Full Description
Critical Design is becoming an increasingly influential discipline, affecting policy and practice in a range of fields. Matt Malpass's book is the first to introduce critical design as a field, providing a history of the discipline, outlining its key influences, theories and approaches, and explaining how critical design can work in practice through a range of contemporary examples. Critical Design moves away from traditional approaches that limit design's role to the production of profitable objects, focusing instead on a practice that is interrogative, discursive and experimental. Using a wide range of examples from contemporary practice, and drawing on interviews with key practitioners, Matt Malpass provides an introduction to critical design practice and a manifesto for how a radical and unorthodox practice might provide design answers in an age of austerity and ecological crisis.
Contents
Chapter 1Challenging orthodoxyChallenging colloquialism: the problem with critical designWhat's so critical about critical design practiceWhy study critical design?Researching critical design practice'Critical' in critical design practiceIndustrial design as a disciplineThe structure and approach to writingChapter 2: HistoryA forgotten history of critical design practiceAn emerging critical design practiceChallenging hegemonyAnti-designParticipatory designUnikat Design: adding nothing but the conceptRepresentative designDesign InteractionsCritical Design at the Royal College of ArtSynergies between precedents and contemporary examples of critical designChapter 3: Theories, methods and tacticsDesign as a medium for inquiryPost-optimal design and Para-functionalityRhetorical useDiscursive designThe aesthetics of use and meaningful presenceExploratory potentialDesign fictionSpeculation and propositionConstructing publicsAmbiguityChapter 4: Criticism, function and disciplineDesign ArtDesign art and societyFunction in critical design practiceThe paradox of critical design in commercial useModelling the fieldDesign at usersDirecting critique through design practiceChapter 5: PracticeAssociative designSpeculative designCritical designDesign practice as satireThe uses of narrativeRationality and ambiguityTowards a taxonomy of critical practices in designThe taxonomy as an analytical toolApplications of the taxonomyChapter 6: Critical design practice and its disciplinary contributionSummaryChallenging disciplinary orthodoxyAn extended role for industrial design: discipline, science and societyBibliography
