Design as Politics

Description

Design as Politics confronts the inadequacy of contemporary politics to deal with unsustainability. Current 'solutions' to unsustainability are analysed as utterly insufficient for dealing with the problems but, further than this, the book questions the very ability of democracy to deliver a sustainable future. Design as Politics argues that finding solutions to this problem, of which climate change is only one part, demands original and radical thinking. Rather than reverting to failed political ideologies, the book proposes a post-democratic politics. In this, Design occupies a major role, not as it is but as it could be if transformed into a powerful agent of change, a force to create and extend freedom. The book does no less than position Design as a vital form of political action.

Tony Fry is a director of the sustainment consultancy Team D/E/S and Adjunct Professor of Design, Griffith University, Queensland College of Art. He has taught and lectured internationally and is author of Remakings: Ecology, Design, Philosophy, A New Design Philosophy: an Introduction to Defuturing and Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice.

"Design as Politics destroys our fantasies of 'sustainable design' and urges us to face our collective future. Read this before deciding whether you have the courage and conviction necessary to be a designer of the future." Lisa Norton, School of the Art Institute of Chicago "There is no more challenging and urgent political question than whether democracy is able to deliver sustainable economic and political futures. Fry's is the first book to ask this question, not in the abstract but in the context of asking how we make the future." Clive Dilnot, Parsons The New School for Design, New York "To say that this book is "timely" is an understatement. Fry offers us one of the most prescient theses for the design of a different possible future - a time and a politics "to-come" - that we have. We all ignore the messages of this book at our own peril." Duncan Fairfax, Goldsmiths, University of London