Alastair Fuad-Luke: Design Activism: Beautiful Strangeness for a Sustainable World (2009)

Design academics and practitioners are facing a multiplicity of challenges in a dynamic, complex, world moving faster than the current design paradigm which is largely tied to the values and imperatives of commercial enterprise. Current education and practice need to evolve to ensure that the discipline of design meets sustainability drivers and equips students, teachers and professionals for the near-future. New approaches, methods and tools are urgently required as sustainability expands the context for design and what it means to be a ‘designer’. Design activists, who comprise a diverse range of designers, teachers and other actors, are setting new ambitions for design. They seek to fundamentally challenge how, where and when design can catalyse positive impacts to address sustainability. They are also challenging who can utilise the power of the design process. To date, examination of contemporary and emergent design activism is poorly represented in the literature. This book will provide a rigorous exploration of design activism that will re-vitalise the design debate and provide a solid platform for students, teachers, design professionals and other disciplines interested in transformative (design) activism. Design Activism provides a comprehensive study of contemporary and emergent design activism. This activism has a dual aim – to make positive impacts towards more sustainable ways of living and working; and to challenge and reinvigorate design praxis,. It will collate, synthesise and analyse design activist approaches, processes, methods, tools and inspirational examples/outcomes from disparate sources and, in doing so, will create a specific canon of work to illuminate contemporary design discourse. Design Activism reveals the power of design for positive social and environmental change, design with a central activist role in the sustainability challenge. Inspired by past design activists and set against the context of global-local tensions, expressions of design activism are mapped. The nature of contemporary design activism is explored, from individual/collective action to the infrastructure that supports it generating powerful participatory design approaches, a diverse toolbox and inspirational outcomes. This is design as a political and social act, design to enable adaptive societal capacity for co-futuring.

Publisher Earthscan, 2009
ISBN 1844076458, 9781844076451
244 pages

interview with the author (Juha Huuskonen, April 2012)

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PDF (updated on 2012-10-30)

Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model (2009)

The Bauhaus—founded inWeimar in 1919, located in Dessau beginning in 1925, and closed in Berlin in 1933—continues to be the most effective and successful export article of twentieth-century German culture. Even more than seventy years after it was closed, this interdisciplinary school for art, architecture, design, and theater has not lost any of its currentness.

On the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus, this profusely illustrated, comprehensive publication with over three hundred color illustrations reexamines and reevaluates the art school’s history and influence. In this collaborative project by the three leading institutes at the former sites of the Bauhaus’s activities—the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, and the Bauhaus-Museum der Klassik Stiftung Weimar—the historic Bauhaus and the trail of its reception are closely examined and analyzed based on sixty-eight selected highlights, including the hitherto neglected aspects of the Bauhaus during the period of National Socialism as well as its international propagation and commercialization.

Texts by Barry Bergdoll, Klaus von Beyme, Regina Bittner, Gerda Breuer, Magdalena Droste, Peter Hahn, Christine Hopfengart, Christoph Ingenhoven, Michael Siebenbrodt, Klaus Weber.

Edited by Bauhaus-Archiv Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin / Museum für Gestaltung, Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
With an introduction by Annemarie Jaeggi
Publisher Hatje Cantz Verlag, Germany, 2009
ISBN 978-3-7757-2414-2
376 pages

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PDF (updated on 2012-7-18)

G. James Daichendt: Artist-Teacher: A Philosophy for Creating and Teaching (2010)

“The philosophy of the artist-teacher is not a new phenomenon. In fact, many artists working within the Bauhaus, nineteenth century Schools of Design, and The Basic Design Movement all applied this method of thinking to their teaching. The Artist-Teacher explores the many facets of this methodology, and the various ways art has been taught over the centuries, using several important artist-teachers (George Wallis, Walter Gropius, Richard Hamilton, Hans Hoffman) to illustrate the rich and deep ways artists are able to facilitate learning.”

Publisher Intellect Books, 2010
ISBN 1841503134, 9781841503134
160 pages

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PDF (updated on 2015-12-12)