Design and Agency: Critical Perspectives on Identities, Histories, and Practices

by John Potvin (Editor), Marie-Ève Marchand (Editor)

Overview

Design and Agency brings together leading international design scholars and practitioners to address the concept of agency in relation to objects, organisations and people. The authors set out to expand the scope of design history and practice, avoiding the heroic narratives of a typical modernist approach. They consider both how the agents of design construct and express their identities and subjectivities through practice, while also investigating the distinctive contribution of design in the construction of individual identity and subjectivity.

Individual chapters explore notions of agency in a range of design disciplines and historical periods, including the agency of women in effecting changes to the design of offices and working practices; the role of Jeffrey Lindsay and Buckminster Fuller in developing the design of a geodesic dome; Le Corbusier's 'Casa Curutchet'; a re-consideration of the gendered historiography of the 'Jugendstil' movement, and Bruce Mau's design exhibitions. Taken together, the essays in Design and Agency provide a much-needed response to the traditional texts which dominate design history. With a broad chronological span from 1900 to the present, and an equally broad understanding of the term 'design', it expands how we view the discipline, and shows how design itself can be an agent for social, cultural and economic change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350513013
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/23/2025
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

John Potvin is Professor of Modern Art and Design History at Concordia University, Canada. He is the editor of Oriental Interiors (Bloomsbury 2015).

Marie-Ève Marchand is Affiliate Assistant Professor of Art History at Concordia University, Canada.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements

Introduction: Reassessing Design through Agency
John Potvin, Concordia University, Canada

SECTION I – Designing Identities

Introduction
Marie-Ève Marchand, Concordia University, Canada

1. Period Decor and the Negotiation of Social Relationships in the Home
Marie-Ève Marchand, Concordia University, Canada

2. Designs on Modernity: Gertrud Loew's Vienna Apartment and Situated Agency
Sabine Wieber, University of Glasgow, UK

3. Gifted Design: Imperial Benevolence in the Needlework of Mary Seton Watts
Elaine Cheasley Paterson, Concordia University, Canada

4. Beyond the Couch: Anna Freud and the Analytic Environment
Amélie Elizabeth Pelly, Concordia University, Canada

5. Multum in parvo: Scale and Agency in the Thorne Miniature Rooms
Erin J. Campbell, University of Victoria, Australia

6. Listening for Design: Agency and History in a Philips Aachen-Super D52
Michael Windover, Carleton University, Canada

7. Agency, Art and Architecture in Medical Murals by Mary Filer and Marian Dale Scott
Annmarie Adams, McGill University, Canada

8. Duelling Over Domes: Jeffrey Lindsay and Buckminster Fuller Cross Struts and Sprits in the US Patent Office
Cammie McAtee, National Gallery of Canada, Canada

9. Desperately Seeking Sunlight: Le Corbusier's Casa Curutchet and The Man Next Door
Mark Taylor, Swinburbane University of Technology, Australia

SECTION II – Systems & Institutions of Design

Introduction
Marie-Ève Marchand, Concordia University, Canada

10. The Dry Goods Economist and the Role of Mass Media in the Creation of a Global Window Design Aesthetic at the End of the Nineteenth Century
Anca I. Lasc, Pratt Institute, USA

11. National Cash Register Company's Boys' Garden: Shaping Working-Class Childhoods and Future Workers, 1897-1913
Sara Nicole England, independent, Canada

12. Women as Agents of Change in the Design of the Workplace
Lynn Chalmers, independent, Canada

13. Stand-in or Act-out: Period Rooms as Spaces of Agency
Änne Söll, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany and Stefan Krämer, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany

14. Agent Bruce Mau and the Audacity of Design
Rachel Gotlieb, Sheridan College, Canada

15. From Indian to Indigenous Agency: Opportunities and Challenges for Architectural Design
David Fortin, Laurentian University, Canada

16. Design History and Dyslexia
Anne Massey, University of Huddersfield, UK

17. Textual Agency: Pitfalls and Potentials
Jessica Hemmings, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

18. Design's Performative Agency: Thoughts and New Directions for Materiality, Ontology and Identity-Making
Ece Canli, Research Insitute for Design, Media and Culture, Portugal

Index

Editorial Reviews

Design and Agency shows design (people, spaces and objects) to be powerful, politically engaged and, often, highly personal. Through a range of examples from the later nineteenth-century to the present, an international group of authors explores the role of the systems and institutions of design in constructing identities. This thoughtful and thought-provoking volume provides an agenda for design and its histories, and calls for a new ethical way of being, knowing and designing.” —Grace Lees-Maffei, Professor of Design History, University of Hertfordshire, UK

“If action indeed speaks louder than words, we need to pay closer attention to the myriad ways power relations are manifested and performed in design culture. Through a delightfully diverse collection of case studies, Design and Agency helps us think more carefully about who and what are the moving forces in our designed world, and how, when, where, why, and to what degree these agents impact the design of our lives.” —Kjetil Fallan, Professor of Design History, University of Oslo, Norway

“The eighteen essays that make up this volume explore the plethora of ideas that arise from a consideration of the relationship between the concepts of agency and design. The ambitions of the editors and the contributors to (re)consider the traditional narratives and historiography of design have been fully realised.” —Penny Sparke, Professor of Design History, Kingston University, UK

From the Publisher