DESIGN AS FUTURE-MAKING Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2014 © Susan Yelavich and Barbara Adams, 2014 Susan Yelavich and Barbara Adams have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-0-8578-5838-2 PB: 978-0-8578-5839-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this book. Design by Evelin Kasikov Printed and bound in India Edited by Susan Yelavich and Barbara Adams DESIGN AS FUTURE-MAKING LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY Table of Contents 6 Acknowledgments 9 Foreword Arjun Appadurai 12 Introduction Susan Yelavich CRAFTING CAPACITIES 18 Barbara Adams 25 Thinking Differently about Life: Design, Biomedicine, and “Negative Capability” Elio Caccavale and Tom Shakespeare 36 Unmapping Sean Donahue 47 Fashion Hacking Otto von Busch 58 Digital Crafting and the Challenge to Material Practices Mette Ramsgard Thomsen 66 Petrified Curtains, Animate Architextiles Susan Yelavich SHIFTING GEOGRAPHIES 82 Susan Yelavich 89 Urban Ecologies: Quatre systèmes de conception pour la fabrication de “la Cité” William Morrish 107 Architecture of Informality Ivan Kucina 116 The Trans/Local Geography of Olympic Dissent: Activism, Design, Affect Jilly Traganou and Grace Vetrocq Tuttle 128 Garments as Agents of Change: Lucia Cuba Hazel Clark 139 Returning Duchamp’s Urinal to the Bathroom? On the Reconnection of Artistic Experimentation, Social Responsibility, and Institutional Transformation Teddy Cruz 149 Sze Tsung Leong and Susan Yelavich Interview UP-ENDING SYSTEMS 178 Barbara Adams 185 Reasons to Be Cheerful, 1, 2, 3 . . .* (Or Why the Artificial May Yet Save Us) Clive Dilnot 198 Design Away Cameron Tonkinwise 214 Pace Layers Bruce Sterling 225 Forms of Space and Time Anna Barbara 233 “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.” Systemic Complexity and the Irregularities of Scale Jamer Hunt 242 Afterword: The Designer and the Designed Tim Marshall 246 Endnotes 250 Bibliography 251 Contributor Biographies 256 Index ACKNOWLEDGMENTS S T N E M G We wish to express our gratitude and appreciation to our colleagues, friends, D E L and families, without whose encouragement, patience, and support this book W O would not have been possible. Design as Future-Making grew out of a significant KN C Parsons initiative begun in the fall of 2005—a course titled Global Issues in A Design and Visuality in the 21st Century: Culture. With the support of Tim Marshall, in his capacity then as dean of Parsons, and of Hazel Clark, former dean of Parsons’ School of Art and Design History, scholars and practitioners from around the globe came to New York to share the ways in which their practices reflect and intervene in the complex changes brought on by this particular moment of globalization. Collectively, their work amounted to nothing less than a reconsideration of design’s capacities to change social and cultural value systems in a world increasingly dominated by one value system, namely that of themarketplace. Out of those multifarious conversations emerged a groundswell of voices calling for a more expansive and relevant role for design and designers— one that is more fully situated in the social, political, and environmental contexts of the people with whom they work. So our first debt of gratitude is to the contributors to this volume: Arjun Appadurai, Anna Barbara, Elio Caccavale, Stephen Talasnik, Cluster, 2013, detail, pencil. Courtesy Stephen Talasnik. 7 Hazel Clark, Teddy Cruz, Clive Dilnot, Sean Donahue, Jamer Hunt, Ivan Kucina, Sze Tsung Leong, TimMarshall, William Morrish, Tom Shakespeare, Mette Ramsgard Thomsen, Bruce Sterling, Cameron Tonkinwise, Jilly Traganou, Grace Vetrocq Tuttle, and Otto von Busch. Hazel Clark, in particular, receives our special thanks for her encouragement to pursue this project as a book. At the time she suggested the idea, Parsons’ Masters of Arts in Design Studies was in the process of inception. Now that the MA Design Studies is a reality, this project has immediate relevancy to a new and growing body of scholars of design at Parsons and around the world. Another early supporter, and briefly a collaborator as well, was Julia Dault. A treasured friend and colleague, Julia has since left Parsons to devote her energies to her highly successful career as an artist. We thank her specifically for her help during the critical stage of framing the book’s thematicstructure. Of course, translating this collection into a cohesive volume in such a way that it will appeal to an audience as diverse as its contributors requires conscientious and meticulous attention to language. In this, we were especially D fortunate to be able to rely on the considerable editing talents of Thomas F. E S IG Reynolds, a long-time colleague of Susan’s. We thank him for his patience, N A his eye and ear for locution on the page, and his camaraderie throughout. S F Thanks are also due to Parsons MA Design Studies student Komal Sharma for U T U her expeditious photo research and technical support in the final stages of R E -M manuscriptpreparation. A KIN For making it possible to present their ideas as a publication, we want to G extend deep and sincere thanks to Rebecca Barden, our editor at Bloomsbury in London, as well as to her assistant, Abbie Sharman. We recognize that publications such as this one require a faith in ideas as much as a faith in their ability to be taken up and read. Bloomsbury is that rare publisher that isfearless. Lastly, we would be remiss in neglecting to cite our main sources of fortification: Susan’s husband, Michael Casey, and her son, Henry T. Casey, and Barbara’s husband, Xavi Acarín. They are the embodiment of the values wecherish. 8 FOREWORD Arjun Appadurai D R This important collection of essays marks a new moment in design studies in O W E which design is fully conceived as a practice that continuously reimagines its R O F own conditions of possibility. Designers and design scholars have always understood that there is an obvious kinship between design, innovation, and newness and, thus, that design is a natural ally of futurity. The essays in this collection take this insight out of the domain of common sense and move it into the space of creative and criticalreflection. One way in which this space is created is by reopening such issues as ephemerality, artifice, and innovation to deeper scrutiny. Several of the authors use these lenses to suggest that the relationship between fashion and time is not necessarily smooth or coherent but can be asymptotic and critical. In these perspectives, design and temporality can be seen as co-productive, and design can reopen the dialogue between memory, futurity, and newness, rather than serving as a mere mirror of commodifiedduration. In a similar manner, several essays in this volume invite us to rethink the problem of materials and materiality by suggesting that design is not a mere operation upon preexisting materials of an ideal (or idealized) series of creative operations. Rather, whether in the matter of clothing, architecture, or digital design, materiality can be viewed as a design context, and design can be treated as a form of vibration (in the sense of Jane Bennett’s idea of “vibrant matter”) 9