Search results for ""Author Michael Erlhoff""

Design affects all social contexts and is therefore intensively instrumentalized both by the politically powerful and their critics. Both functions of design, and their inevitable combination, are presented in this book in precise detail. Authors from various countries present previously unknown and innovative examples of democratic activities conducted through design. This publication is therefore aimed not only at design professionals but also at the general public of all countries.

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The complexity of the designed world demands a critical analysis of its social and economic contexts. A design criticism worthy of its name is urgently needed, because it scarcely exists. The design theorist Michael Erlhoff is a radical critic who focuses on concealed banalities, hidden cruelties, obscured obviousness, disguised motives, and other repressed enmeshments of design. Specifically he examines the design of weapons, design under Nazism, the design of "electric chairs," the brutality of branding, the ambivalence of service design, the violence of signs, or the ornamentalization of people as masses. This book provides the kind of self-criticism that is needed if design is finally to become self-aware.

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This dictionary provides a stimulating and categorical foundation for a serious international discourse on design. It is a handbook for everyone concerned with design in career or education, who is interested in it, enjoys it, and wishes to understand it.110 authors from Japan, Austria, England, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United States, and elsewhere have written original articles for this design dictionary. Their cultural differences provide perspectives for a shared understanding of central design categories and communicating about design. The volume includes both the terms in use in current discussions, some of which are still relatively new, as well as classics of design discourse. A practical book, both scholarly and ideal for browsing and reading at leisure.

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Design has long expressed and established itself as an independent research competence – a fact that also companies, institutions and politicians have come to acknowledge. What is still needed, however, is a stronger public platform for design to confidently reflect upon this process and to establish and communicate the specific innovative and experimental dimension of design research. For this reason, BIRD, the Board of International Research in Design, has developed the New Experimental Research in Design / NERD format. The edited conference contributions of twelve young researchers from all over the world provide an impressive and diverse and insightful range of intelligent and inspiring approaches in design research, giving rise to further debate and action in the rapidly evolving field.

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The desk is a place of work and of action, but it also serves as a place to exhibit personal things and preferences. Thus it always characterizes in two ways a material and symbolic unity. The desk is not only very informative in itself, but also must always be studied and understood in the context of its cultural, gender-specific, and field-related surroundings. The focus of this study is a comparative analysis of the use of desks. Desks in insurance companies, banks, administrative authorities, call centers, and design studios in twelve countries on all continents were studied. This publication presents the results in the form of extensive visual material, empirical analyses, and critical essays. The study was carried out by the Köln International School of Design (KISD) in collaboration with universities in Hong Kong; New York; Seoul; Taipei; Curitiba, Brazil; Pune, India; Auckland; Milan; and Fukuoka, Japan.

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