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The spirit of design : objects, environment and meaning

This sole-authored book makes an original contribution by expanding understandings of design for sustainability. Through fundamental design research, it challenges a host of common assumptions about sustainability, progress, growth and globalisation. Practice-based explorations of localisation, human meaning and functional objects demonstrate the imaginative potential of research-through-design and yield a constructive and hopeful direction for design w.r.t. sustainability; one that radically re-imagines our material culture by meshing mass-production with individuality, products with place, and utility with environmental responsibility.

It embraces a wide-ranging view of cultures and traditions, drawing on historical and contemporary precedents to offer a substantial basis for post-industrial design. Topics include: the nature of practice-based research; taste; aesthetics and sustainability; systemic vs. incremental change; evolving objects; product transience; and design and spirituality. In an age where utility is provided by digital electronics and virtual environments, the outmoded axiom of form follows function is replaced with a more profound and potentially more enduring notion of form follows meaning. This is achieved by introducing an original evaluative concept for design for sustainability that prioritises practical meaning, social meaning and personal meaning while placing economic means in a secondary role. The approach fully integrates theory development and ‘academic’ design practice via a comprehensive, discipline-appropriate methodology that combines intellect and imagination, induction and abduction, rational argument with intuitive, tacit ways of knowing. The work received rigorous peer review and includes numerous examples of the propositional object, an original design research tool developed by the author.

It resulted in many keynote invitations including, International Symposium on Sustainable Design, Universidade Federal De Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil 2011; Middle East Technical University, Ankara 2010. Responsible Design Conference, Istanbul 2010, DeSFORM2010, Lucerne; Design Culture Series, Carleton University, Ottawa 2010; as well as an Adjunct Professorship at Ontario College of Art and Design University, Toronto.