The ABCs of Contemporary Design
The ABCs of Contemporary Design
The ABCs of Contemporary Design
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The ABCs of ContemporaryDesign*
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Outmoded: "The older media, not designed for mass production,take on a new
timeliness:thatof exemptionand of improvisation.Theyalone could outflankthe
united frontof trustsand technology."So writesTheodor Adorno in Minima
Moralia (1951) on the criticaluse of outmoded media in a capitalistcontextof
ceaseless obsolescence. Here, of course, Adorno draws on WalterBenjamin, for
whom "the outmoded"was a centralconcern. "Balzac was the firstto speak of the
ruins of the bourgeoisie," Benjamin wrote in his ArcadesProject."But only
Surrealismexposed them to view.The developmentof the forcesof production
reduced the wish symbolsof the previous centuryto rubble even before the
monuments representingthem had crumbled."The "wishsymbols"in question
are the capitalistwonders of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisieat the heightof
its confidence,such as "the arcades and interiors,the exhibitionsand panoramas."
These structuresfascinatedthe Surrealistsnearlya centurylater-when further
capitalist development had turned them into "residues of a dream world" or,
again,"rubbleeven beforethe monumentswhichrepresentedthemhad crumbled."
For the Surrealiststo hauntthese outmoded spaces, accordingto Benjamin,was to
tap "the revolutionaryenergies"thatwere trapped there. But it is less utopian to
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Vernacular:Postmodernarchitecturepretended to revivevernacularforms,but
forthe mostpartit replaced themwithcommercialsigns,and Pop imagesbecame
as important as articulated space. In our design world, this development has
reached a new level: now commodity-image and space are oftenmelded through
design. Designers strivefor programs"in which brand identity,signage systems,
interiors, and architecture would be totally integrated"(Bruce Mau). This
integration depends on a deterritorializingof both image and space, which
depends in turnon a digitizingof the photograph,itslooseningfromold referential
ties,and on a computingof architecture, itslooseningfromold tectonicprinciples.
As Deleuze and Guattari(let alone Marx) taughtus long ago, thisdeterritorializing
is the path of capital,not the avant-garde.
WithoutQualities: Design is all about desire, but todaythis desire seems almost
subject-less,or at leastalmostlack-less:designseems to advance a kindof narcissism
thatis all image and no interiority-anapotheosis of the subjectthatmaybe one
withits disappearance. In our neo-ArtNouveau worldof totaldesignand Internet
plenitude, the fate of "the poor little rich man" of Loos, "precluded fromall
futurelivingand striving,developingand desiring,"is on the vergeof realization.
RobertMusil,a Loos contemporary, also seemed to anticipatethisStyle2000 from
the perspectiveof Style1900. "A worldof qualities withoutman has arisen,"Musil
wrotein TheMan Without Qualities(1930-43), "of experienceswithoutthe person
who experiences them,and it almostlooks as thoughideallyprivateexperience is
a thing of the past, and that the friendlyburden of personal responsibility is to
dissolveinto a systemof formulasof possible meanings.Probablythe dissolution
of the anthropocentricpoint of view,whichforsuch a long time consideredman
to be at the center of the universebut which has been fadingfor centuries,has
finallyarrivedat the 'I' itself."
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Design 199
Yahoos: ...
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