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Showcases the bold, innovative, and colorful architectural designs of Alexander Girard. During the midcentury period, Michigan attracted visionary architects, designers, and theorists, including Alexander Girard. While much has been written about Girard's vibrantly colored and patterned textiles for Herman Miller, the story of his Detroit period (1937-53)-encompassing interior and industrial design, exhibition curation, and residential architecture-has not been told. Alexander Girard, Architect...

The unlikely story of Le Corbusier and Chandigarh has proven itself to be one of modernisms boldest experiments. Born of a vision of a modern India, Chandigarhdesigned by Le Corbusierwas created as a statement for an emerging modern nationstate. Its Capitol Complex, considered by many as Le Corbusiers masterpiece, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016. Like all visionaries, Le Corbusier was adept at taking the iconic and symbolic and using them to fashion his own unique vocabulary....

How did our modern ideas of physical comfort originate? This study demonstrates that changes in the technology of comfort depended on a fashion-conscious public being made to feel discomfort with surroundings they had previously preceived as functionally adequate.

Performance, Fashion and the Modern Interior examines the interior as a stage upon which modern life and lifestyles are consciously fashioned and performed, and from which modern identities are projected by and through design. Scholars from Europe, Canada, America and Australia present a range of interior environments - domestic interiors, sets for stage and film, exhibition spaces, art galleries, hotel lobbies, cafés and retail spaces - to explore each as an intersection of fashion, lifestyle...

How making models allows us to recall what was and to discover what still might be  Whether looking inward to the intricacies of human anatomy or outward to the furthest recesses of the universe, expanding the boundaries of human inquiry depends to a surprisingly large degree on the making of models. In this wide-ranging volume, scholars from diverse fields examine the interrelationships between a model’s material foundations and the otherwise invisible things it gestures toward, underscoring th...

This book examines, through an interdisciplinary lens, the relationship between political dissent and processes of designing. In the past twenty years, theorists of social movements have noted a diversity of visual and performative manifestations taking place in protest, while the fields of design, broadly defined, have been characterized by a growing interest in activism. The book’s premise stems from the recognition that material engagement and artifacts have the capacity to articulate politi...

Subjectivity is one of the central issues of twentieth-century philosophy, literature and art. Modernism, which "discovered" the subconscious, put an end to the belief in the Cartesian Subject as the autonomous centre of knowledge and self-consciousness. Instead, the subject became something uncontrollable, unreliable, incomplete and fragmentary. The attempts to recapture the unity of the subject led to the existential quest and the flight into ideology (nazism, communism). Postmodernism, the cu...

Along with urban planning and architecture, design played a central role in shaping the socialist future. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, it was above all the issue of housing that became the yardstick of the successful implementation of visions of a better world. Beginning in Berlin with its early housing exhibitions which took place in an atmosphere that was shaped by political rivalry and the pathos of progress, this publication focuses on the (post-)Soviet satellite states. It explores th...

Beyond the Dirndl. A photographer from Berlin brings the traditional costumes of rural Germany into the context of couture. They have lost their place in daily life and yet, they still exist: the regional costumes of Germany. Once lovingly stitched by hand to be worn on festive occasions, they are true historical relies: their shapes and metallic ornaments carry within them history from the Renaissance and Baroque to Biedermeier, while their embroideries tell of ancient pagan rites or the emanci...

The last in Tony Fry's celebrated trilogy of books continues his radical rethinking of design. Becoming Human by Design's provocative argument presents a revised reading of human 'evolution' centred on ontological design. Examining the relation of design to the nature of the human species - where the species came from, how it was created, what it became and its likely future - Fry asserts that current biological and social models of evolution are an insufficient explanation of how 'we humans'...

Whilst there are some studies of architecture in Scotland post-devolution, writings on design are largely non-existent. Designs on Democracy seeks to fill that gap and ranges over the debates concerning architecture, urbanism, design and the Creative and Cultural Industries and the policies, people and places that stimulate and animate them. The book also tells a story about Scotland's creatives -where they work and how their ideas and what they create and design contribute to Scotland's democra...

Building blocks are practical materials for playing, learning and working at kindergartens, schools, universities and companies. How did building blocks, which were primarily established as toys for children, come to be practical materials used in professional and educational settings?This study explores the historical implications of particular sets of building blocks in the interdisciplinary consolidation and transformation of techniques, materials, discourses and subjects. By mapping the gene...

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The veil can be an instrument of feminist empowerment, and veiled anonymity can confer power to women. Starting from her own marriage ceremony at which she first wore a full veil, Rafia Zakaria examines how veils do more than they get credit for. Part memoir and part philosophical investigation, Veil questions that what is seen is always good and free, and that what is veiled can only s...