Design and the Question of History

Design and the Question of History is not a work of Design History. Rather, it is a mixture of mediation, advocacy and polemic that takes seriously the directive force of design as an historical actor in and upon the world. Understanding design as a shaper of worlds within which the political, ethical and historical character of human being is at stake, this text demands radically transformed notions of both design and history. Above all, the authors posit history as the generational site of the future. Blindness to history, it is suggested, blinds us both to possibility, and to the foreclosure of possibilities, enacted through our designing. The text is not a resolved, continuous work, presented through one voice. Rather, the three authors cut across each other, presenting readers with the task of disclosing, to themselves, the commonalities, repetitions and differences within the deployed arguments, issues, approaches and styles from which the text is constituted. This is a work of friendship, of solidarity in difference, an act of cultural politics. It invites the reader to take a position – it seeks engagement over agreement.

Tony Fry is Principal of the Studio at the Edge of the World, Tasmania, Adjunct Professor at the University of Tasmania, and the former Director of the EcoDesign Foundation in Sydney, Australia. A writer, researcher, educator and award-winning designer, he is author of 20 books including Design as Politics, Becoming Human By Design, Defuturing, Writing Design Fiction and Contrapractice.

Clive Dilnot is professor of Design Studies at Parsons The New School for Design, New York, USA. Recent publications include Ethics? Design? (2005) and the text for Chris Killip: Pirelli Work (2007).

Director of Postgraduate Studies and Curriculum Development, Design School, University of Technology Sydney, Australia.

Anne-Marie Willis is a design writer, editor and educator who has taught at universities in Australia, Hong Kong and Egypt, including as Professor of Design Theory at the German University in Cairo. She was Editor of Design Philosophy Papers, and former Assistant Director of the EcoDesign Foundation, an organization that pioneered sustainable design in Australia. Her published books include The Design Philosophy Reader (Bloomsbury, 2019) and Steel (Bloomsbury, 2015). She collaborates with Tony Fry at the Studio at the Edge of the World, Tasmania, and is also a member of the editorial advisory board for the Bloomsbury Design Library.