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Meaningful Stuff: Design, Ecology and the Human Condition
Meaningful Stuff peers beneath the slick, polished surface of the made world to reveal a dark, incoherent and altogether disturbing reality - showing how at the root of it all, it is the underlying human condition that shapes our impending ecological crisis. As we inefficiently fumble our way through countless embraces with material experiences - from skyscrapers to saltshakers - we temporarily connect with a longer-standing struggle to understand complex existential phenomena such as time, mortality, identity, value, selfhood and utopia.
Through this timely and polemical work, the author violates fixed ideas surrounding the tyranny of design in the collapse of our planet's ecosystems; pioneering a more cerebral and progressive model of ecological design thinking, which draws into focus the critical role of design in dealing with complex 21st century global issues. Delivering an expansive, ecological model of practice - or praxis - where design engagement is defined as an essential synthesis of nested activities that seek to reconcile social, cultural, environmental and semantic agendas; a mode of praxis located among manifold layers of engagement from the deeply abstract and theoretical, to the practical and applied.
Meaningful Stuff illuminates the complex and thorny nature of our engagements with buildings, spaces and artefacts; mapping a new critical and intellectual territory that fuses sources from early social and philosophical writings to contemporary theories in cultural studies, anthropology, design, architecture and ecology. Providing an essential point of reference for anyone whose work grapples with the knotty problems of design, human behaviour and sustainability.
This is a book for all learners - academics, professionals and students alike - brimming with intelligent viewpoints, controversial propositions, practical examples and theoretical analyses. Chapter summaries throughout the book both deepen and embed the reader's understanding of the text, while creating a vital opportunity for reflection by distilling the content of each chapter down into a series of concentrated, seminal points.
Beautifully illustrated throughout with over 100 examples - from urban studies, architecture and interiors to furniture, products, fashion and textiles, crafts, graphics and illustration - woven together in a theoretically critical, yet accessible and engaging style of writing, Meaningful Stuff provides the reader with an arresting, provocative and radical reassessment of the role of design as a driver of social, economic and environmental revolution.
Through this timely and polemical work, the author violates fixed ideas surrounding the tyranny of design in the collapse of our planet's ecosystems; pioneering a more cerebral and progressive model of ecological design thinking, which draws into focus the critical role of design in dealing with complex 21st century global issues. Delivering an expansive, ecological model of practice - or praxis - where design engagement is defined as an essential synthesis of nested activities that seek to reconcile social, cultural, environmental and semantic agendas; a mode of praxis located among manifold layers of engagement from the deeply abstract and theoretical, to the practical and applied.
Meaningful Stuff illuminates the complex and thorny nature of our engagements with buildings, spaces and artefacts; mapping a new critical and intellectual territory that fuses sources from early social and philosophical writings to contemporary theories in cultural studies, anthropology, design, architecture and ecology. Providing an essential point of reference for anyone whose work grapples with the knotty problems of design, human behaviour and sustainability.
This is a book for all learners - academics, professionals and students alike - brimming with intelligent viewpoints, controversial propositions, practical examples and theoretical analyses. Chapter summaries throughout the book both deepen and embed the reader's understanding of the text, while creating a vital opportunity for reflection by distilling the content of each chapter down into a series of concentrated, seminal points.
Beautifully illustrated throughout with over 100 examples - from urban studies, architecture and interiors to furniture, products, fashion and textiles, crafts, graphics and illustration - woven together in a theoretically critical, yet accessible and engaging style of writing, Meaningful Stuff provides the reader with an arresting, provocative and radical reassessment of the role of design as a driver of social, economic and environmental revolution.
384 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2020
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