Design and the Question of History - (Design, Histories, Futures) by Tony Fry & Clive Dilnot & Susan Stewart (Paperback)

About the Book

"Design and the Question of History offers a new perspective on the historical significance of design, showing how design is an agent of historical change rather than a single aspect. Despite a historical sensibility being essential in making critical and directional choices, Design History presents an extremely selective view, which cannot deliver the historical knowledge to sufficiently and sensitively inform designers and design thinkers' practice. Focusing on how the relationship between design and history is understood and presented, this book uses a methodological approach to address this problem. The book covers the issue of history and how design in history needs to be understood by recognising that design is always historically embedded in a relational context; the efficacy of Design History as a sub-discipline within design; and the delivery of a more substantial historical sensibility to emergent designers, identifying the pedagogic problems it presents and discussing the agency of such knowledge in practice. This book is the flagship of the Design, History & Futures series, edited by Tony Fry, Lisa Norton and Anne-Marie Willis"--

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"A forceful and inspiringly articulated set of essays ... Compelling and insightful." --Journal of Design History

"This is a work of intense and vital scholarship. Fry, Dilnot and Stewart cut to the heart of what is at stake in how we question design, history, and the future. Design history will either rise to the challenge of this book or fade into irrelevance." --Matthew Kiem, University of Technology Sydney: Insearch, Australia

"The provocative essays in this volume are at once a critique of history and a call for its relevance to the present and future. Within the provocation is the question of how design and its history can inform our actions in a world that presents extreme difficulties but also unprecedented opportunities to create a positive future." --Victor Margolin, University of Illinois, USA

"Design and the Question of History offers an ambitious, compelling, and urgent challenge to design studies and to history. The world we live in has been fashioned and fabricated by design. The futures we can live are determined by these histories. This is scholarship that matters." --Ben Highmore, University of Sussex, UK

"This is unashamedly a work of design philosophy. In fact, it is exactly the kind of philosophy that is needed now, as it confronts vital issues not just for design and the 'post-discipline' of history, but also of 'now' and the future. Fry, Dilnot and Stewart approach their common project with different voices, their passion and seriousness shining throughout." --Anne- Marie Willis, German University in Cairo, Egypt

"Design and the Question of History argues that the world we inhabit, and its devastation, are thoroughly a product of design. This claim requires a rewriting of the relation between history and design, from which there emerges a powerful ontologically-oriented view of design that may lead us into entirely novel ways of worlding and visions of the human." --Arturo Escobar, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA

About the Author

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.