1. Introducing critical design -- Challenging orthodoxy -- Challenging colloquialism: the problem with critical design -- What's so critical about critical design practice -- Why study critical design? -- Researching critical design practice -- 'Critical' in critical design practice -- Industrial design as a discipline -- The structure and approach to writing -- 2. History -- A forgotten history of critical design practice -- An emerging critical design practice -- Challenging hegemony -- Anti-design -- Participatory design -- Unikat Design: adding nothing but the concept -- Representative design -- Design Interactions -- Critical Design at the Royal College of Art -- Synergies between precedents and contemporary examples of critical design -- 3. Theories, methods, and tactics -- Design as a medium for inquiry -- Post-optimal design and para-functionality -- Rhetorical use -- Discursive design -- The aesthetics of use and meaningful presence -- Exploratory potential -- Design fiction -- Speculation and proposition -- Constructing publics -- Ambiguity -- Satire -- 4. Criticism, function, and discipline -- Design Art -- Design art and society -- Function in critical design practice -- The paradox of critical design in commercial use -- Modelling the field -- Design at users -- Directing critique through design practice -- 5. Practice -- Associative design -- Speculative design -- Critical design -- Design practice as satire -- The uses of narrative -- Rationality and ambiguity -- Towards a taxonomy of critical practices in design -- The taxonomy as an analytical tool -- Applications of the taxonomy -- 6. Critical design practice and its disciplinary contribution -- Summary -- Challenging disciplinary orthodoxy -- An extended role for industrial design: discipline, science, and society.
Summary:
"Critical Design is becoming an increasingly influential discipline, affecting policy and practice in a range of fields. Matt Malpass's book is the first to introduce critical design as a field, providing a history of the discipline, outlining its key influences, theories and approaches, and explaining how critical design can work in practice through a range of contemporary examples. Critical Design moves away from traditional approaches that limit design's role to the production of profitable objects, focusing instead on a practice that is interrogative, discursive and experimental. Using a wide range of examples from contemporary practice, and drawing on interviews with key practitioners, Matt Malpass provides an introduction to critical design practice and a manifesto for how a radical and unorthodox practice might provide design answers in an age of austerity and ecological crisis"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.