access.

An anthology is above all, a collaborative work. My aim with this compilation is to bring together a group of authentic voicestheorists, scholars, writers, and designerswho are building a canon of informed literature that documents the genesis and rapid development within this field of study. In concert, these texts build upon the notion that social design is design with a conscience , and, as such, can help the reader understand how design can be employed as a catalyst for social change. Editing an anthology of this nature can be quite a daunting task, especially for someone without experience in this genre and format.

There are many restrictions when framing a compilation of this kind: contracted word count; the stringency of academic permission fee budgets; the availability of key texts; and the ensuing economic and physical challenge to gain permission to republish them. Another contributing factor to the framing of this anthology is its bias for language preferencethe All pivotal criteria that contributed to the selection of what texts to publish.

The crucial advantage to this type of anthology is its ability to feature texts emphasizing the theoretical and discursive dialogue threads from multiple perspectives current within mainstream academic and professional discourse, and those from the margins of the status quo. The texts were reproduced as they had been first publishedwritten in either British English or American English. A unique aspect that emerges from such a diversity of voices is the different and distinctive writing styles that should be embraced by the reader.

Structure of the Reader

The Social Design Reader is divided into three sections:

: Making a Stand: A New Social Agenda for Design includes the introduction to the term social design and papers that explore its historical underpinnings to build a foundation to support the expanding dialogue and embody the social design movement.

: Creating the Future: Defining the Socially Responsible Designer 196499 feature papers that document the emergence of social design as a concept, as a nascent field of study, and as a rapidly developing professional discipline.

: A Sea Change: The Paradigm Shift from Objects to Systems 200020 feature papers that acknowledge design as a firmly established professional discipline. As such, there is an increased need for both quantitative and qualitative research that utilizes strategic and critical thinking as designers are now being challenged to tackle complex social problems during the first two decades of the twenty-first century.

Contextualizing section introductions are provided to assist readers in understanding the nature of the material discussed along with summary messages that articulate how each text fits within the larger milieu of social design theory, methods, and practice.

Key Features

The Social Design Reader brings together previously published seminal papers, essays, articles, and excerpts with a laser focus on the social nature of design to provide the reader with a solid overview of the trajectory and key advancements toward a more human-centered profession.