Design and the Question of History - Paperback

by Tony Fry (Author), Clive Dilnot (Author), Susan Stewart (Author)

Design and the Question of History is not a work of Design History. Rather, it is a mixture of mediation, advocacy and polemic that takes seriously the directive force of design as an historical actor in and upon the world. Understanding design as a shaper of worlds within which the political, ethical and historical character of human being is at stake, this text demands radically transformed notions of both design and history. Above all, the authors posit history as the generational site of the future. Blindness to history, it is suggested, blinds us both to possibility, and to the foreclosure of possibilities, enacted through our designing.

The text is not a resolved, continuous work, presented through one voice. Rather, the three authors cut across each other, presenting readers with the task of disclosing, to themselves, the commonalities, repetitions and differences within the deployed arguments, issues, approaches and styles from which the text is constituted. This is a work of friendship, of solidarity in difference, an act of cultural politics. It invites the reader to take a position - it seeks engagement over agreement.

Author Biography

Tony Fry is an adjunct professor, Griffith University, Brisbane and is a visiting professor at several universities internationally. Tony has published ten books, including Becoming Human by Design (Bloomsbury, 2012), Design as Politics (Bloomsbury, 2010) and Design Futuring (Bloomsbury, 2008).

Clive Dilnot is professor of Design Studies at Parsons The New School for Design, New York, USA. Recent publications include Ethics? Design? (2005) and the text for Chris Killip: Pirelli Work (2007).

Susan C. Stewart is Director of Postgraduate Studies and Curriculum Development, Design School, University of Technology Sydney, Australia.