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From building blocks to city blocks, an eye-opening exploration of how children's playthings and physical surroundings affect their development. What do youngsters lose when seesaws are deemed too dangerous and slides are designed primarily for safety? How can the built environment help children cultivate self-reliance? Alexandra Lange reveals the surprising histories(...)
The design of childhood: how the material world shapes kids
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From building blocks to city blocks, an eye-opening exploration of how children's playthings and physical surroundings affect their development. What do youngsters lose when seesaws are deemed too dangerous and slides are designed primarily for safety? How can the built environment help children cultivate self-reliance? Alexandra Lange reveals the surprising histories behind the human-made elements of our children's pint-size landscape. Her fascinating investigation shows how the seemingly innocuous universe of stuff affects kids' behavior, values, and health, often in subtle ways. And she reveals how years of decisions by toymakers, architects, and urban planners have helped--and hindered--American youngsters' journeys toward independence. Seen through Lange's eyes, everything from the sandbox to the street becomes vibrant with buried meaning.
Design Theory
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From the former director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, a timely and passionate case for the role of the well-designed object in the digital age. Curator and scholar Glenn Adamson opens "Fewer, Better Things" by contrasting his beloved childhood teddy bear to the smartphones and digital tablets children have today. He laments that many children and adults(...)
Fewer, better things. The hidden wisdom of objects
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From the former director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, a timely and passionate case for the role of the well-designed object in the digital age. Curator and scholar Glenn Adamson opens "Fewer, Better Things" by contrasting his beloved childhood teddy bear to the smartphones and digital tablets children have today. He laments that many children and adults are losing touch with the material objects that have nurtured human development for thousands of years. The objects are still here, but we seem to care less and know less about them. "Fewer, Better Things" explores the history of craft in its many forms, explaining how raw materials, tools, design, and technique come together to produce beauty and utility in handmade or manufactured items.
Design Theory
$22.95
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Three interconnected palimpsest essays recount (1) the backstory of a “meta” font recently updated by Dexter Sinister and used to typeset the Contemporary Condition book series, (2) a broad history of the rationalization of letterforms that considers the same typeface from “a higher point of disinterest,” and (3) a pending proposal for a sundial designed to operate in(...)
Dexer Sinister: Notes on the type, time, letters & spirits
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Three interconnected palimpsest essays recount (1) the backstory of a “meta” font recently updated by Dexter Sinister and used to typeset the Contemporary Condition book series, (2) a broad history of the rationalization of letterforms that considers the same typeface from “a higher point of disinterest,” and (3) a pending proposal for a sundial designed to operate in parallel physical and digital realms. Along the way they contemplate the ambiguous nature of our shared idea of *time* itself.
Design Theory
$53.95
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Arising from a course on repair at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Applied Sciences in Munich, this book responds to our culture of disposability and built-in obsolescence, to encourage thinking and making, from product design to architecture.
Repair: encouragement to think and make
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Arising from a course on repair at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Applied Sciences in Munich, this book responds to our culture of disposability and built-in obsolescence, to encourage thinking and making, from product design to architecture.
Design Theory
$79.00
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In this engaging new book, design theorist Louise Schouwenberg (born 1954) and designer Hella Jongerius (born 1963) examine the meaning and agency of objects, exploring how things act as mediators between people and the world both in everyday life and in the context of the museum. As technology continues to change these relationships, Schouwenberg and Jongerius(...)
Beyond the new on the agency of things
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In this engaging new book, design theorist Louise Schouwenberg (born 1954) and designer Hella Jongerius (born 1963) examine the meaning and agency of objects, exploring how things act as mediators between people and the world both in everyday life and in the context of the museum. As technology continues to change these relationships, Schouwenberg and Jongerius thoughtfully consider the agency of our objects. Questioning the market's obsession with novelty in design, the authors try to develop criteria for recognizing true cultural innovation. What distinguishes novelty for the sake of novelty from something truly new? Designed by the legendary Irma Boom, the book itself is a love letter to creative design.
Design Theory
$55.95
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Founded in 2003, Design Observer inscribes its mission on its homepage: Writings about Design and Culture. Since its inception, the site has consistently embraced a broader, more interdisciplinary, and circumspect view of design's value in the world- one not limited by materialism, trends, or the slipperiness of style. Dedicated to the pursuit of originality, imagination,(...)
Culture is not always popular: fifteen years of design observer
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Founded in 2003, Design Observer inscribes its mission on its homepage: Writings about Design and Culture. Since its inception, the site has consistently embraced a broader, more interdisciplinary, and circumspect view of design's value in the world- one not limited by materialism, trends, or the slipperiness of style. Dedicated to the pursuit of originality, imagination, and close cultural analysis, Design Observer quickly became a lively forum for readers in the international design community. Fifteen years, 6,700 articles, 900 authors, and nearly 30,000 comments later, this book is a combination primer, celebration, survey, and salute to a certain moment in online culture.
Design Theory
$32.95
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Sometimes designed objects reject their users: a computer mouse that doesn't work for left-handed people, for example, or a touchscreen payment system that only works for people who read English phrases, have 20/20 vision, and use a credit card. Something as simple as color choices can render a product unusable for millions. These mismatches are the building blocks of(...)
Mismatch: how inclusion shapes design
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Sometimes designed objects reject their users: a computer mouse that doesn't work for left-handed people, for example, or a touchscreen payment system that only works for people who read English phrases, have 20/20 vision, and use a credit card. Something as simple as color choices can render a product unusable for millions. These mismatches are the building blocks of exclusion. In Mismatch, Kat Holmes describes how design can lead to exclusion, and how design can also remedy exclusion. Inclusive design methods?designing objects with rather than for excluded users?can create elegant solutions that work well and benefit all.
Design Theory
Design unbound: volume 2
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"Design Unbound" presents a new tool set for having agency in the twenty-first century, in what the authors characterize as a white water world—rapidly changing, hyperconnected, and radically contingent. These are the tools of a new kind of practice that is the offspring of complexity science, which gives us a new lens through which to view the world as entangled and(...)
Design unbound: volume 2
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"Design Unbound" presents a new tool set for having agency in the twenty-first century, in what the authors characterize as a white water world—rapidly changing, hyperconnected, and radically contingent. These are the tools of a new kind of practice that is the offspring of complexity science, which gives us a new lens through which to view the world as entangled and emerging, and architecture, which is about designing contexts. In such a practice, design, unbound from its material thingness, is set free to design contexts as complex systems.
Design Theory
Design unbound: volume 1
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"Design Unbound" presents a new tool set for having agency in the twenty-first century, in what the authors characterize as a white water world—rapidly changing, hyperconnected, and radically contingent. These are the tools of a new kind of practice that is the offspring of complexity science, which gives us a new lens through which to view the world as entangled and(...)
Design unbound: volume 1
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"Design Unbound" presents a new tool set for having agency in the twenty-first century, in what the authors characterize as a white water world—rapidly changing, hyperconnected, and radically contingent. These are the tools of a new kind of practice that is the offspring of complexity science, which gives us a new lens through which to view the world as entangled and emerging, and architecture, which is about designing contexts. In such a practice, design, unbound from its material thingness, is set free to design contexts as complex systems.
Design Theory
$54.95
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Good design provides solutions to problems. It improves our buildings, medical equipment, clothing, and kitchen utensils, among other objects. But what if design could also improve societal problems by prompting positive ideological change? In this book, Bruce and Stephanie Tharp survey recent critical design practices and propose a new, more inclusive field of socially(...)
Discursive design: critical, speculative, and alternative things
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Good design provides solutions to problems. It improves our buildings, medical equipment, clothing, and kitchen utensils, among other objects. But what if design could also improve societal problems by prompting positive ideological change? In this book, Bruce and Stephanie Tharp survey recent critical design practices and propose a new, more inclusive field of socially minded practice: discursive design. While many consider good design to be unobtrusive, intuitive, invisible, and undemanding intellectually, discursive design instead targets the intellect, prompting self-reflection and igniting the imagination. « Discursive design » (derived from “discourse”) expands the boundaries of how we can use design—how objects are, in effect, good(s) for thinking.
Design Theory