Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Design on a Darkling Plain
T2 - transcending utility through questions in form
AU - Walker, Stuart
PY - 2012/12/2
Y1 - 2012/12/2
N2 - This practice-based design exploration considers the relationship of contemporary products to issues of sustainability and enduring meaning. The secondary or extrinsic value of products, which includes technological advancement and business development, is discussed. Instrumental value is also addressed, along with a product’s intrinsic value – or lack of it. This yields a set of general propositions for countering triviality and waste and increasing intrinsic value, and some of these propositions fall under the remit of design. Against this backdrop, product meaning and intrinsic value are considered with reference to the philosophy of E. F. Schumacher as well as various critiques – from Arnold in the nineteenth century to Orr in the twenty-first – and a case is made for objects of design, rather than art, that have no practical utility but whose function is concerned with what might be referred to as ‘inner work’. These arguments and ideas are then translated into a series of propositional objects – or questions in form – that ask how matters of ultimate concern, which are inherently ineffable, might be appropriately expressed as contemporary, contemplative artefacts.
AB - This practice-based design exploration considers the relationship of contemporary products to issues of sustainability and enduring meaning. The secondary or extrinsic value of products, which includes technological advancement and business development, is discussed. Instrumental value is also addressed, along with a product’s intrinsic value – or lack of it. This yields a set of general propositions for countering triviality and waste and increasing intrinsic value, and some of these propositions fall under the remit of design. Against this backdrop, product meaning and intrinsic value are considered with reference to the philosophy of E. F. Schumacher as well as various critiques – from Arnold in the nineteenth century to Orr in the twenty-first – and a case is made for objects of design, rather than art, that have no practical utility but whose function is concerned with what might be referred to as ‘inner work’. These arguments and ideas are then translated into a series of propositional objects – or questions in form – that ask how matters of ultimate concern, which are inherently ineffable, might be appropriately expressed as contemporary, contemplative artefacts.
KW - Sustainability
KW - spiritual meaning
KW - E. F. Schumacher
KW - symbolism
KW - practice-based design
KW - propositional objects
KW - questions in form
U2 - 10.2752/175630612X13330186684196
DO - 10.2752/175630612X13330186684196
M3 - Journal article
VL - 15
SP - 347
EP - 372
JO - The Design Journal
JF - The Design Journal
SN - 1756-3062
IS - 3
ER -