QUESTION

ING
THE MASTER PROGRAMMES
AT DESIGN ACADEMY EINDHOVEN

DESIGN
 AUTHOR—DESIGNER 4

3
Louise Schouwenberg, Jan Boelen,
Ben Shai van der Wal

BEYOND IDEOLOGICAL NAIVETY AND

DO-GOODISM: CRITICAL REFLECTIONS
ON SOCIAL DESIGN 16
Michael Kaethler

IMAGINING THE REAL 26

Joost Grootens, Gert Staal

WHO CURATES WHAT, WHEN, WHERE,

FOR WHOM, AND HOW? 36
Agata Jaworska, Tamar Shafrir

ARE WORDS THINGS? 44

Tamar Shafrir

QUESTIONING DESIGN
QUESTIONING DESIGN

The Master Programmes

at Design Academy Eindhoven

Edited by
Louise Schouwenberg, Joost Grootens

Authors
Jan Boelen (curator, director Z33, head Social Design),
Joost Grootens (graphic designer, PhD researcher,
head Information Design), Agata Jaworska (curator,
interim co-head Design Curating and Writing), Michael
Kaethler (PhD researcher, thesis tutor Social Design),
Louise Schouwenberg (art and design theorist, head
Contextual Design), Tamar Shafrir (designer, theorist,
interim co-head Design Curating and Writing; tutor
Contextual Design), Gert Staal (theorist, theory tutor
Information Design), Ben van der Wal (literary critic,
lecturer Contextual Design)

Graphic Design
SJG / Joost Grootens, Julie da Silva, Dimitri Jeannottat

Printing
UNICUM

Published by CD Contextual Design

Design Academy Eindhoven, September 2018 SD Social Design
ID Information Design
ISBN 978-94-91400-39-1 DCW Design Curating and Writing
AUTHOR—
Design and Authorship seem to be contradictory notions: The autonomy of the author versus the depen-
dency of the designer, who is confined to a context, commission, and the available means of production.
And yet, Louise Schouwenberg and Jan Boelen, heads of the Master’s programmes in Contextual Design
and Social Design, believe they can unify these contradictory concepts. In the margins of the text there’s
the voice of a relative outsider, Ben Shai van der Wal, adding some critical notes to their reflections….
L Louise Schouwenberg
J Jan Boelen
B Ben Shai van der Wal
L My mother used to have an egg slicer,
which seemed handy, because it would
cut the egg into equal slices. However,
cleaning it required an inordinate amount
of time, which turned it very impractical.
That such an absurdity nevertheless found
its way into the homes of many, like so
many other senseless paraphernalia, is
Jan Boelen, Ben Shai van der Wal
primarily the result of marketing. But does
marketing have anything to do with what
we teach at Design Academy Eindhoven?
Louise Schouwenberg,
The question that brings us here today is:
Why do we need a concept like “author-
designer” to explain our vision on design
education? Why doesn’t the notion of
“designer” suffice?
J Because we want to make a distinction
between designers who follow the prevailing mar-
ket logic unquestioningly, and designers who ques-
tion everything.
L And let themselves be guided by personal
fascination.
J Exactly. It reminds me of students with a
Jewish background. Most of them stand out because
of their critical attitude. They question everything.
Even our curriculum, ad nauseam! I suspect this has
something to do with their culture. Since childhood,
they have been taught to interpret the Torah, time
and again. They aren’t looking for a clear-cut mean-
ing, like the Catholics do when they read the Bible or
the Muslims the Quran. They reinterpret the texts in
the Torah continuously. The Jewish people have had
to survive in many different places in the world and
have had to adjust old laws and interpretations to fit
new contexts, more so than any other religion. [ 1 ]
1 B As a Jew myself, I have some critical questions concern-
ing your observation. Looking back on my life so far, I think I’ve
only read from the Torah a few times. And when I would ask ques-
tions related to Judaism during my youth, the response was similar
DESIGNER
to that of any other religion; “It is written”. And with that, curiosity
was stifled. I do not mean to discredit a general observation with
a personal experience, but perhaps the difference between a Jew
and an Israeli is crucial here. Israeli people are famously con-
trarian. But so are Americans. Americans and Israelis are consid-
ered to be more inclined to become litigious than students from
any other culture. What both these culture share, above all, is a
political preference towards the liberal right. A culture where one
must fight to survive. This critical attitude may then be nothing
more than a symptom of the fight to survive politically as well as
for recognition, and perhaps it is even an existential matter.
Nevertheless, I suspect that someone reading this is already
5
formulating some critical note in their minds. If they then find a
platform to voice their opinions, I’m sure someone else will have
their own objections, and so on, and so on. The point is to keep
interpreting the discourse. In this sense, I have just added to that,
and I’ll let someone else question my interpretation.
L When a text allows for multiple interpreta-
tions, doubt is allowed to become a factor.
This means the quality of an interpretation
is determined by the quality of the argu-
ments used to support it. This sharpens
the mind.
J I suspect that there is a connection be-
tween this questioning attitude and the fact that the
Jewish people have produced some of the most in-
spiring artists, musicians and philosophers. [ 2 ] This
has nothing to do with genetic differences between
ethnicities, but with this attitude, which is consi-
dered a virtue in Jewish culture, and which is passed
on from generation to generation.
2 B It could also be because historically, for many reasons,
the Jews have been famously protectionist. They would favour
trading amongst themselves, ensuring, through wealth and oppor-
tunities, fine educations.
L A questioning attitude is what we aspire
to engender through our curriculum.
Authors don’t just follow the market, which
QUESTIONING DESIGN
continuously demands newness for the
sake of newness, and authors don’t allow
their work to be dictated by technological
limitations, but are driven instead by their
own agenda, changing even the means of
production if necessary. We should also
examine the traditional notion of the
author as an individual who develops their
own vision. The author as mastermind, as
a truly free artist who operates autono-
mously. This idea of the author no longer
seems tenable.
J Every designer marks their work with their
own personal stamp. In this sense, every designer
is also an author, even when the final product is the
result of an algorithm written by the designer.
L For years now, students within the Con-
textual Design programme have designed
themselves out of the design process, as
it were. They let their designs be defined
by, for example, the impermanence of
 natural materials, external influences like
the weather, the mechanical logic of manu-
facturing machines, or, like Giorgio Gasco
currently investigates, let the combination
of gravity and the upward forces of water
define a shape. One would expect an
author to invite such new insights into their
field. To redefine design.
J The quality of a choice decides whether
we are dealing with a good or mediocre author. One
of our Social Design students, Amandine David,
involved a diverse group of people in her graduation
project, each with their own highly specialised field
of expertise, ranging from 3D printing to weaving.
She herself hadn’t designed a thing, but she had
orchestrated the entire project, connecting all those
different experts. Like a film director, or an editor,
she had placed those components in a new hierar-
chy. By doing so, she introduces a new view on the
role of the designer.
L In contrast to the archaic notion of the
author as autonomous artist, designers
usually work within strict, collaborative
frameworks. The designer as author is at
best co-author and is well aware of all oth-
ers included in the process. How much
authorship can one claim? Do graphic
designers have complete freedom to con-
vey what they want as they see fit? Archi-
tects? Product designers?
J An artist’s autonomy is likewise restricted
by the framework and by that which he or she already
knows. No artist starts with a tabula rasa. Just like a
designer, all artists sample a variety of concepts,
shapes and materials.
L The same holds true for the author as
writer. Every author relies on other peo-
ple’s texts, insights which they arrange in
a specific way in order to create their own
text. All the choices in the process of cre-
ating a book are wrought with other voices:
editors, in some cases translators, pub-
lishing houses—all the way down to the
graphic design of the text. Even the most
inconspicuous designer will somehow
leave traces of their own insights, ideas,
aesthetic sensibility and authorship in the
eventual design. Finally, the reader reads
the texts, and their interpretation does not
necessarily coincide with the intentions
of the writer, nor with those of the graphic
designer. The reader introduces their own
baggage, their own context. Here we might
say that, although a book is technically
written by only one person, it really has
multiple authors. [ 3 ]
3 B A writer is dependent on language. Language is text. A
writer is dependent on text in the same way we all depend on text
to formulate our ideas. Those other people, then, those forebears,
as you envision them, can be recognised as being given the
7
privilege of authorship. This privilege of authorship is indeed
bestowed upon certain texts—it fulfils a semantic function, and
therefore is a matter of power. This text on the designer as author,
for instance, is subject to these power relations that govern its
manifestation. Indeed, like you said, editors, publishers and
other writers—we are all huddled around this text like sculptors
with our chisels at the ready. But someone decides what we are
carving. If, for instance, I would take my chisel and hack a groove
that is not to the liking of Boelen and Schouwenberg, who decides
what to do next? To Louise Schouwenberg, I might say something
like “bcdhj ocaiudhsf dabc hsadbc jadbsnck and what not to do”
and she might decide that she doesn’t like my tone or that my
comment distracts too much from the main text, and thus skip it
altogether. Who, then, is in power? Who is the author?
J If we were to draw an analogy between
writing and product design, we might call the
designer the primary author, similar to the writer.
They study and interpret the world around them-
selves, incorporate other people’s interpretations,
and proceed to design something which bespeaks
their vision. Then, the design is subjected to the
interpretation of those involved in the physical pro-
duction process. This, of course, suggests that
authorship is to be regarded as something relative.
Some voices are just louder than others. [ 4 ] Finally,
the user or consumer takes possession of the prod-
uct in his own way, thus adding to the cacophony
of voices.
4 B Roland Barthes has argued that the author is no longer
the one who holds power of the meaning of his own text. The
reader is the one who brings their own interpretation to the text
and thereby, Barthes had famously proclaimed the author as dead.
Foucault has built upon Barthes’ conceptualisation of “The Death
of the Author” and has shifted the question of “who/what is the
author?” to “what function does the designation of authorship
fulfil?” His answer: “the author serves to neutralize the contra- Gradual Unease
dictions that are found in a series of texts. Governing this function Hala Tawil (CD)
is the belief that there must be—at a particular level of an author’s
thought, of his conscious or unconscious desire—a point where Tawil researched the fine line between ‘need’ and ‘want’ in design, and chose as focus the childish
contradictions are resolved, where the incompatible elements imagery of cartoons, props and toys, and erotic imagery, with which they seem to hold an “eerie com-
can be shown to relate to one another or to cohere around a fun- mon ground”. “The images allow us to project our own desires onto their familiar but suggestive, creamy
damental and originating contradiction”. Indeed, we seem to be and glossy shapes. Both types of imagery promise an inaccessible fulfilment of personal desires, and
doing exactly this in our “conversation”; where in the process of we can’t help, on some primal level, but to feel drawn to them and want them.”
defining authorship do we encounter the contradiction of the
multiplicity of authors? This serves to underline the function of
the author in design as one that does not allow for a resolved
contradiction. In fact, perhaps the author’s function in design is
not to “neutralize the contradictions”, but rather to neutralise the
expectation of contradiction through their work. If no design can
QUESTIONING DESIGN
be completely ascribed to one author, then perhaps one of the
main characteristics of an author-designer is that the concept
itself is multiplicitous. An author-designer is someone who
screams, like Whitman famously wrote, “I contain multitudes”.
L The different contexts in which a product
ends up play an important role. There is a
world of difference between looking at the
design of a chair in the context of a mu-
seum, where a curator specifically posi-
tions the cultural artefact so as to imbue
it with meaning and narrative, or in a com-
mercial context, like a furniture fair, where
the object is “sold” with whirling words of
promise. And, of course, the context of
everyday life, in which people actually use
the chair, where the ‘object’ becomes a
‘thing’, and usually disappears in the back-
ground of consciousness. Philosopher
Martin Heidegger differentiates between
isolated ‘objects’, which one can for in-
stance study in a museum, and ‘things’,
 which are connected to other things we
use in daily life. The market has perverted
the idea of the author-designer by merely
focussing on stylistic differences between
isolated objects, ignoring how design only
gets meaning within relationships. When
the aim to create novelty is solely driven
by commercial interests, we end up with
the illusion of originality and the branding
of star designers—a firmament made up
of personality cults.
J Which is usually at odds with true
innovation.
L Not long ago we had a discussion about
the difference between art and design with
Arno van Roosmalen, the director of
Stroom—an art centre in The Hague—
who was involved as an external critic in
the project Peace & Justice. One group of
students had approached the subject con-
ceptually, organising a variety of useless
activities on the field opposite the Peace
Palace, such as endlessly carrying water
buckets from one pond to the other, back
and forth. Each of these activities was
accompanied by a sign that read “Waiting
for Peace & Justice”. Hilarious, but it also
raised some interesting questions. Van
Roosmalen was pleased, but also said he
was initially inclined to be harsh in his crit-
icism, as his first response was that design-
ers were supposed to provide answers and
solutions—not raise more questions. This
is a dated, yet tenacious view on the dif-
ference between art and design, and one
that’s still upheld in the art world.
J Designers can—and even should—posit
Ornament Now
fundamental questions. Only then can they truly
Erika Emerén (CD) change something.
Erika Emerén has researched Modernism in Sweden as part of a bigger social reform. ‘Ornament Now’
L Curiously enough, this notion of the
intends to disturb the pure and to transform the heritage of minimalist Swedish design, by searching author-designer arose at a time when lit-
beyond the canon, looking at everyday crafts: the ones that never entered the cultural institutions.
Knitting, baking, …. A traditional Swedish cake, the Spettekaka (cake on a spit), served as inspiration for
erary and art critics began to have severe
a technically complex project she realized at the EKWC, the European Ceramic WorkCentre in Oisterwijk. doubts about the autonomy of the author
and the artist. Remember the writings of
Bataille and Foucault on authorship. The
idea that a piece of work could be attribu-
ted to multiple authors became widely
accepted within literature and art theory.
While artists developed an awareness of
context and other forces at work in a cre-
ative process, designers were, paradoxi-
cally, seizing autonomy. Within the field of
design, this development has resulted in
nonsensical specimens of ‘design-art’,
usually made of very expensive materials,
testifying of both a misunderstanding of
design and of art. But the increasing quest
for autonomy in design has also led to an
exciting friction between relative auto-
nomy and relative dependence.
It is exactly this friction that students must
9
J
learn to deal with.
L We therefore introduce many different
tutors from various backgrounds, who
deal with a great variety of themes, some
addressing social urgencies, some
addressing abstract notions. In the first
year of Contextual Design, most tutors are
artists, imbuing in our students a sense
of freedom and advancing their imagina-
tion and artistic skills. In my view, people
need to dare to fly high, trespass the bor-
ders of design into other fields of exper-
tise, before they land on solid grounds and
become aware of contextual demands.
J On the other hand, there is still a very real
difference between artists and designers. An artist
may commence with an air of independence, while
the questions that designers struggle with are moti-
vated by personal or external necessity. Design has
implications for human interaction, for the environ-
ment, etcetera, and this is a crucial difference. As a
result, the design practice demands we define auto-
nomy differently from how it’s defined in the arts. As
a designer, you make choices about the position you
claim within the field. At the same time, you are
always part of that field, and you realise that that
very same field has shaped you as a designer.
L The same holds true for the arts.
J The personal choices you make, and the
awareness that those choices are never completely
your own, are part of the concept of autonomy.
Indeed, also for the artist. But with design, the ques-
tions are more urgent, more demanding. Designers
bear the final responsibility.
L Because it is more useful to ask those
questions when it comes to design, in con-
trast to asking questions by means of art?
Doesn’t that mean a designer is also re-
QUESTIONING DESIGN
sponsible for the answers?
J The questions must bear within themselves
the necessity of possible better alternatives.
L “What is critical consciousness at bottom
if not an unstoppable predilection for alter-
natives”, said Edward Said. In his view
“oppositional knowledge” can lead to
activism as it challenges questionable val-
ues in society. Designers can question the
status quo and propose new ways of living
and working. We challenge students to do
just that, and not simply abide with the
existing.
J Then the next question should be: are they
able? Many students are fine thinkers, but they are
unable to translate their visions and reflections to
things like function, shape, colour and material. I
see this as one of the greatest potential pitfalls for
Social Design.
L Some projects never moving beyond a
display of good intentions.
 And those intentions by no means lead to
J J
a liberated image of humanity per se. Look at com-
munism: When the concept of community is lio-
nised too fanatically, the individual is promptly
forgotten. The road to hell is paved with good inten-
tions. This is something I regularly have to remind
my students of.
L With Contextual Design, there is always
the looming danger of too casual a project
without an awareness of social context
and the ideological frame in which one
operates. Sometimes being oblivious can
lead to new insights, but holding on to
obliviousness leads to ignorance. And that
is unforgivable.
J We are more stringent in our demand for
sensible alternatives. At Contextual Design, the
demand is more implicit, or relevant at a later stage.
Sometimes, at Social Design, the “why” question is
asked too early in the process, which then stifles the
imagination, unfortunately.
L In your programme, students are prompted
from the very beginning to question their
political and social-economic reality. We
have noticed that at Contextual Design,
students start by employing artistic strate-
gies like questioning a certain situation
through the medium of film, accompanied
by a collection of associative images. I
think that both programmes, via diverse
journeys, try to teach students to boldly,
and in our case more carefree, claim their
own position, while also realising that
there’s a myriad of consequences and
implications for each decision made. They
have to realise that it’s never just about a
thing—that’s the most important lesson
we can teach them.
J Each thing incorporates a larger narrative.
L I think it was the strength of the conceptual
platform Droog Design in its heyday to
show that design held a reflection on the
world that reaches beyond the thing itself
and also beyond its functionality. Mate-
rials, the traces of production—all com-
ponents of a design incorporate references.
Every design can be ‘read’. Over the years,
this has lead to some moralising ‘concep-
tual’ designs as well as witty ones. Even
though one might argue that the Droog
designs became too readable, and there-
fore started to miss magic and real impact,
and became boring even, this doesn’t take
away from the fact that Conceptual Design
as a movement has triggered a great sense
of awareness. As a designer, you cannot
afford to be naive when it comes to the
script that you implicitly incorporate in
your design. Do you simply adapt to the
status quo or do you aim at changing it?
Shortly before the 2018 edition of Salone
10
11
de Mobile, Vitra organised a retreat in Milan centred
around design, during which some interesting
notions surfaced. The entire Vitra design team was
present: de Bouroullecs, Grcic, Jongerius, former
director Fehlbaum and many others. Implicitly, the
conversation was about design authorship, about
designers who obviously don’t design for them-
selves, who are not merely looking for a way to
express their personality in a recognisable style, but
those who keep asking themselves what their work
means to the world. Erwan Bouroullec explained
how the chairs in his family home in Northern France
had straight, upright backs and neo-gothic tips at
the ends, which gave their users only two options:
they either had to sit as straight as a die, or bent over
the table. That was how they, as young men, were
deemed to sit. It was inescapable. Now, as author-de-
signers, they question the moral codes of the society
in which they grew up as well as today’s society, and
the same goes for every noteworthy designer: they
don’t just make something that will sell easily, they
thematise problems and ask questions.
L Every design incorporates morality, a pre-
scription of how to live that goes beyond
the plain functionality of the thing. Kon-
stantin Grcic is very explicit about this. A Basic Instinct
Rather than trying to shape objects, he Anna Aagaard Jensen (CD)
tries to shape experiences, primarily in Reference images from the research project A Basic Instinct. For her graduation, Anna Aagaard Jensen
order to speculate about future living and has investigated how postures of men and women reveal their unequal positions in society. The project
challenges the boundaries of conventions and proposes alternatives. Her research led to statement
working. This is in sharp contrast to design- chairs that allow women to lean back in a relaxed way, spread their legs seductively, and boldly take
ers who design chairs solely to meet the over space as the most natural thing to do.
demands of the present.
J A good author always speculates about
the future.
L Otherwise they are inevitably regressive—
conservative at best. To be sure, the mar-
ket instigates innovations in the field of
technology, but rarely in the social and
QUESTIONING DESIGN
cultural field. [ 5 ]
5 B I find this an interesting observation. Because the impli-
cation is that a cultural value can be expressed outside of the
capitalist paradigm. Like the concept of nature, isn’t culture also
one of those terms that connotes an ethical preference? The
exalted status of culture versus the base cheapness of the
market.
J One of the graduation projects in your pro-
gramme, by Anna Aagaard Jensen, shows how
author-designers are able, through their work, to
raise questions about social phenomena, and how
they might initiate change.
L She addresses the inequality between
men and women and how, for example,
this manifests itself in public life. While
men take up space with ease, women are
more inclined to inhabit as little space as
possible. Using stills from American talk
shows, she reveals how men tend to sit
straddle-legged, taking up the entirety of
the seat, while women are cramped into
 the corner of the seat with clenched-up
12
legs. She also shows pictures in which
women seem to be ashamed when their
skirt slides up while getting out of a car.
And then, there is the iconic image of Sha-
ron Stone in Basic Instinct, who seduc-
tively spread her legs in order to rattle her
interrogators. Anna’s final project consists
of a series of curious-looking chairs that
Fountain of Knowledge
force women to sit astraddle and to claim
Théophile Blandet (CD) space. [ 6 ]
For his 2017 graduation project, Théophile Blandet researched the ubiquity of knowledge available
online, versus the here and now of human existence. As an amateur, he learned how to paint from the 6 B Could I say, then, that design is an agonistic endeavour?
famous Bob Ross, and covered his computer screen with thick smears of paint, representing landscapes, Should an author-designer be practicing a kind of critical nego-
but also popular images from the digital world. The images freeze the screen, “shutting off our access tiation between the society at large and their own vision? Jensen’s
to its omniscience”. The paintings take hours, even days, to make them, and have a physical staying research shows an ideological frame, and her chairs reveal her
power, in contrast to the fleeting nature of the images behind them. own vision on that frame. In this sense, the author-designer is
also a kind of political activist. Indeed, one might even consider
Jensen’s chairs as a transgression, because they test and question
the dominant hegemony of gender expectations.
J A statement chair! She questions frames
of thought. And I can imagine Vitra will one day
design a similar chair, because people like Anna have
brought about a change in mentality, which slowly
but surely will trickle through to the general public.
L I doubt it. Design has multiple functions
and forums. Her design is a headlong rush
aimed at instigating a cultural transforma-
tion, but in the end it’s most of all a state-
ment that will probably garner attention at
exhibitions and from the media, but once
the mentality has changed, will the general
public still need a chair like this? There will
be a time in which women will simply take
the space they need.
J The authors we want to educate are writers
of science-fiction, in that they predict the future.
Paul Preciado is an exciting thinker when it comes
to fundamental cultural changes—gender, among
others. As he sees it, a very slow cultural revolution
has been taking place over the past several decades.
A revolution that seems to be failing. [ 7 ] Just look at
the rise of populism and xenophobia. Donald Trump!
But Preciado remains hopeful and believes that we
are still moving towards complete freedom, a com-
plete emancipation from the moral concepts that
are forced upon us.
7 Bob Dylan in ‘Song to Woody’: “[the revolution] is tired and it’s
torn, it looks like it’s dying and it’s hardly been born”
L Projects like Anna’s, and an earlier one by
Gabriel Maher, former student of Social
Design, convincingly express the urgency
Precipitation
of such a cultural transformation.
Giorgio Gasco (CD) J Maher was an exceptionally bright student
Reference images, research sketches and models, created to imagine new construction modes for
and ever since her graduation she has continued
design. Giorgio Gasco collaborates with scientists of the Technical University of Eindhoven (department her research of the influence of gender stereotypes
Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, Materials and Interface Chemistry) on the creation of forms
under water. As the images of Gaudi’s experiments for the Sagrada Famila show, gravity usually defines
on our experience of the world. She investigates
the shape of constructions. New possibilities arise by linking this insight to Archimedes’ principle: ‘any how designers are able to create different images
object, wholly or partially immersed in a fluid, is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid
displaced by the object’. The project is still in its experimental phase, but already shows some promising
and visions on the subject of gender. Ones that
options for future application. match current changing ideas on this topic.
Design reveals who we are. Even the small-
13
L
est things we use daily, such as this coffee
mug, tell us something about being human,
about our lives. This implies, design can
also change who we are.
J The idea of relational design originated
with, among others, Victor Papanek, and evolved
into the concept of social design. With that came
the understanding that the earlier focus on efficiency
and pragmatism had actually become part of its own
downfall.
L The Modernist paradigm of design as a
problem-solving enterprise has paradoxi-
cally caused many problems, such as the
market’s endless search for new “prob-
lems” to be solved.
J Design not only makes things possible but
is also a limiting factor. Today, there’s a growing
awareness that all of the objects we use are charged
with political significance. The iPhone, this com-
puter, the coffee in this coffee mug—they all signify
something about the political and cultural contexts
in which they were designed, while also influencing
those contexts. Designers who are capable of play-
ing with these notions are the ones who make a
difference.
L And so, the old idea that design can better
the world returns.
J Only if it becomes a critical practice. [ 8 ]
8 B This reminds me of Ernst van Alphen’s definition of art.
He observes that art explicates the pain points of a culture in
imaginative ways. How could this be translated into design?
Perhaps design does not explicate but rather lets its users expe-
rience the pain points of a culture in imaginative ways? And per-
haps an author-designer ensures that experience. Ernst Van
Alphen. Art in Mind: How Contemporary Images Shape Thought.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
L Perhaps it’s fruitful to compare a critical
design practice with design criticism as a
QUESTIONING DESIGN
writing practice. There must be a reason
why design criticism is so rare, with the
exception perhaps of graphic design. [ 9 ]
As a result, there’s almost no fruitful inter-
action between different practices. No
other profession is subjected to the whims
of the market as product design is and as
a result, even design criticism tailors itself
to the market in a way. Newspapers don’t
publish articles about design in the cul-
tural appendix but rather between the
pages of lifestyle segments. Even more
so, the articles themselves merely legiti-
mate products’ existence and are usually
devoid of critical analysis. On the other
side of this spectrum, we see design criti-
cism become a kind of doomsday criti-
cism. Judging by the design symposiums
of the last couple of years, the blame for
our current state of affairs is all too often
placed on designers, as if producers and
 consumers are the innocent onlookers of
their whims. Too rarely, design critics
approach their work from the perspective
of active engagement, from the inside out,
by linking critical analyses to thinking in
possibilities.
9 Rick Poynor: “It is design criticism’s job to explore, explain and
critique the issues raised by the designer’s critical practice or—as
it might be—the designer’s lack of a critical mentality.”
J We consciously exclude the market from
our curricula. The market pushes designers back
into traditional logic, while we strive to explore rad-
ical possibilities and alternatives. [ 10 ]
10 B But isn’t the market part of the social and political reality
in which we find ourselves? Instead of thinking whether the mar-
ket should be excluded from the thinking process, isn’t it more
appropriate in this preliminary definition of the author-designer
to acknowledge that the market always forces itself into our lives,
and even into our very thoughts?
L Students must be aware of how the market
works, naturally, but we abstain from the
convention of many design schools to
adhere to market requirements within their
programmes. The old notion that design
should provide answers and solutions for
problems presupposes finality, closure.
But a critical designer is concerned with
interpreting and reinterpreting continu-
ously and keeps thinking up alternatives.
J The market adapts itself very quickly to
developments. If the current trend is a call for sus-
tainability, then every marketer, and in their wake
scores of designers, will claim that all products must
be produced sustainably. Greenwashing is very
much a commonplace practice.
L But do we buy it? That’s why students must
allow themselves to trust their gut feeling,
trust what they themselves find fascina-
tion. Also when they oppose their tutors’
views on what is ‘critical’, ‘valuable’ and
‘interesting’. The courage to lean on their
own observations ensures that students
don’t merely parrot empty marketing lingo
or the seemingly opposite, the guilt-ridden,
culturally correct verbiage of those who
claim they know better what the world
needs. I applaud my students when they
embrace a dissident voice and even dare
to take a stand against politically correct
themes like sustainability and can provide
good arguments for doing so. In this sense
I consider it a blessing that our students
are influenced by art practices, in which
taking adversary positions is common
practice. Hala Tawil investigated how
erotic imagery and children’s cartoons
have many similarities. Is it design? Art?
Does it change the world for the better or
does it mainly reveal something deeply
innate human, which we might have over-
14
looked? The film she made is fantastic,
funny, gross, beautiful, fuelling the viewer’s
curiosity. And the objects have an enor-
mous physical appeal. For me, there are
sufficient reasons to consider this a nec-
essary and important design project.
J Agreed. But, designers can’t just keep look-
ing inward—they can’t only look at themselves. They
are part of a society and must therefore develop an
awareness of their position in it.
L To achieve this, however, apart from being
aware of the history of design and apart
from knowing what is happening in the
world today, it’s paramount for students
to develop their intuition and rely on their
humour or sense for the absurd, their aes-
thetic antennae and their personal reflec-
tions and criticisms. Only then can they
sensibly speculate about a better, more
humane, playful, and a more truthful
future. They don’t have to keep building
on the same old rehashed views of others.
Like art, design can be disruptive in any
imaginable way, without setting pre-
defined limits.
J You could say that our view on education
is a triangle of the political, the speculative and the
relational. We speculate about possibilities and
explore new relationships. Of course we must be
able to take a train or a plane, or drive our cars. Of
course we must be able to sit on a chair designed
by a nameless designer in the name of functionality.
But if we really, and actually, want to innovate that
chair, for instance, then it is imperative that we think
about the larger narrative.
L Only then can we ask whether we really
need an egg slicer and twenty different
kitchen knives all designed for specific
tasks, and whether we need to move
around the globe this fast. Or ask whether
a circular economy is actually making our
lives more agreeable. Or, question the pre-
supposed meaning and higher value of
the concept ‘nature’, or ‘unspoiled nature’,
which various students at Contextual
Design currently do in a range of provoking
projects. In this respect, a thinker like Tim
Morton is extremely interesting. Using his
own brand of ecocriticism, he shows how
the word ‘nature’ usually applies to an eth-
ical context in order to differentiate
between what is considered good or bad.
For example, saying that homosexuality is
unnatural, says more about whether one
intends to condone its practice. Govern-
ments still use this irrational argument to
legitimise malicious policies. [ 11 ] Morton
shows the complexity of subjects, their
internal contradictions, and the deeper
layers that people deny in favour of simple Ben Shai van der Wal, literary critic, lecturer and
15
solutions, thus narrowing the discus- translator. Schouwenberg also invited van der Wal
sion [ 12 ] We need that kind of thinking. to add comments and insights in the margins, espe-
cially where it concerned literary notions of author-
11 B Could we consider it natural to use the concept of nature ship. In the awareness that the text will keep
to exert power over others?
12 Nicholas Korody: “We desire our homes to be antiseptic, isolated,
undergoing changes, finding new interpretations
and exclusively human zones. So we filter our air, spray chemicals, with every new reader, various voices can thus be
set out rat poison—often inadvertently poisoning ourselves in
the process, like some autoimmune disorder that we’ve decided
“heard” in this text and its margins, which links back
to call dwelling. In fact, this dynamic is very much at play in haunted to the aim of educating tomorrow’s author designers
houses of horror fiction, where pests and ghosts rebel against
the imposition of domesticity. Can you speak to this?” Tim Morton:
who are well aware of all the voices that are included
“That’s precisely it. In order to maintain smooth functioning (for in their personal voice.
humans), and to maintain the smooth functioning of this very
myth of smooth functioning, a whole of violence is required behind
the scenes on every level, social, psychic and philosophical. In
every respect we’ve been trying to sever ourselves from other
lifeforms—remember, you have them inside you and you couldn’t
exist if you didn’t, and there’s more of them inside you than there
is of you, so this is a major deal, this violence.” https://archinect.
com/features/article/149934079/timothy-morton-on-haunted-
architecture-dark-ecology-and-other-objects
J I also find Morton’s self-reflective attitude
very interesting, and one I would encourage our stu-
dents to take on as well. When you, as a designer,
are for instance advocating a sense of community,
you should put yourself to the test. Are you brave
enough to confront your own demons? [ 13 ] I would
like to go back to the topic of critical design and
design criticism. Design criticism is often the prod-
uct of outsiders who analyse the world of consumer
articles in a purely academic discourse.
L Lacking true engagement.
J One can also consider the field of design
critically from within and attempt to change it, like
any good designer does. Taking responsibility for
the cultural space they inhabit and taking respon-
sibility for the cultural script embedded in their
projects.
13 I agree. It is one thing for LS and JB to agree with one another
on the necessity of critical voices, it is a whole other ball-game
for them to invite a critical voice into their very text. Is my voice
such a voice? When you are advocating a celebration of criticism,
then you should be put to the test. Does this strengthen the
QUESTIONING DESIGN
conceptualisation of the author-designer that we are trying to
communicate? Can any voice that is allowed to criticise ever
truly be critical?
Speaking of authorship… whose names should the
text be assigned to? Who is responsible? It started
off as a conversation between Louise Schouwenberg
and Jan Boelen, in July 2018, which was then recon-
structed into a text by the first. Actually, naturally, it
started much earlier. Authorship in design has been
an integral part of yearly broodings on the upcoming
curricula of Contextual Design and Social Design,
during which scores of other authors, practitioners,
teachers and students were sought after for inspi-
ration. In writing the text for this magazine, the author
had to make choices, thereby killing some darlings
of the two people involved in the conversation.
Throughout the text and in its margins, other voices,
other authors, came in who inspired the conversation
and, naturally, a new voice came in with the trans-
lation of the Dutch sentences into English ones by
BEYOND
“IS TEAR GAS A DESIGN PROBLEM?”
16
In her research ‘Lexicon of Everyday Exception’,
Mariangela Beccoi explores objects of protest and
reveals a disconcerting asymmetry between the
IDEOLOGICAL
hyper designed objects of crowd control and the
simple improvised objects of resistance. Her inquiry
leads to an unsettling reflection: designed objects
are predominantly positioned on the side of the
oppressor. Where, one could ask, are the designers
NAIVETY AND
to support the cause of protesters—holding power
to account? Does design as a practice favour certain
social classes, ideologies and power relations, fur-
thering their causes at the cost of others? Without
a critical socio-political reflection on the relationship
DO-GOODISM:
between design, designer and the context, design
is bound to remain in the anaemic albeit comfortable
embrace of the predominant ideology. Is teargas a
design problem? Yes, if designers are dedicated to
social transformation.
The western tradition of design has been serving
up myths of the status quo for nearly two centuries.
While critical and radical design movements have
existed, often side-lined, design has played an
important role in preserving and disseminating the
logic of capitalism. Much of what we accept as
Michael Kaethler
design was forged by the furnace of free-market
capitalism in the kilns and workhouses of the 19th
century. Design was a crucial fixture in industriali-
sation and vice versa; it was pivotal in a scissor-like
manner of streamlining production processes to
create new products quicker and more efficiently,
while simultaneously driving up the demand for
these products. In other words, capitalism relies on
design to both improve the production of goods and
to insure their eventual consumption.
CRITICAL
DESIGNING OUTSIDE OF THE VACUUM
Despite this conjugality between capital and
design, there is a prevailing view of design as neutral,
without context or historical rootedness. Design,
REFLECTIONS
however, does not exist within a vacuum. Objects,
relationships, materials and processes are made
manifest in the ‘real world’ with real consequences
and culpabilities. In terms of shaping the world,
design punches above its disciplinary weight. Design
is a practice that has political and ethical repercus-
sions; it intervenes, it compels changes in behaviours,
relationships and ways of thinking, or as Adrian Forty
put it, “it can cast ideas of who we are and how we
should behave into permanent and tangible forms.”
ON
Design has a way of moulding not solely the
physical but also the thought world, imbuing myths,
assumptions and values so that these seem incon-
trovertible and beyond reproach. Design is social,
it mediates our social realities, the way we think
SOCIAL DESIGN
and interact with the world. However, at the same
time, designers are rarely conscious of this social
layer and its implications, unaware of how designs
interact with, for example, power structures. This
friction between capacity and cognizance is visible
in practices within the ‘social design’ realm where,
17
unlike many other design practices, there is an
explicit emphasis on designing for a notion of
social good.
The cultural theorist Edward Said famously
remarked, “ideas, cultures and histories cannot seri-
ously be understood or studied without their force,
or more precisely their configurations of power, also
being studied.” The same can be said of the intention
of bringing about social change through design; it
is crucial to understand the context (or forces and
configurations of power) at play in order to: first,
grasp what needs to be addressed and second, know
how to address it. Without an understanding of the
broader ideological agenda, social design is doomed
to remain superficial and recklessly naïve. Social
design can lead to forestalling social change or at
times to perpetuating social decline by uncon-
sciously becoming the material mouthpiece of the
predominant ideology of the time—the status quo.
WHITEWASHING DESIGN
A cursory look at the projects and images asso-
ciated with social design show mainly self-satisfied
white people interacting as if some magical new
gadget has lobotomised their critical faculty. Point-
less participatory design projects are praised as
innovative and ‘game changing’ because they con-
sider a token of public input (how democratic!).
Books aimed at promoting social design, such as,
the pompously titled “Looks Good, Feels Good, Is
Good” provide answers in the form of design solu-
tions for questions that are febrile and delusory. One
could be forgiven for thinking that social design is
the design world’s version of whitewashing, such
as corporate social responsibility (Nestle giving a
fraction of its profit to help poor communities or
Wal-Mart building green roofs for its megastores),
where large companies redirect the public gaze away
QUESTIONING DESIGN
from their otherwise destructive practices by high-
lighting positive initiatives. Social design appears
all too often to be a chaste attempt at making design
more palatable than the object-obsessed and mate-
rial-centred design mentalities that came to populate
much of the 20th century. Is social design a version
of ‘caring capitalism’, a shiny veneer concealing a
caustic underbelly?
Indeed, a considerable amount of what is con-
sidered social design can be slotted into a pastel
coloured catalogue of well meaning do-good proj-
ects often disconnected from a larger reflection on
the act of making, such as social relations, material
ramifications, power or ideology. There is an abun-
dance of social design projects, which are neither
good design nor properly addressing the social—in
effect, the worst of social engagement and the worst
of design.
The ‘Hippo Roller’ is often heralded as a prime
example of social design. It’s an elegant solution
to a problem faced by many around the world.
Transforming a water container into an easily manoeuvrable push-barrel

18

19
relieves the burden of carrying water long distances for villages without
access to clean water. This meets the ‘needs’ of some individuals but it
does not address crucial systemic and institutional problems related to the
‘rights’ of individuals to access clean water. By diminishing the encumbrance
of transporting water it potentially relieves the State of its duty to provide
water through the necessary infrastructure—thus failing to fulfil core legal
obligations enshrined in the constitution for its citizens. As such, the hippo
roller, at least in some contexts, is part of perpetuating the status quo,
weakening the obligations of the state and diminishing the capacity for
meaningful social and political transformation. In other words, the Hippo
Roller, while providing a useful temporary fix for accessing water may also
be contributing to much broader and substantial problems leading to exac-
erbating the conditions of the very people it is seeking to assist.
In contrast, Elisa Otanez’s work ‘Yellow Spot’ engages with a similar
type of problem—female urinals in public space—contextualising it within
the scope of institutions, rights and power. Like the Hippo Roller, she pro-
vides a design solution to meet short-term needs (in this case, women’s
public peeing). However, unlike the Hippo Roller, her urinals are intention-
ally and explicitly designed to be temporary, acting as both a short-term
functional stopgap and as a provocation and political statement for the city
to recognise the rights of women in public space. Her work acknowledges
that without the temporality in her design and without explicitly linking it
to a larger ideological framework of the rights of women in public space,
her project runs the risk of contributing to business-as-usual, in effect let-
ting municipalities off the hook by using her design contribution as the
permanent solution as opposed to providing permanent municipal solu-
tions. It is this extra level of reflection that distinguishes her work from
well-meaning but naive design projects.
The above two examples deal with clear and current socio-material

QUESTIONING DESIGN
concerns. It is important to stress that social design is not only about tack-
ling obvious social concerns. There is a danger that social design falls prey
to the pitfalls of pragmatism and neglects the immense power of aesthet-
ics and material forms that are potent and persuasive. Intangible or less
problem-oriented projects have the potential to illuminate issues that we
didn’t even know were there. Speculative approaches, for example, are able
to design new perspectives, ideas and ways of seeing. Projects such as
the ‘Gouda Embargo’ by Anastasia Eggers exemplify this. Her work provides Lexicon of Everyday Exception
Mariangela Beccoi (SD)
a rich and nuanced exploration of the recent socio-political trend of nativ-
ism. She uses food as a medium to explore this, setting it in Russia in the
year 2032 when there is a food embargo with the rest of Europe. She
exposes the lengths one must go to produce the Dutch cheese Gouda in
Russia, tracing the contradictions between two competing desires—
globalisation and nativism. Her designs are frightening and absurd, taking
nativism to its logical conclusion and challenging the growing global
 phenomena. Design in this case generates, analyses and gauges political

20

21
thought, bringing to the fore contradictions and frictions that we are often
hitherto unaware of.

TOWARDS A CRITICAL APPROACH TO SOCIAL DESIGN

Most definitions of social design are short, vague and mention words
like change or transformation without detail or elaboration. Despite not
wanting to provide an exhaustive definition, the following are important
features of a critical approach to social design. First, social design seeks
to unfasten the long-fingered grasp of the market on design. In doing so,
social design provides an autonomous space to conceive design as an
innately human act of giving meaning to the world around us (and not only
of giving meaning to the consumption of goods), emphasising it as a prac-
tice of signification. This unfastening alters the direction and objective of
design and allows for a greater crossover into social or cultural arenas that
reject or challenge market oriented logics such as socially engaged art,
protest culture, social movements, and so forth. Additionally, it further opens
up the designer’s relationship to materials, loosening the constraints of
cost and efficiency, the need to appease style or fashion and in the process
creates natural overlaps with many artistic and ecological practices and
approaches. Second, and as a partial result of the first, social design is
more open to employ speculative practices, which create processes and
Yellow Spot
Elisa Otanez (SD) outcomes that do not fit easily within conventional design settings. Third,
social design situates its own contribution within the body of theory and
practice—gauging how it builds off of or contests existing work. Lastly and
most importantly, it recognises its disruptive or conducive forces within
the real world—aware that design intervenes in a world of interrelated
dynamics with very real consequences and seeks to bring about societal
transformation, whether subtle, indirect or explicit, through recognising
the bigger context in which it is introduced.

QUESTIONING DESIGN
If we are to take a critical approach to social design, it is imperative that
those involved in design recognise their tradition’s own lurid past, its trans-
gressions as a medium for economic and cultural expansion and with it a
considerable amount of exploitation of individuals and materials across
the world—from cobalt mines in the Congo to sweat shops in Bangladesh.
For the designer to avoid sustaining the ‘coloniality of power’, what Anibal
Quijano describes as the structures of power, control and hegemony that
emerged from modernity, whether through unconscious decision making
or through grand gestures of trying to save the world, it is necessary to
acknowledge one’s own individual and cultural location and position, values
and assumptions. This implies taking a reflexive position as a designer and
in designing.
An important starting point, it follows, is learning to ask the right ques-
tions. Jan Boelen, the head of the Social Design department at the DAE is
often heard asking the question, “If design is the answer, what is the
question?” This is a provocation; design is usually too busy providing

22

23
answers to ask questions. Self-reflection is not part of the design tradition;
its predisposition is to provide the answers that are demanded of a brief,
not to pose the questions that could destabilise the brief. In this way, it is
natural for design to view itself as neutral—ideologically bereft. Without
questioning the fundamental logic of producing objects it will continue to
produce the objects of the predominant ideology.
‘Lumps of Clay’ by Thomas Nathan asks some of these questions in a
poetic manner. He argues that given our perilous state of global affairs and
the incrimination of design, we need to question the act at the very heart
of design—making. However, to do away with making is to deny a funda-
mental human urge, we are homo faber (man the maker). Thomas works
with this contradiction, seeking to develop a new relationship with the act
of making through an intimate process of shaping tiny lumps of clay—the
smallest tactile object with which to make, whilst limiting unintentional
consequences. It is a deliberate work of meditation, exploring the homo
faber and the logic of design through tiresome repetition. In the end, a
ceramic object emerges, poetic in form, critical in process, representing
a search for an ethical passage for making. Thomas picks apart the rela-
tionship between the designer, the material and the broader world, in search
for a new rapport and an ethical juncture, by stepping away from main-
stream design practices and developing a reflective and deeply intimate
design process.

CONCLUSION
Charles de Gaulle is quoted as saying, “Politics is too serious a matter
to be left to the politicians.” It can be argued that design is too important
and powerful to be left to designers, a group who have shown, with some
notable exceptions, a remarkable disregard for a world on the brink of major
crisis. However, despite this paper’s rather critical take on the social design

QUESTIONING DESIGN
field, there are immense design possibilities for radically reshaping the
world. On one hand, social design runs the very real risk of self-delusion,
whereby it continues to reproduce the structures responsible for crises Gouda Embargo
while patting itself on the back for its good efforts. On the other hand, social Anastasia Eggers (SD)

design, as highlighted in many examples in this text, can provide a rich

critical exploration of the objects, relationships, materials and processes
in our society. This opens up a range of possibilities, knocking design off
its dependency on the market and into a world ripe with inspiration, mate-
rials, relationships and approaches. Moreover, a critical and contextualised
approach renders design nuanced and meaningful, requiring the designer
to be steeped and integrated into the contexts in which they seek to
engage—humility and humanity becoming principle design traits. Disre-
garding the centuries of modernist colonial hubris, design can look beyond
ideological blinders to practices that are, for instance, outside of the west-
ern design cannon, opening up design practice to ways of knowing and
 being that can alter the fundamental assumptions we have about material

24

25
or the common good. There is a great many things that design can accom-
plish when rooted in creativity, intuition and socio-political reflection.
Whether it is poetic or protesting, design is an enabler for change, it’s sim-
ply the question of what type of change designers desire; reproducing the
values of the status quo or disrupting and challenging these power dynam-
ics to work towards a more socially-just society? Now I ask you, the reader,
is teargas a design problem?

QUESTIONING DESIGN
Mariangela Beccoi, Thomas Nathan, Elisa Otanez and Anastasia Eggers are
former graduates of the DAE Master of Social Design.

References

Forty, Adrian, and Ian Cameron. Objects of desire: design and society since
1750. London: Thames and Hudson, 1995.
Quijano, Anibal. “Coloniality of power and Eurocentrism in Latin America.”
International Sociology 15.2 (2000): 215-232.
Lumps of Clay Said, Edward W. “Orientalism: western conceptions of the Orient. 1978.”
Thomas Nathan (SD) Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin (1995).
IMAGINING
It took a while before many of us began to realize that the

27
internet was not just this shiny, free gateway to an egali-
tarian society in which everyone—regardless of national-

THE
ity, level of education, social position or income—would
have almost unlimited access to an unlimited treasure
trove of information. A mid-nineties conference on design
and digital media such as Doors of Perception¹ still cele-
brated this new world of shared knowledge, bottom-up
democracy, collective intelligence, digital mobility, and
the new age of play with an undiluted spirit of optimism.
“Home is where the laptop is,” was the leading slogan of
the conference’s first edition, where a nomadic tribe of
digital information pioneers advocated an approach to
design that would be fundamentally different from all estab-

Joost Grootens, Gert Staal

lished practices of industrial designers, graphic designers,
architects, fashion designers, and even craftsmen.
From then on, most predictions about the profound
changes digital technology would bring, even the ones
that sounded like lunatic fantasies at the time, have mate-
rialized one way or another. The Web 1.0 and 2.0 definitely
changed the way we produce and distribute information,
they are supporting unique forms of collaboration and
self-organisation, and they did help establish new prac-
tices of research and development which have resulted

QUESTIONING DESIGN
in a stream of new services, products, and systems. In
all kinds of domains—from journalism and biology to car-
tography and the production of weapons—digital tech-
nologies actually provided specialist tools to huge groups
of non-specialist users. These democratized tools did
indeed change balance of power between producers
and consumers, professionals and amateurs, and thereby
the very nature of the design profession and its outcomes.

REAL
But those were not the only effects.
1 The first Doors of Perception conference was held in Amsterdam in 1993.
The annual conference, initiated by John Thackara together with Mediamatic
and the Society for Old and New Media (currently De Waag), was one of
the main programmes of the Netherlands Design Institute, connecting
developments in information technology with questions concerning con-
temporary culture, society and ecology.
When the first edition of Doors of Perception was
staged, no one had ever heard of companies such
as Google, Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram. Sure
enough, it was clear that large IT-firms would be
important drivers of the technological revolution.
But a sense of romance around maverick innova-
tion—a few bright guys in a suburban garage—still
defined the preferred scope around the cultural and
social impact of these new technologies. Now that
small collectives could easily organize themselves
to become influential forces in society, why not spec-
ulate on a similarly decentralized economic model?
Information technology could be used to deliver
low-cost solutions for local problems on a global
scale. Software was not primarily perceived as a
product, but first of all a service; a tool to enhance
participation and fairness instead of competition.
A few decades onwards, the soft(ware) revolution
has proven its capacity to create public access to a
superabundance of information, but the business
model of the major information providers is based
on mining data from those who access the informa-
tion. Digital media, and especially social media have
opened up the democratic process, just like they
provide a platform for groups and individuals who
act as fact finders (Bellingcat) or undercover civilian
reporters (Syria). However, simple technologies such
as electronic voting are vulnerable to manipulation,
social media accounts are easily hacked or faked,
and online reporting is sometimes barely distin-
guishable from trolling. The complex reality of today’s
information society is defined both by abundance
and ambiguity: it’s never either/or but often both/
and: the sum of loads of contrasting data on which
we need to build our understanding of the world.
COMPLEXETIES
What does this imply for the design of informa-
tion? And how do these consequences translate
into the current curriculum of the Information Design
Master Department at Design Academy Eindhoven?
To mark the territory, it is important to note that infor-
mation design builds largely on the tools and formats
that defined graphic design, a field in which the
designer—commissioned by a client—provides a
truthful and engaging, often printed representation
of the contents of a project for a designated audi-
ence. In comparison, information designers are
forced to deal with a less straightforward task in a
less straightforward information environment. Tech-
nological innovations not only introduced new tools
and modes of work, they also caused a fundamental
shift in the roles of authors, publishers, designers
and users. Designers could become publishers.
Some defined themselves as authors or researchers.
Publishers developed business models in which
they act either as editors or as retailers of ‘packaged’
graphic products. Perhaps the users present the
most influential challenge to the natural chain of
command: their ability to act as publishers, critics,
and designers, aided by dedicated media platforms
29
and easily accessible software, necessarily alters
the roles of all other ‘professionals’ in the process,
including the designer of information.
What defines the design professional when the
differences between user and designer tend to dis-
appear? Perhaps the answer lies in the title of a
recent lecture series at the Amsterdam Academy of
Architecture: ‘Learning by thinking about the mak-
ing’. This sentence quite accurately defines what
distinguishes the designer form the user. Both are
makers, but the essence lies in learning and thinking.
Contemplating the act of making and its conse-
quences might not be the first thing a user would
do; for any designer it is a core activity. And learning
implies a process of repetition and gradual progress:
becoming better at making and thinking through
experience. For a Master course like ours, where
students are not expected to acquire totally new
skills but instead reflect on their creations and the
profession in general, these are crucial notions.
The field of operations has certainly widened
over the last decades, causing graphic design to
lose its singularity along the way. Still, the editors of
a recently published, self-proclaimed ‘bible’ of the
information design discipline², present a fairly
unequivocal definition. Information design, they
state, “makes complex information clear with the
need of users in mind.” Within our department we
have chosen not to put such a tight definition on our
subject area. Instead we approach the range of con-
texts in which information design can operate and
the variety of forms it can take within the students’
projects as a definition in the making.
This deliberate decision not construct a precon-
ceived straitjacket denotes the explorative, non-sci-
entific nature of the course. Working with a group
of students and tutors who represent different gen-
ders, generations, (sub)cultures, educational back-
QUESTIONING DESIGN
grounds, visual and linguistic literacies, and Satellite Mode
Julian Peschel (ID)
technological skills it makes sense to address diver-
sity as an important aspect of today’s information Satellite Mode serves as an attempt to link Google Maps’ underlying satellite imagery to the internal
(map technology) and external (satellite technology) infrastructure on both a horizontal as well as a
society. In our case “keeping the need of the users vertical scale. In doing so, the project aims to reflect on the technology and politics behind the repre-
in mind” is definitely an issue but answering the sentation and perception of our digital globe.
Divided into a map and expandable sidebar legend, the website provides the user necessary
question what need(s) can be addressed through information within the spectrum from satellite launch to search command as well as its current position
design, how and how much a designer can know inside the map (tiles) and the ‘real world’ (lat./long.). The legend functions as an interactive link to the
maps’ viewport, which dependent on the horizontal (drag) and vertical position (zoom), will highlight
about these needs, and for which specific user(s) one to several aspects (icons) related to satellite technology or imagery and furthermore allows for a
the project aims to work, is far from straightforward. simultaneous view of all (in)active satellite providers at this location.
“Making complex information clear” could be an
equally tricky concept when we consider that clarity
is never an absolute notion. What’s clear in one given
context, might be totally confusing in another. A
piece of cake for you could well be a mystery to me.
The current student population in the Information
Design department can be characterized as “digital
natives”. They are at ease with technology and they
understand how the design of tools conditions the
2 Black, Alison et.al. (ed.). 2017. Information Design: Research and Practice,
London: Routledge, Centre for Information Design Research, University
of Reading.
 work of a designer. For many of them the real urgen- of his critics³, many readers appreciated the method

30

31
cy lies in the growing complexity of today’s society.as an effective way to involve them in the process of
They feel surrounded by complexity in all kinds of imagining the real. In essence, these two parallel
contexts: from complexity in numbers (how do you processes can also be traced in the most profound
deal with vast amounts of information?) to the com- information design projects, and their importance
plex nature of abstract scientific information or of is reflected in the Information Design curriculum.
news reporting (accessibility, reliability and actual-
Ideally student projects show the ‘how’ next to the
ity), to political forms of complexity (issues around‘what’ and thus reveal the interpretation given by the
race, gender, democracy or privacy). The course designer to the original data sets and the tools used
hopes to nurture a critical awareness around all to visualize this specific reading of the material.
these types of complexity, next to a general under- In her 2014 book Graphesis⁴ visual theorist
standing of how power, ownership and economic Johanna Drucker describes information visualiza-
structures influence our fields of work. tions such as maps as “intellectual Trojan horses”.
Together with the students we are trying to figure
They may appear to be independent of the observer
out what the role of design in such complex infor- but they are in fact interpretations masquerading as
mation environments can be. We try not to position representations. The collection of data itself already
students as agents of change—which is sometimes reflects an underlying mental framework. And as
seen as the central aim of design education—but soon as these data are visually represented, the per-
rather choose to use design as a tool to visually sonal interpretation of the designer we have learned
define and present the challenges of the future soci-to value in traditional graphic formats such as post-
ety. The graphic representation of data by just group-
ers or book covers suddenly seems to disappear. As
ing them together can never be the answer. They if data visualizations could simply adopt a rhetoric
will only make sense to a chosen audience when of neutrality. According to Drucker we need to accept
they are turned into visual information. the fundamentally constructed nature of data and
Laurent Binet, the French author who rose to acknowledge that phenomena such as nations, gen-
fame with his 2010 novel HHhH (short for Himmler’s ders, populations and time spans are not self-evi-
Hirn heisst Heydrich/Himmler’s brain is called Hey- dent, stable entities. Following this critical approach
drich) mentions how an unedited set of data fails to Drucker calls for ambiguity and uncertainty to be
tell a story. “No reader will remember this list of incorporated into the design of information, either
names,” Binet argues, “why would he? For anything by being represented or by forming the basis upon
to penetrate into memory, it must first be trans- which a representation is made.
formed into literature.” As in Binet’s recapturing of Drucker stresses the need for a map with a more
the story around the assassination of high-ranking nuanced legend or for a nonstandard map that shows
Nazi officer Reinhard Heydrich, where historical its constructed nature. Her first call can certainly be
events needed to be understood, boiled down to answered: legends can certainly be designed to
their essence, and then reshaped to suit the format express delicate distinctions. Less clear is how her
of novel, any information design project of some demand for incorporated ambiguity should be met.
The HCI Collection
Domitille Debret (ID)
importance should do exactly this: interpret, synthe-How can an atypical map (or any other data visual-
size, and transform. Which is not an easy thing to ization) incorporate the qualities of being open to
This online platform is a visual exploration of gestures, habits and practices of Human-Computer

QUESTIONING DESIGN
Interaction over the past decades. The website acts as a space in which the collected images can be
do, as Laurent Binet acknowledges when he con- more than one interpretation? And what formats can
sorted out to highlight relevant paths, common patterns or historical perception. Whether you want to templates the outcomes of his historical research be designed to show that the position of the designer
look back and refresh some dear memories of our early-stage relationships with computer, look forward
and prospect for the shape of our future interactions or simply if you are interested in seeing how
in the context of constructing the novel. He bemoans:in a certain matter is unresolved?
interaction tools evolved over the last decades. “I’m fighting a losing battle. I can’t tell this story
The fact that there are no easy answers to these
the way it should be told. This whole hotchpotch of last questions doesn’t disqualify Johanna Drucker’s
characters, events, dates, and the infinite branchingargument. Within the Information Design depart-
of cause and effect—and these people, these real ment at Design Academy Eindhoven tutors and stu-
people who actually existed. I’m barely able to men- dents collectively challenge the boundaries of the
tion a tiny fragment of their lives, their actions, their
discipline with the aim of finding new formats. These
thoughts. I keep banging my head against the wall radically new formats should be able to answer the
of history. And I look up and see, growing all over urgencies of today and tomorrow, instead of slightly
it—ever higher and denser, like a creeping ivy—the adjusting existing models to new circumstances.
unmappable pattern of causality.” Demands about the representation of ambiguity
force us even more to find appropriate methods to
INTERPRET, SYNTHESIZE, TRANSFORM present interpretations as interpretations; in other
HHhH presents both a literary evocation of his- words, to show that a given approach is based on a
tory and a log of a writing process. The book shows
how fragments of information are used to construct 3 A recent article on Binet’s work, written by Wyatt Mason, makes this
the story and how language colors the observations. point. The review ‘Imagining the Real’ was published in The New York
Review of Books, 19 July 2018.
Binet weaves “the making of” into his fictional sto- 4 Drucker, Johanna. 2014. Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge
rytelling. Although this technique annoyed several Production, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
choice to highlight certain aspects and ignore others
for the sake of rhetorical clarity. Future formats need
to create space for the user to question them by
becoming more transparent or interactive.
For a while, the so-called Open Design movement
projected its hopes on the contributions of non-spe-
cialists. Because digital design tools and publication
platforms were readily available, the amateur could
become the added innovator, next to a professional
design community. A quick scan of the results in
the field of map making doesn’t do much to sub-
stantiate this expectation. Originally a particularly
restricted format, the map was highly affected by
the democratization of tools to record and edit geo-
graphic data. Smartphones with GPS technology
and open-source software to create and distribute
information have attracted a growing community of
amateur mapmakers. As this group expanded rap-
idly, the number of maps being produced exploded.
Pinterest boards full of cartographic explorations
testify to this development. The makers are clearly
fascinated by complexity but most of them fail to
synthesize and transform their material into an
image that speaks to the user. Many of the results
are not attuned to cartographic traditions. Often out
of ignorance of what the conventions are, the result
is illegible cartographic sludge or self-indulgent data
pornography. Few examples produced by these new
players actually question the format or force us to
rethink the assumptions that underpin it, let alone
make the map’s user aware of being manipulated.
What is true for the map, seems equally plausible
for other established formats. Invention based on
ignorance will not pay off. Today’s community of
information designers faces the task to gain an
understanding of the user’s needs and simultane-
ously create appropriate new formats that can sat-
isfy these needs. Not simply because “the new” is
the embedded trademark of all design efforts. First
and foremost, it is a consequence of the changing
modes in which we produce, collect, disclose, dis-
tribute, and process the exponentially growing
amount of information that has become the corner-
stone for several of the world’s most prosperous
companies. Information sells—that is obvious—but
how can information be designed in such a way that
it isn’t just the shareholders of these large corpo-
rations who reap the benefits? And how can design
be aligned with a world in which the categorical
either/or options have made way for a much more
ambiguous understanding of reality?
A recent exhibition at the Fondation Cartier showed
the work of Japanese architect Junya Ishigami. ⁵ ‘Free-
ing Architecture’ was introduced with a text written
by the architect himself. It hardly takes any editing—
simply replacing the word architecture by information
design—to express the framework from which the
Information Design department at Design Academy
Eindhoven has departed in 2011, and to which it still
subscribes today. Junya Ishigami wrote:
“I wish to think about architecture freely;
33
to expand my perspective on architec-
ture as flexibly, broadly, and subtly as
possible, beyond the stereotypes of what
architecture is considered to be. The
society that we live in is gradually chang-
ing, accepting an array of values more
diverse than ever before. It is becoming
increasingly difficult for preconceived
building types and / or functions (graphic
formats and typologies) to respond to our
current circumstances.”
Those current circumstances, Ishigami argues, force
us to set the generalities of the discipline aside and
forget all preconceived concepts. It is necessary to
“consider and confront” its roles and needs in our
current society. To question who it serves and how
users can be granted access to the design process.
In the case of designed information for instance by
Presumed Guilty
showing and questioning the provenance of data. Papon Sirimai (ID)
Their (in)completeness. By demonstrating that the
This book analyses all the pieces of evidence found in the case of Ampon Tangnooppakul, a 60-year-
final representation selected by the designer is just old former truck driver who has been sentenced to 20 years in jail by the lèse-majesté law (insulting
one of many possible options. Considerations like or defaming the Thai royal family).
these have shaped the Information Design curricu-
lum. If it is our mission to free information like Ishi-
gami is trying to free architecture then we will have
to unlock fixed formats and typologies so that they
can become tools in the hands of the user. In the
light of this ambition we can safely adopt and this
time edit Ishigami’s final statement, saying the we
“anticipate a future where new roles and conditions
for information design materialize that have never
previously been imagined.”
QUESTIONING DESIGN
5 Junya Ishigami, Freeing Architecture, exhibition at Fondation Cartier
Paris, 30 March—9 September 2018.
 34

35
Pollution in the Netherlands
Twin de Rooy (ID)

This map shows the amount of pollution in the Netherlands in 12 factors. The grid system which uses
scale instead of color to show different ranges of pollution allows for these 12 factors to be shown at
the same time. Pollution has an effect on large and small scales, and the challenge was to capture
both in a single form. By zooming, an overview as well as detailed information are present.

QUESTIONING DESIGN
The Great Firewall (1.5 × 1.5 m)
Minyang Liu (ID)

This project is about mapping the great firewall, As known as the censorship of China. At the beginning
of the project, I found out that it is so difficult to find information about this censorship inside the wall.
The only thing I can find is how western media talked about it. Then I gathered everything I can find online
together and put them on a map. I’m trying to draw an outline of what is the Great Firewall looks like.
Map is a source of knowledge, what I was doing is to see it above the ground, move information
around on a flat surface to understand the correlations of everything involved there.This information
related to each other in the context. In another way, my work is to rebuild the wall by the integration
of the information.
WHO CURATES
During our summer discussions in preparation for
36
the upcoming year of the Design Curating and Writ-
ing master’s programme, we were confronted with
this question by Erik Viskil. The idea of what curating
WHAT,
is or can be is already so complex, conditional, and
layered, that it can be easy to neglect these founda-
tional precepts or to practice one’s partiality and
idiosyncrasy as a given default. We take inspiration
from a reading of design, amidst the larger field of
cultural production (spanning art, mass media, tech-
nology, and ethnography), as a series of turns that
unsettle what has been taken for granted; that try
out new possibilities, which often fail disastrously;
that crystallise or mend deep-seated societal rifts;
that enact aesthetic refinement or iconoclasm.
Creative acts have a relation to the status quo:
they question and resist it, seeking alternative ways
of living and being together. And if the creative act
of design is always socially and politically implicated,
then curating is even more so, for several reasons.
WHEN, WHERE,
Compared to design, curating is inherently more
mediatic, more oriented to spectacles and manifes-
tos. We speak about “everyday”, “ordinary”, or “banal”
objects—but there is no such thing as an “everyday”
exhibition or an “everyday” essay. The ordinary
FOR WHOM,
museum display or the banal symposium are, sadly,
not unheard of, but their shortcomings point to the
fundamental importance of the question that begins
this essay. By asking, “Who curates what, when,
where, for whom, and how?” we cannot make any
assumptions about competence, cultural status,
hierarchy, or methodology. We have to begin at the
beginning.
At the same time, we cannot think about curating
as a frictionless communication of ideas. In other
words, the title question is not just about theoretical
intentions, but also concerns materialisations, and
how they embody, facilitate, complicate, or even
subvert the collection and formulation of research
Agata Jaworska,
as well as the development of new conceptual
Tamar Shafrir
approaches. Curating is accordingly complex
because it is a decisively narrative (and thus explic-
itly authored) practice that manifests in multiple
formats—printed texts, online platforms, photo-
graphs, catalogues, spaces, performances, sympo-
sia, archives, participatory events, and sometimes
even new objects. Each of these formats, in turn,
has its own protocol, longevity, accessibility, termi-
nology, aesthetic, and audience. Beyond the indi-
vidual design process and product, curating is in
itself a form of multi-modal publishing with the
potential to speak to a variety of overlapping com-
munities, to travel through different media channels,
to speculate into the future, mirror the present, and
reflect on the past.
AND HOW?
In raising the title question, our intention is not
to provide answers, definitions or prescriptions, to
say, “This is how curating ought to be.” Rather, we
are trying to establish the complexity and responsi-
bility of the role of the curator for a variety of creative
practitioners, and thus to challenge our peers, col-
37
leagues, advisors, and—most importantly—our stu-
dents and ourselves to develop our positions more
reflexively and conscientiously. The question of who
curates what, when, where, for whom, and how, con-
stitutes the parameters by which curators and
designers direct attention and ascribe value judg-
ments to certain things, materials, concepts, com-
munities, and cultural phenomena. How these
parameters are configured—how a project is aligned,
who is involved, who decides, and who benefits—
reveals what is taken for granted and what is not,
and unveils our interests, our preferences, and our
blind spots.
WHO
In conversation with the Design Academy Eind-
hoven’s creative director, Joseph Grima, the figure
of the Design Curating and Writing student was
raised: “We should see them as designers.” This
statement points to an unresolved tension, a flexible
interaction and overlap between the roles of curator
and designer—and perhaps even to the impossibility
of distinguishing between the two. Through its
experimental pedagogy over the last few decades,
as part of a larger ideological and tactical shift in the
design field, the Design Academy has dismantled
the designer as a figure with clear boundaries and
responsibilities in the chain of an industrial hierarchy,
and reinvented her as a self-defined, self-initiating,
independent or intermediary practitioner in a much
broader network of agents and forms of expertise.
As co-heads of the Design Curating and Writing
department, we share these goals in relation to our
students. First, we assume no standard beginning
point or shared experience for the role of the curator.
They may bring an educational background in art or
design or architecture, or the history of those fields,
but they may also have a more methodological train-
QUESTIONING DESIGN
ing and experience in journalism, anthropology,
psychology, or economics. The vast majority, we
would guess, have neither “curated” an exhibition
nor produced a piece of traditional design critique
before. They may not do so during their studies or
beyond, either. It is futile to define the curator by the
form or medium that their output assumes. We
define the curator rather by an ability to coalesce
people, ideas and things in the pursuit of socially-sit-
uated knowledge.
Therefore, we begin rather from the question of
authorship. How does the curator position them-
selves in relation to the things they are invested in,
and how can they engage others and develop their
thinking process? Can they identify their subjectiv-
ities and implement them as empathetic opportu-
nities rather than delimiting prejudices? Is that
achieved through participatory or collaborative
structures of authorship? Does it require self-con-
scious reflection on the ways of knowing, judging,
and expressing taught in school or instilled by
cultural and socioeconomic context? What ethical
obligations guide the intertwining of the curator’s
sense of authorship with that of the designer, with
their collaborators, with the agenda of the institution,
with “anonymous” objects or works, or with the
self-determination of a free observer, reader, visitor,
or user? Especially given the history of writing and
exhibition-making in design, how does the curator
interpolate between the roles of enthusiastic pro-
pagandist, aloof critic, exclusive arbiter of taste, and
inclusive co-creator? And how does each position
instigate or suppress debate, dissent, and confron-
tation between diverse actors?
Returning to the question of curator as designer,
we believe that a curator must develop their own
relation to making as part of the process of articu-
lating knowledge. It is an unfortunate vestige of the
hierarchical power of the 20th-century curator that
less authorial recognition is given to the individuals
who make the curatorial project concrete—the
designers, builders, producers, lighting technicians,
copyeditors, translators, coders, graphic designers,
printers, illustrators, performers, cleaners, guards,
receptionists and guides. This department will
encourage students to understand these processes
as complex, materially-entangled crafts, which are
inevitably implicated in the act of curating. How, and
how much, they want to take on those practices as
design challenges or as collaborative endeavours,
will indelibly shape who they are as curators.
WHAT
In his 2016 essay “Connoisseurship and Cri-
tique”, the art critic Ben Davis identifies a matrix of
cultural interactions based on two polarities, the
fi rst of subjects (the connoisseur and the con-
sumer) and the second of objects (art and industry).
The connoisseur’s interaction with art is exempli-
fied by an “enlightened” viewer’s encounter with
aesthetic objects in an institutional context; the
consumer’s interaction with art is located more in
the Yayoi Kusama selfie, the Van Gogh mousepad
in the museum gift-shop, or the “Apeshit” music
video by Beyoncé and Jay-Z filmed in the Louvre.
The third quadrant concerns “the world of indus-
trially produced culture, as it meets its target con-
sumer…what the object says about its maker or
how it fits into a larger creative vision is not gener-
ally the most important factor at play.” That leaves
the final quadrant, where connoisseurship and
industry intersect—where enthusiasts, obsessives,
collectors, critics, cultural commentators, and cura-
tors converge around the objects of everyday life,
the material landscape in its diversity and complex-
ity of authored, anonymous, or emergent artefacts
and curiosities.
Davis argues that “at different times and places,
pressing the merits of any of these four quadrants
over the others has taken the appearance of political
critique…you could say that all four quadrants of this
matrix are torn parts of an integral freedom, to which
38
39
they, nevertheless, do not add up.” Today, the curator
in the design field enjoys unprecedented latitude in
terms of their object(s) of investigation. On top of a
diffuse and expansive notion of design that encom-
passes industrial objects, prototypes, speculative
props, architecture, fashion, food, biology, and tech-
nology, the curator can also approach abstract con-
cepts or dynamics that, in their materialisation or
their organisation of people and objects, can be
treated as forms of design—from domesticity to
adhocracy, from digital optimisation to political
agency. Furthermore, the design curator can involve
artworks as such but also as commodities or arte-
facts. Considering the fluctuating borders between
fine art, applied art, industrial art, industrial design,
craft, readymades, conceptual art, and conceptual
design—and this only in the last century—that entan-
glement is practically unavoidable. 
This raises, however, another question: what
makes any and, more to the point, all of those things
design? The question of what to curate reflects how
we choose to see and position design given the myr-
iad functions and positions it performs in society.
Design can generate foresight, critical reflection,
and tools for strategic intervention, but it is also a
symptom of greater forces that govern our lives indi-
vidually and collectively. The decision to frame
design as an agent of change, a symptom of change,
or a symptom of business-as-usual is telling of the
allegiances and agendas of the curator and their
collaborative and institutional network. On the other
hand, by claiming design to be ubiquitous and
almost everything to be design, the curator is wres-
tling between inclusivity and arrogance. These ten-
sions are as much the content as the objects under
investigation or on display.
The question of what to curate can also be
defined by exclusion: what is not present, or what
QUESTIONING DESIGN
is removed? When dealing with design as embed-
ded in daily life, the curator may create a critical
distance by removing design from its normative
environment; they may use a suspension of disbelief
to render the “everyday” itself hypothetical. Where
we might usually look at an object in terms of its
utility, financial value, or indication of social sta-
tus—based on our own subjective notions of rele-
vance, significance, or taste—we can also achieve
a more self-aware and open-ended understanding
by a process of curatorial surgery, excising the quo-
tidian context that suppresses our capacity for
reflection, that presents objects as neutral and inno-
cent. In the absence left by this selective framing,
the curator can instigate new interpretations and
critical tools, reconstituting that which we already
know about our “everyday” lives. Once again, these
The exhibition Second Reading (Van Abbemuseum, June 16-24, 2018) featured curatorial projects by
interpretations and tools must be materialised—so the graduating students of Design Curating and Writing: Max Calabria, Delany Boutkan, Kirsten Geekie,
what to curate entails the design of spaces, sur- Josh Plough, and Yasmin Tri Aryani. The exhibition was designed by the graduates, produced by Looy
Driesser and Tijmen Dekker, with graphic design by Jeremy Jansen and Kai Udema. The department
faces, sounds, scripts, publications, objects, and was headed by Alice Tremlow, and the class mentors were Agata Jaworska and Annie Fletcher. Photos
infrastructures as part of the process. by Angeline Swinkels.
 WHEN
40
The 2016 Istanbul Design Biennial is an instruc-
tive example of the way curating in design manifests
through particular temporalities. The curators, Mark
Wigley and Beatriz Colomina, approached the ques-
tion of are we human? by looking at two extremes
on the spectrum of human design—the hand-axe
and the smartphone. Both are tools and technolo-
gies presumed to be relatively ubiquitous—the first
through the adaptations and geographical disper-
sions of the human species over the surface of the
Earth, and the second through global capitalism,
resource logistics, and market saturation. Together,
they reveal a widespread preoccupation with
urgency and universality, which can lend curatorial
projects greater appeal and popular relevance, but
which can also generate friction with a longer his-
torical reading of design as a situated cultural
phenomenon.
We would argue that curating in the design field
succeeds in certain temporal frameworks, including
the primordial artefacts of pre-historic civilisations
presented in archaeological contexts; the rather
narrow notion of modern design illustrated in
museum archives around the world through objects
by a small group of mostly Western European and
American men; and the fast-paced and transient
fairs, biennials, and other shows that showcase new
prototypes throughout the calendar year. These
archetypes of curating can be useful, especially as
starting points for critique and experimentation, but
they should not overshadow other timelines of
design reflection. For instance, the display of
mid-century modernist furniture under the ideology
of affordable design for the masses can induce a
kind of cognitive dissonance for contemporary view-
ers who can only buy these objects under licensed
production at exclusive prices. Furthermore, the
heights of design engineering seen in the automo-
bile or the airplane may demand new ethical read-
ings based on a context of climate change and
eternal warfare. In these cases, the relatively limited
timespan of the modern design exhibition is a barrier
to the sorts of reflections needed today.
On the other hand, immediacy is equally an issue
for curating. The demand for cutting-edge projects
on “urgent” themes belies the time-consuming
nature of research and curating as an extended pro-
Waiting for Peace and Justice
cess. Counterintuitively, the pursuit of such “current”
Rawad Baaklini (CD), Heloise Charital (DCW) and Julian Peschel (ID) themes makes the presentation of recent projects
Each year, the master departments from Design Academy Eindhoven collaborate together on a group
all the more precarious, as “groundbreaking” tech-
project. This year’s theme was ‘Peace and Justice’. In Waiting for Peace and Justice the occasional nologies become commonplace and interesting
collective of students, consisting of a curator (Charital), a product designer (Baaklini) and an information
designer (Peschel), explored the ambiguous relationship between Design and a big and complex topic
prototypes become instantly familiar through more
like Peace and Justice. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and its surroundings rapid media channels. Competing with design news
became their main subject of interest. “The first time we visited the site we were completely uninspired
and felt totally out of context. We took this lack of context and made it our main focus.” The title is an
blogs is an exercise in futility if one’s goal is to invest
ode to Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece Waiting for Godot. “We were sitting on a bench in front of the in research and reflection. As much as the curator
building waiting for an idea to come, for a project to be defined, but this idea never came. From there,
we reflected on the action of waiting and tried to understand what this waiting meant to us personally.
would like to freeze the world to understand what is
Although waiting is usually considered as a state of non-action, or a delay of action, for us waiting going on at that very moment, they instead need to
became our first act.” The final display of their research consisted of a series of digital as well as ana-
logue documentations of site specific actions and reactions based on the team’s investigations of
come up with ways of incorporating and extending
flowers, grass, soil, insects, animals, water, ponds, benches, pavement, concrete, shadows, people…. an active discourse through their curatorial approach.
Launched in 2014, the V&A’s Rapid Response Col-
41
lecting project is an intriguing model that demysti-
fies the process of curating and makes a very
significant and stately institution more adaptive;
however, it tends to collect objects as evidentiary
artefacts of important news events (such as a pair
of Primark jeans made in the Rana Plaza building in
Bangladesh, where more than 1,000 garment work-
ers died when the building collapsed in 2013), rather
than as designed objects on their own merit. There-
fore, it would be difficult to generalise from this
approach in order to encompass a larger field of
curatorial research and practice.
As they materialise, of course, these investiga-
tions take on different forms with different lifetimes.
A film endures in its original format for years, but
often is only screened intermittently, while an exhi-
bition has a continuous and intense presence that
rarely lasts more than a few months. Later, the cat-
alogue can be consulted instead, but its contents
were probably finalised months before the exhibition
opening, making it a partial view on a shared body
of research (few catalogues, for example, feature
photographs of the exhibition they accompany). An
independent publication may linger on personal
bookshelves for years, but be difficult to source after
the first print run, and websites may be launched
with great fanfare but suffer from broken links and
changing code within a few years. Even data storage
and archival formats become obsolete with unex-
pected speed. Thus, both the content and form of
the curatorial research demand careful positioning
with respect to time.
WHERE
If the process of curating is oriented to the initi-
ation and development of discourse, then it is depen-
dent not only on the materials and channels through
which it takes place, but also the spaces in which it
QUESTIONING DESIGN
unfolds. As previously mentioned, curating in the
design world often entails estranging the object
from its quotidian environment and placing it in a
new field of reflection and discourse—which could
mean a physical space but could also be on paper,
on screen, or in a digital, virtual, or augmented envi-
ronment. Ultimately, none of these spaces are neu-
tral containers for content: each one dictates its own
rules of conduct and thresholds for access. These
thresholds may be as concrete as the cost of an
entry ticket or the visa needed to attend a design
event in a certain country, but the abstract filters of
class, taste, language, and diversity or homogeneity
are equally powerful—and they must be taken into
account as part of a curatorial practice. In the design
world, however, the matter of context cannot be
reduced to a question of elitism.
The design exhibition as a space has always been
fraught with competing demands and protocols, and
has never achieved nor truly pursued the nominal
purity and elevated status of the “white cube”. As
far back as 1851, the Great Exhibition of the Works
of Industry of All Nations in London’s Crystal Palace
(one of the earliest and most significant progenitors
of the contemporary design exhibition) featured a
sense of complexity, embedded in and inextricable
from a messy, chaotic social context. The Great Exhi-
bition can be read as the negotiation of competing
interests including early modern capitalism, com-
petitive and self-mythologising strains of national-
ism, industrialisation, technological progress,
entertainment, the cultivation of consumer taste,
and the manifestation of a continuous discourse of
design that could absorb anything from lace to can-
non. In 1938, the Museum of Modern Art put on the
Exhibition of Useful Objects Under Five Dollars,
when it would have been unthinkable at the time to
exhibit artworks by price (and would be rather taboo
for a museum even today). The 14th Triennale di
Milano in May 1968, curated by Giancarlo de Carlo
under the thematic framework of the “Grande
Numero”, was occupied by politicised youth and
academics and used as a space for collective activ-
ism (somewhat ironically, given that De Carlo’s exhi-
bition design included a “youth protest” room
complete with cobblestones, barricades, old tires
and an upturned car).
These exhibitions suggest that design has always
breached the walls of the institution as a strictly
defined container, whether or not that outcome was
intended or planned. Indeed, the museum, the gal-
lery, and the exhibition hall are obvious sites for the
staging and enactment of curatorial projects, but
their limitations are formidable and they do not
always align with the conditions required by design
investigations. Why should curatorial projects take
place in museums at all? In our collective experience
as curators, we have made exhibitions in nightclubs,
abandoned schools, mini-markets, hardware stores,
and private homes. In the same vein, we feel an urge
to find new sites for curating in design and to play
with the interactions between context, protocol, and
content. The meaning, value, and function of objects
and images can be rewritten simply by moving them
to another place. We are interested in experimenting
with porous boundaries, with diffuse and bor-
der-crossing curatorial strategies, in order to draw
out nuance and complexity.
FOR WHOM
The question of “for whom” is perhaps the most
difficult, as it presupposes a result that can only
unfold in real time (and which, as in the case of the
previously mentioned Giancarlo De Carlo’s “Grande
Numero”, can easily backfire). Like any situated proj-
ect, a curatorial endeavour deals with different but
overlapping groups of people in terms of represen-
tation, orientation, empowerment, collaborative
inclusion, and marginalisation. Earlier, we suggested
that the unavoidable subjectivity of the curator could
be redeemed, through self-conscious reflection, as
a form of insight into a research process. Neverthe-
42
less, we must also take into account that the design
field is hardly diverse, especially in terms of the crit-
ical and research-oriented practitioners given a voice
by esteemed institutions and popular events. There-
fore, “for whom” becomes an even more pointed
factor for the curator who wants to feature stories
and start discussions that are not already known.
In our department, we want to move away from
the stereotype of the curator as an aloof, all-seeing
figure, commenting on the status quo from on high,
and towards the idea of the curator as an active and
engaged intermediary who can work by coalescing
people with converging interests in order to research,
work, and experiment together. In that sense, the
idea of a shared narrative, a common cause or enemy
can be highly effective in creating a sense of iden-
tification and an entry point for participation. This is
echoed in the rise of populism in politics on both
the right and the left, since the financial crisis desta-
bilised the premise of unlimited neoliberal progress
and profit, and we consider the empathetic critique
of populism and the collaborative development of
alternative narratives to be one of the most important
projects for the creative practitioner in the design
field. And rather than pursue change through estab-
lished modes of political participation, which no
longer feel effective, we see the organisation of new
collaborative projects as a challenge of design.
How can we achieve this? First, we can approach
curatorial projects as small-scale prototypes of
research, discussion, reflection, and implementa-
tion. Independent of the explicit politics and ethics
of its theme or subject of interest, any project will
also have an implicit politics and ethics based on its
model of collaboration (or lack thereof), based on
how it is structured, funded, and instrumentalised.
It is not possible to look at practice as an applied
form of theory or to look at theory as an explanation
of practice. Theory and practice, discourse and
action work in tandem as mutually influencing forces.
Well-intentioned discourse must move beyond iso-
lated channels; participatory platforms must synthe-
sise rather than subdue conflict. Critique cannot
happen from a safe distance but must leap into the
fray with constructive strategies for discussion.
HOW
Thus far, we have enumerated the ways in which
we see curating as a way of thinking as well as mak-
ing—a process of researching, collecting, discuss-
ing, situating, designing, materialising. However, it
is also essential to think of curating as a way of mak-
ing public, of framing, editing, and amplifying the
multidirectional flows of information, energy, and
matter through a variety of media. Making public
means considering not only how the author or cura-
tor reads or interacts with these media and their
contents, but also how their collaborators and audi-
ence do as well. A complete and definitive rendition
or encapsulation can never be made. On the con-
43
trary—the most powerful public forms have the sus-
tained capacity to be written and rewritten, to be
disassembled and reassembled in new ways.
Based on the approach of the curator, making
public has the potential to unfold qualities of open-
ness, ambiguity, and nonlinearity in the evolution of
a project towards unexpected outcomes and a mul-
tiplicity of readings. Overly didactic frameworks, on
the other hand, ask the user to suspend their own
associations, to reject the multitude of meanings
that can be made, to shoehorn the curator’s subjec-
tivity into their own. Just as with a metaphor, a joke,
or a meme, a curatorial project needs the viewer to
“complete” the experience by filling in a gap with
their own understanding.
The power of the design research investigation
lies in the means: the selection, adaptation, recon-
struction, and assemblage of new and found ele-
ments in images, sound, text, material, space, and
more. A curatorial project is like an embodied motion
picture, a non-linear narrative unfolding over time,
with a structure, a plot, a unique timbre, and a series
of twists and turns. Each project can introduce its
own organising principles—codes, grammars, or
logics that establish a mode of exchange with the
user. Conventions can be (mis)used in order to warp
the spatial and temporal conditions of the here and
now, to teleport into the past or the future or across
great distances and conceptual barriers.
In this text, we have given our own perspectives
on the composite question of who curates what,
when, where, for whom, and how? We agreed on
many points, debated many others, misunderstood
and clarified certain thoughts, completed one anoth-
er’s sentences, digested and repeated one another’s
words, played devil’s advocate, and challenged our-
selves together to go further in thinking critically and
originally. We look forward to continuing this process
QUESTIONING DESIGN
throughout the next year with our students.
ARE
I often wonder whether it is possible to be a designer who

44

45
uses words as a material, rather than a writer who just
happens to speak about design, both on the page and

WORDS
out loud. I was never trained to be a writer, although lan-
guage has been the channel through which I have sub-
consciously formulated and consciously expressed my
ideas for most of my 33 years. In fact, I never thought of
writing as an integral part of my practice until I came to
the Design Academy Eindhoven to study in the Contextual
Design master’s programme from 2010 to 2012.
The department’s rather unique concept of how a
designer should interact with the world put me in an
unusual position: I had a lot to say about things—not just
the covetable products of design but the rather banal accu-
mulation of objects that vastly outnumbered them—but
I could not seem to materialise those ideas in the same

Tamar Shafrir
way as my classmates. They devoted little time to sketch-
ing out or predicting exactly what they were going to do
before they did it; they simply charged into the workshop
and dove into the process, their critical and imaginative
faculties emerging in a mysterious synthesis of hand, tool,
material, context, and method of representation.
My approach was rather different. Very quickly, I real-
ised that my background in architecture had not instilled

QUESTIONING DESIGN
in me the kind of thinking necessary to work in the moment
with materials and processes that apply a great deal of
friction to the intentions of the maker. I could solve “prob-
lems” requiring spatial thinking, but the problems prior-
itised in the department were much more profound—why
make? how does this object respond to and intervene in
a broader contemporary human condition? what relation
does it construct between designer, user, and their envi-

THINGS?
ronment?—and they had to be addressed through proto-
types in which theory, form, technique, and aesthetics
could not be extricated from the whole. A design project
could not simply illustrate a preformed idea: it had to
process that idea into a thing in the world, to manifest it as a
semi-independent artefact in a real context, with complex effects
that could not be precisely predicted.
Although I struggled to think meaningfully about these issues
through the process of making, I was nevertheless able to use
other skills I had learned before. Studying architecture in the
mid-2000s was less about buildings and more about making a
rhetorical and narrative argument using a variety of representa-
tional tools (a tradition tracing back to the 19th-century École des
Beaux-Arts). Furthermore, that argument would be judged not
only on its content but on the legibility, beauty, and ingenuity of
the way in which it was described—or rather conjured up in the
mind of the jury. Finally, my education devoted as much time to
the studio as to architectural history and theory, which embraced
other disciplines from philosophy and political critique to futurism
and the history of technology, and reflected on the particular role
played by creative practice in relation to those fields.
I loved drawing, reading, and writing, but it was not until my
Design Academy master’s thesis that I stopped considering these
methods as “lesser than” design and began to conceive of a
personal practice that used those tools of analytical inquiry and
representation in order to encounter objects in different ways. I
was not an art historian, an anthropologist, a philosopher, or an
engineer, and not exactly a designer—but somehow, in the com-
bination of all of those approaches, I could be a theorist of things,
combining a critical perspective with profound respect and,
indispensably, a sense of empathy for designers cultivated
through friendships and countless discussions, but also many
hours spent at their side in the workshop. These experiences led
me to believe that there is something sublime and inimitable in
the act of materialising an idea in negotiation with other forms
of nonverbal and embodied intelligence, from the muscle memory
of the hand to the deep-seated cognitive structures of shape
analysis in the brain, from the grain of a material to the tolerance
of a machine.
When I write about things, I strive to bring out these tangible
but unspoken qualities as a designer would understand them
and think about them as the locus for the abstract concepts that
constitute theory. This is not an easy task, but it is a crucial one:
while theorists from other fields may refer to objects, they rarely
have the expertise or the inclination to ground their arguments
in their enmeshed materiality. And yet it is impossible to really
understand concepts like power, capitalism, efficiency, innova-
tion, or the avant-garde if they are described as pervasive invisible
vapours (like humours or miasma in archaic medicine) rather
than conditions situated in flows of material and energy at the
most fundamental level. Design theory is not just something I
happen to like: it is something I see as indispensable for con-
temporary discourse.
Even if my individual path from designer to writer is liberally
strewn with coincidence, luck, blind leaps, and an astonishing
amount of faith and generosity from a group of key individuals,
there are also several underlying reasons why I arrived at this
form of practice, at this point in time, and why this approach
seems valid, valuable, and urgent. The chronology in which my
education and experiences unfolded corresponds to two phe-
nomena in the interaction between words and things—first, the
entwining of verbal communication with objects and technology;
second, the growing importance ascribed to materials, objects,
and things in philosophical conceptions of the world, especially
after the decline of structuralism. Design theory may still be a
relatively niche and undisciplined field, with no defined protocol
for interacting with other spheres of academia, creative and cul-
tural production, and technological development, but I see these
two contemporary conditions as premonitions of the field’s immi-
nent fruition—and thus will explore them in more detail.
First: “language” is not an abstract, neutral, or universal
medium; it is indivisible from things and conditioned by their
particularity. While language has always been mediated by the
form of its capture and reproduction—from oral tradition to the
printing press—as someone born in 1985 and raised in the United
States in a middle-class immigrant family with technophilic ten-
dencies, I have experienced words in a remarkable diversity of
forms and devices that each constitute their own materialisation.
Although the 2008 financial crisis has recast the memory of the
46
1990s and 2000s as an era of toxic economic policies and disas-
trous faith in neoliberalism, I also remember it in other ways—as
a time when multiculturalism (and thus multilingualism) was
celebrated, when amazing new technologies appeared out of
nowhere and changed everything for the better every few years,
when interactive and participatory entertainment actually became
possible, when our words were not comprehensively surveilled
or monetised.
In 1990, we had an electronic typewriter that transmitted
finger strokes to inked characters on paper: a mistyped letter was
not erased but rather covered with a transparent white film. Soon
after, the first real computer entered our house—a 386 running
on MS-DOS, where I typed puzzling strings of letters, colons, and
slashes to communicate with something inside the machine.
Eventually the computer was upgraded to a graphical user inter-
face, with software like Microsoft Word and its infinite ways of
transforming the appearance of letters at the click of the mouse.
In school in 1994, we learned the art of cursive, drawing a word
out of continuous loops without lifting the pen from the paper.
The physical precision necessary to make the gesture apparently
bestowed the words with a greater beauty formality in the aca-
demic context.
That same year, when my brother said he was telling someone
how to beat a computer game on Prodigy, I could not really grasp
what he meant. How could words travel fast enough to constitute
the act of “talking”, and how could they travel with no medium?
By 1996, however, I was familiar enough with the Internet to use
chatrooms, participating (rather naively) in bizarre conversations
with anonymous ID names. Altavista, Ask Jeeves, and Google
appeared as search engines, which allowed for a new form of
navigation: instead of moving through the computer as a hierarchy
of folders or categories, you could simply leap into the unknown
via the transporting power of a single word. Technologies like
e-mail began in skeuomorphic forms and only gradually devel-
oped a native aesthetic, and my brother even taught me the simple
code language necessary to build a personal website. Amongst
friends, we learned to economise our words to get around text
message character limits on our first Nokia mobile phones.
The exponential increase in the complexity and variety of
social media has made of language a resource to be mined for
collective and personal information, something that we see as
transgressing the boundary of private space (ironically, for a dis-
cursive channel). However, social media have also pioneered
new ways that language can be read, particularly in the inter-
weaving of language itself with metalanguage. Only recently,
while showing an Instagram meme to a friend, did I realise that
reading these collages of image and text requires a special under-
standing of their non-linear narratives: the eye must move around
the screen, piecing together the elements of the story in the right
order to arrive at the punchline. They may not be immediately
legible, but they do introduce a new element of spatial complexity
and overlay of foreground text and background image to the act
of comprehension.
I recount this well-known and rather banal history simply to
point out that it is impossible to think of words as detached from
the medium in which they have been conceived and passed on.
As a designer who works with words, the conscious choice of
material, dimension, durability, and accessibility, the decisions
to make the words searchable and editable and shareable (or
not), affect not only the impact but the interpretation of language.
A conservative understanding of design theory as a branch of
cultural criticism maintains a separation between theory and
design that is not only ideological but also material: printed in
books and magazines or visualised on digital screens, the words
remain relatively inert. Could we instead design new methods of
writing, communicating, and reading based on the inherent qual-
ities and idiosyncrasies of each medium? Perhaps the text could
disappear entirely from the final version, as source code hides
behind a public interface, while still maintaining its original intent.
For theory to have an effect on things, we must pay more attention
to how it is designed and made.
We can also consider words less as vehicles for meaning and
more as things with histories and economies of use. In 2015, I
started a project called Designing Words (http://designingwords.
tumblr.com/) that tracked the etymology and popularity of words
commonly used in design theory. I was curious if we could think
about that vocabulary as a stock market or menagerie. Why did
fabricate fall out of fashion in 1910, while apparatus reached its
peak? Why has beauty decreased since 1910 while unique has
risen steadily? Do words with Germanic roots (build, craft, cut,
draw, feel, frame, etc.) differ in kind from words with Greek roots
(contour, chair, electric, geometry, harmony, idea, etc.)? Does the
origin of craft in “strength” or “sea vessel”, of talent in “sum of
money”, of calibre in a “shoemaker’s last” tell us anything about
the journey from signifier to signified? These questions may seem
abstract, but they are essential if we expect that rapid changes
in technology, new materials and inventions, and shifting geog-
raphies of production will not only demand new critical terminol-
ogies but also shape them in return.
If we can apply theory to things, and encounter words and
theory as things, can we also consider things themselves as
theory? Can things, in fact, constitute a way of thinking in their
own right? This question has grown in importance over the past
few decades for multiple reasons. First, Bruno Latour’s highly
influential actor-network theory claimed that society could only
be understood by accounting for the actions of both human and
nonhuman agents, including objects. Second, the increasing
power of artificial intelligence has shifted the balance in real
and symbolic power from the human mind to nonhuman cogni-
tive systems. Third, the gradual awareness of mankind’s destruc-
tive effects on the natural environment has encouraged a new
sensitivity to nonhuman forms of experience and embedded
intelligence, from organisms like plants and materials like rocks
to more complex entities like rivers and mountains. It is also
possible that increasing wealth and consumerism and the dimin-
ishing role of Christian religious observance in many Western
nations have erased any moral hierarchy between spirit (the
immateriality of the soul as the embodiment of faith, love, good
deeds, and transcendence) and material (the base nature of
earthly existence, icon worship, vanity, and greed). Today, looking
for theoretical value and meaning in things is not only ideolog-
ically tolerated but encouraged in many intellectual, cultural,
and technological spheres.
It has not always been so self-evident, however. In November
1971, Dutch philosopher Fons Elders moderated a debate
between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, which was
recorded at TU Eindhoven and broadcast on Dutch National
Television under the title “Human Nature and Ideal Society”. As
a structural linguist, Chomsky described the universal phenom-
enon of human language as evidence of an intrinsic structure
within the mind, which constituted an aspect of human nature.
Not only did this internal structure determine how we encoun-
tered our external reality, but it had to coincide with some aspect
of that external reality. He justified this inference by comparing
language to physics: both are ways of understanding and
describing the world based on underlying organising principles;
both allow for shared discourse between a community of people
across time and space; both sustain logical analysis and creative
speculation within their complex structures. Yet very few people
are able to master physics, while every child learns language in
the absence of any physiological or psychological obstacles,
even though Chomsky called them as equally complex. There-
fore, the structure of language was internal to the human mind
whereas the structure of physics was not. However, Chomsky
also claimed that the mind could only develop scientific theories
if the structure of physics and the structure of language were,
on some level, the same.
Foucault took a very different position. He questioned the
existence of any innate quality that could constitute a form of
human nature. Where Chomsky saw intuitive intelligence and
creativity based on the shared systems of language or science,
Foucault saw a restriction of creativity through the application
of various systems of rules, which had to be enforced through
techniques of power. There was no reason to believe that there
was a fundamental connection between language and science
as innate structures; instead, Foucault suggested that we look
elsewhere for the systems that have enabled the development
of science—“in social forms, in the relations of production, in
47
class struggles”. And while Chomsky’s idea of intrinsic human
nature and its capacity for creativity meant that there could be
an ideal structure of society designed to emancipate the human
and maximise their potential, Foucault was skeptical that any
organisation of society could be called ideal, and that instead all
institutions in society should be critiqued through the lens of
power—especially power masquerading as neutral or hiding
within silent, solid points of support. Without identifying the appa-
ratus of domination embedded within the world, which allowed
some parts of society to exploit others, any political revolution
was doomed to reassert it. For example, he analysed the ideal
society envisioned by 20th-century socialism as rooted in a bour-
geois paradigm—of family structure, of sexuality, of aesthetics.
Socialism was a reaction to the limitations on human potential
and self-realisation under capitalism, but paradoxically, its idea
of a liberated human nature was envisioned through a highly
conservative model of behaviour and coexistence.
How does the divide between the two relate to the idea of
things as theory? Although Foucault does not explicitly refer to
objects, as he talks about the relations of production, the lit-
tle-known points of support and the solidity of domination, and
the bourgeois aesthetic, it becomes clear that he locates systems
of rules and operations of power in the material world and its
interactions with the humans that inhabit it. The external world is
not a mere stage set for the performance of a specific social order:
it works in concert with specific concepts of systems of rules in
order to produce a collective society, both human and not.
On the other hand, Chomsky’s incredibly anthropocentric
view on the world leaves little room for non-human sources of
power and intelligence to have any meaningful influence—going
so far as to imply that the structure of the external world must
be intrinsically connected to that of human language. His ideal
society is based on conditions of justice and power, which he
describes as mental and social concepts without specifying
how they are manifested. When he mentions Eindhoven’s own
Philips in passing, he describes the hegemonic superstructure
of the multinational corporation as a threat to a free society
without also considering how its power operates at the scale
of its products. And Chomsky seems to repeat the mistake of
socialism identified by Foucault when he claims that in an ideal
society, the liberated individual will instinctively perform pro-
ductive, creative labour unless they are physically or mentally
deformed. His outlook positions productivity as a self-evident
objective and any resistance towards productivity as a form of
social deviance—both qualities of the capitalist system he had
previously denounced.
The Chomsky-Foucault debate was a telling moment during
a time of radical change—in the wake of the youth revolutions in
QUESTIONING DESIGN
Europe, the civil rights movement in the United States, and the
end of nuclear testing, but also at the cusp of the 1970s energy
crisis, the formalisation of the environmental movement, and the
scientific study of human overpopulation. This context revealed
a fundamental flaw in the Modernist ideology—its dependence
on the availability of infinite resources at the behest of human
civilisation. Humans could no longer regard materials and objects
as their faithful servants in the pursuit of an a priori utopian dream,
and therefore it was necessary to begin thinking about the world
beyond their own sense of consciousness.
But the environmentalist understanding of the relation
between humans, nonhuman organisms, and materials and
objects only accounts for part of the rising interest in things.
After all, its orientation towards survival, above all that of the
human species, is rooted in anthropocentric ethics. Meanwhile,
theorists like Jean Baudrillard started to write about objects in
more speculative and less moralistic terms, investigating with
fascination the new conditions of mass media, industrial pro-
duction, and consumerism as they translated into discrete arte-
facts. As Baudrillard later wrote in his 1986 book America, “There
is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty
room.” I share that sense of wonder as my imperative to think
about, with, and through things in the pursuit of new forms and
directions of knowledge.