Anti-Design: Prescription for Rebellion? Papanek Foundation

Anti-Design: Prescription for Rebellion?
How radical design transforms social futures
9-11 November 2011

Paola Antonelli (MoMA)
Gerald Bast (University of Applied Arts)
Alison Clarke (University of Applied Arts)
Anthony Dunne (RCA)
Guy Julier (V&A)
Jamer Hunt (Parsons New School)
Felicity D. Scott (Columbia)
John Thackara (Doors of Perception)

Symposium
10–11 November 2011

The Victor J. Papanek symposium celebrates the legacy of Papanek as a leading critical thinker of design. Each bi-annual event embraces a timely theme, bringing together interdisciplinary speakers to discuss and debate issues with a bearing on contemporary design practice.

The theme of the launch symposium, ‘Anti-Design: A Prescription for Rebellion’, takes its slogan from Papanek’s clarion call to designers, to look beyond the aesthetics of conventional product design to a broader, politicised vision of design’s power to transform social futures. Invited speakers, from historians to contemporary designers, will present their visions and critical reflections on the potentiality of design’s anarchic past and future.

Program: Victor J. Papanek Foundation Symposium: ANTI-DESIGN: “Prescription for Rebellion?” (PDF, 582 KB)

Papanek Foundation
Inaugural Lecture
9 November 2011

19.00 A History of Violence - Design, Control, and Rebellion
John Thackara
(Paola Antonelli – krankheitsbedingt abgesagt)

Senior Curator Architecture and Design, MoMA New York History has taught us that design is a means of exercising power and control. At times however, in the attempt to subvert the status quo, design and architecture use their own power to rebel using disruptive actions that can be either theatrical, or subtle and systemic. From Brutalism to Rudofsky’s 1964 Architecture without Architects exhibition, and from Punk to Papanek’s 1971 Design for the Real World and Enzo Mari’s Autoprogettazione of 1974, all the way to Dunne & Raby’s contemporary Critical Design, this presentation will examine the past fifty years of polemical theory and practice.