Design and Truth - Hardcover

Grudin, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300161409 ISBN 13: 9780300161403

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2010

Synopsis

A profound meditation on how design reflects the uses and abuses of power from the Pulitzer Prize-nominated author of Time and the Art of Living

“If good design tells the truth,” writes Robert Grudin in this path-breaking book on esthetics and authority, “poor design  tells a lie,  a lie usually related . . . to the  getting or  abusing of power.”

From the ornate cathedrals of Renaissance Europe to the much-maligned Ford Edsel of the late 1950s, all products of human design communicate much more than their mere intended functions. Design holds both psychological and moral power over us, and these forces may be manipulated, however subtly, to surprising effect. In an argument that touches upon subjects as seemingly unrelated as the Japanese tea ceremony, Italian mannerist painting, and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello plantation, Grudin turns his attention to the role of design in our daily lives, focusing especially on how political and economic powers impress themselves on us through the built environment.

Although architects and designers will find valuable insights here, Grudin’s intended audience is not exclusively the trained expert but all those who use designs and live within them every day.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Grudin is professor emeritus in the English Department at the University of Oregon. His Book: A Novel was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in Literature. He lives in Berkeley, CA.

From Publishers Weekly

The faddish exaltation of design as an all-encompassing force reaches an apogee in this scattershot manifesto. English prof Grudin (Book) discusses a hodgepodge of phenomena as exemplars of good or bad design, including St. Peter's Basilica, Edsel automobiles, Microsoft Word, Heidegger's philosophy, human liberty, and a Velcro doohickey he rigged up to fix his TV remote. Grudin has a cosmic conception of his subject (the entire universe is a knowledge design) and draws correspondingly vast conclusions that go beyond engineering and aesthetics into morality and politics: good design, he contends, expresses honesty and integrity, while bad design embodies falsehood, corruption, and abusive power. Unfortunately, these notions get lost in a rambling text that jumbles together perceptive criticism (the artist Christo's installations were a massive multiplication of banalities) with self-help exhortations and leadership bromides (corporate activity on all levels should be value-driven). There's little payoff to Grudin's inflation of design into a theory of everything beyond abstractions (The energy field created by a given design is situated within the larger energy that is the marketplace) and clunky analogies (The U. S. Constitution is the design equivalent of the Jaguar XKE). The result is a promising but ill-designed treatise. Photos. (May)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0300161409
• ISBN 13: 9780300161403
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224