Rosa B, 5: Environment and Design (2014) [French/English]

“Rosa B 5 deals with relations between the environment and design following the Aspen conference in 1970.

Around 1970, in France and on an international level, in all industrialized countries, the environment became a primordial question. Debates aiming to define principles and ways of approaching the issue gave rise to theoretical and conceptual tension. They crystallized the economic and political problems born of the connection taking shape between modernity and nature. In France in 1968 the Ministère des Affaires Culturelles founded the Institut de l’Environnement, a center for education and research proposing a new approach to teaching urban planning, architecture, design and communication, in response to new challenges intrinsic to a “sensitive environment.”

In 1970, the IDCA (the International Design Conference in Aspen) presented a program called Environment by design. In response to an invitation by the IDCA, the French delegation, led by designer Roger Tallon, took a position through a declaration written by Jean Baudrillard. The French delegation’s declaration, in association with the reactions and demonstrations of students and environmental activists at the conference, marked a turning point for the Aspen meetings.

Issue no. 5 of Rosa B takes the form of an archive, updating historical documents that put current debates on the fabrication of the environment into perspective. With texts and contributions by Peio Aguirre, Martin Beck, Gilles de Bure, Sheila Levrant de Breteville, Monique Eleb, Pierre Lascoumes, Jeanne Quéheillard, and a ‘carte blanche’ to Benjamin Tong with the calarts archives.” (from announcement)

Conceived by Peio Aguirre and Jeanne Quéheillard
Publisher Guadalupe Echevarria & Charlotte Laubard, Bordeaux, 2014

HTML (English, updated on 2017-11-29)
HTML (French, updated on 2017-11-29)

René Spitz: The View Behind the Foreground: The Political History of the Ulm School of Design, 1953-1968 (2002) [EN, DE]

“The Ulm School of Design (HfG) has a reputation as the place which, after the Bauhaus, has had the most lasting influence not only on the design of industrially manufactured goods and of services but also on designer training. As a private institution the HfG was different from other contemporary design-focused training centers in that its goal was design based on the humanities and natural sciences, rather than traditional design, whose approach is one that relies on artistic intuition.

At the HfG, designers were trained, design took shape, theories of design were elaborated, and methods of design developed. In speaking of the instruction method used at the HfG and the way designers teamed up with technicians and business people, the terms “Ulm model” or “Ulm concept” are used. But the tangible results of work at the HfG – product and information design – have also set a trend: They are said to have a special “Ulm style”.” (from the back cover)

Publisher Axel Menges, Stuttgart, 2002
ISBN 3932565177, 9783932565175
462 pages

Review: Shantel Blakely (2003).

Publisher
WorldCat (EN)

HfG Ulm: The View Behind the Foreground (English, 87 MB, updated on 2019-2-25)
HfG Ulm. Ein Blick hinter den Vordergrund (German, 82 MB, updated on 2019-2-25)

Reyner Banham: Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 2nd ed. (1960/1967)

First published in 1960, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age has become required reading in numerous courses on the history of modern architecture and is widely regarded as one of the definitive books on the modern movement. It has influenced a generation of students and critics interested in the formation of attitudes, themes, and forms which were characteristic of artists and architects working primarily in Europe between 1900 and 1930 under the compulsion of new technological developments in the first machine age.

Publisher Praeger, New York and Washington, 1960
Second edition, 1967; Second printing, 1970
338 pages

Review (Robert Gardner-Medwin, The Town Planning Review, 1961)
Review (Dennis Young)
Review (Caroline S. Lebar, 2012)
Review (of the 2009 French edition, Hugues Fontenas, Critique d’art, 2010, in French)
Commentary (Gillian Naylor, Journal of Design History, 1997)
Commentary (Nigel Whiteley, 2005)

PDF (50 MB, no OCR)