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How to design a world in which we rely less on stuff, and more on people. We're filling up the world with technology and devices, but we've lost sight of an important question: What is this stuff for? What value does it add to our lives? So asks author John Thackara in his new book, In the Bubble: Designing for a Complex World. These are tough questions for the pushers of technology to answer. Our economic system is centered on technology, so it would be no small matter if "tech" ceased to be an end-in-itself in our daily lives. Technology is not going to go away, but the time to discuss the end it will serve is before we deploy it, not after. We need to ask what purpose will be served by th...
A visionary yet practical guide to building a more sustainable future, by one of the most important voices in environmentally aware design Are there practical solutions to the many global challenges—climate change, poverty, insufficient healthcare—that threaten our way of life? Author John Thackara has spent a lifetime roving the globe in search of design that serves human needs. In this clear-eyed but ultimately optimistic book, he argues that, in our eagerness to find big technological solutions, we have all too often ignored the astonishing creativity generated when people work together and in harmony with the world around them. Drawing on an inspiring range of examples, from a temple...
Praise for the previous edition: "[A] fascinating book." John Thackara, Doors of Perception "Provides the foundations for a radical new perspective." Ethical Pulse "At last a book that dispels the idea that fashion is only interested in trend-driven fluff: not only does it have a brain, but it could be a sustainable one." Lucy Siegle, Crafts Magazine Fully revised and updated, the second edition of Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys continues to define the field of design in fashion and textiles. Arranged in two sections, the first four chapters represent key stages of the lifecycle: material cultivation/extraction, production, use and disposal. The remaining four chapters exp...
Digital information about physical products and the availability of production tools and facilities transforms design into an open discipline
designing designing is one of the most extraordinary books on design ever written. First published in 1984 and reprinted with this title and cover in 1991, the book was the product of ten years of auto-critique, reflection and experimentation on writing on designing. Offering a savage auto-critique of his own work on “methods”, as well as of the wider methods and ends of advanced industrial societies as a whole, this book challenges the traditional product- and progress- orientated focus on design by insisting that the world now coming into being requires designing to be understood as 'a response to the whole of life.' But designing designing is also unique in modern design thinking in its exploration of what writing on designing might be. Combining essays, interviews, reflections, performances, plays, poems, chance procedures, photographs, collages and quotes, Jones experiments with both form and content in an attempt to make a book which 'is not simply about designing but is instead itself an instance of the ideas and processes explored within it.'
Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories unpacks the complex and crucial debates surrounding sustainable design to deliver a compelling manifesto for change, at a time of looming ecological crisis, mounting environmental legislation and limited progress. This is a book about sustainable design, by the leading sustainable design thinkers, for creative practitioners, professionals, students and academics. This challenging work provides the reader with a rich resource of future visions, critical propositions, creative ideas and design strategies for working towards a sustainable tomorrow, today.The authors boldly present alternative understandings of sustainable design, to curate a challenging, sometimes uncomfortable and always provocative, collection of essays by some of the worlds leading sustainable design thinkers. The result is an impacting and polemical anthology that reinvigorates the culture of critique that, in previous years, has empowered design with the qualities of social, environmental and economic revolution.
This is an essential aid in the initial design and planning of a project. The relevant building type is located by a comprehensive index and cross reference system, a condensed commentary covers user requireements, planning criteria, basic dimensions and other considerations of function, siting aspect etc. A system of references based on an extensive bibliography supports the text. In every section plans, sections, site layouts, design details and graphs illustrated key aspects of a building type's design. Most illustrations are dimensioned or scaled - the metric system of measurement is used throughout, and the equivalent in feet/inches can easily be read either off a graphic scale on the p...
The Why Factory is a global think-tank and research institute, run by MVRDV and Delft University of Technology and led by professor Winy Maas. The Why Factory's Future Cities research programme explores possibilities for the development of our cities by focusing on the production of models and visualizations for cities of the future"--Book Jacket
This book aims to map out ways of designing and planning products so that their value is sustained and they can be kept in use for a longer time. It tells the story of Vivian, a name that represents any product. The life oF Vivian is traced from preconception, through development, purchase and long period of use, right up to oblivion. Vivian's story is embedded in the information and experiences that the Eternally Yours Foundation has gathered over the past years, culminating in the 'Time in design' conference organized in October 2003 in cooperation with the Long Now Foundation. This book includes most of the lectures by, among many others, Ezio Manzini, Brian Eno, Gustaf Beumer and John Thackara - introduction.
A collection of writing about design from the influential, eclectic, and adventurous Design Observer. Founded in 2003, Design Observer inscribes its mission on its homepage: Writings about Design and Culture. Since its inception, the site has consistently embraced a broader, more interdisciplinary, and circumspect view of design's value in the world—one not limited by materialism, trends, or the slipperiness of style. Dedicated to the pursuit of originality, imagination, and close cultural analysis, Design Observer quickly became a lively forum for readers in the international design community. Fifteen years, 6,700 articles, 900 authors, and nearly 30,000 comments later, this book is a com...