Bloomsbury International Design Organizations: Histories, Legacies, Values

About the Author Jeremy Aynsley is Professor of Design History and founding Director of the Centre for Design History at the University of Brighton, UK. Alison J. Clarke is Professor of Design History and Theory and founding Director of the Papanek Foundation at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria. Tania Messell is Researcher in Design History at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) in Basel, Switzerland. Product Description This innovative volume brings together international design scholars to address the history and present-day status of national and international design organizations, working across design disciplines and located in countries including Argentina, Turkey, Estonia, Switzerland, Italy, China and the USA.In the second half of the 20th century, many non-governmental organizations were created to address urgent cultural, economic and welfare issues. Design organizations set out to create an international consensus for the future direction of design. This included enhancing communication between professionals, educators and practitioners, raising standards for design, and creating communities of designers across linguistic, national and political borders. Shared needs and agendas were identified and categories of design constantly defined and re-defined, often with overt cultural and political intents.Drawing on an impressive range of original research, archival sources and oral testimony, this volume questions the aims and achievements of national and international design organizations in light of their subsequent histories and their global remits. The Cold War period is central to the book, while many chapters draw on post-colonial perspectives to interpret how transnational networks and negotiations took place at events and congresses, and through publication. Review International, regional and national organizations have been essential in negotiating the political, economic and social standings and functions of the design professions since the mid-twentieth century. This volume brings together an impressive array of new research on these networks and their role in the consolidation of the culture and practice of design as we know it today. --Kjetil Fallan, Professor of Design History, University of Oslo, NorwayIn the past 80 years, international organizations have greatly shaped discourse and practice in industrial and graphic design. <i>International Design Organizations</i> provides a refreshingly diverse array of critical perspectives into the designers’ interactions with and through international organizations, with a focus on lived experience and the political ramifications of the ideal of the ‘international’, within design communities. Chapters clearly demonstrate how international design organizations are constituted both by regional and local ways of working brought into dialogue and by an often-illusory proposal for ‘universal’ design approaches, values or standards, showing how the resulting communities of practitioners, researchers and educators both link design culture across geographical and cultural divides and reflect deeper political inequalities between continents and nations. --Sarah Teasley, Professor of Design, RMIT University, AustraliaThis new edited volume presents pioneering research in predominantly postwar design histories and successfully applies network research methods onto yet unexplored design history material. Thirteen essays analyse histories of institutions transnationally and reveal the complex functioning of design institutions and their contributions to the narrative of design history as a whole. This fascinating and engaging book will captivate its readers but should also become a useful teaching tool for understanding this net of stories and histories. --Helena Capková, Associate Professor of Art History, Ritsumeikan University, Japan