07 Aug Design by Accident. For a New History of Design
Alexandra Midal
Design curators, -critics, and -academics often cry over themselves and lament that design has not managed to establish an independent field like architecture or art. Of course everybody sees design as essential nowadays, but its vague characteristics make it difficult to place. Meandering between functional, artistic, engineering, styling, problem solving, experimentation, research, trend, and expression it is neither art nor science. It is heavily abused by marketing but it is far from being just styling.
Alexandra Midal wants to set things straight by shaping a history for this young discipline, that was thought by some to be just a fade in architecture. She links and compares theories, manifestoes, and essays to gather a critical study that hopefully will lead to clarification and a long needed emancipation of design.