David Stairs
“The subordinate place of history, theory, and criticism in design education is concomitant with the difficulty most designers have in envisioning forms of practice other than those already given by the culture.” –Victor Margolin… Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
Mr. Shinkey by Lucien Stairs, age 5
Writing an e-mail to a friend recently, I happened to mention the word ‘pornography’ in my note. The word turned red as I wrote it. Then the words that followed reverted to black as I moved on with my thoughts…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Guaranty RV sales, Junction City, Oregon
One doesn’t notice it at first, not until you start frequenting environments dominated by parks and resorts. Until then it’s subtle, in the background. But driving through the Targhee National Forest it’s inescapable: the number of RV-related camps and services expands exponentially…. Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
For years, George Orwell’s novel, 1984, has embodied the dystopian vision of a society where technology has gone awry and fallen into the hands of malevolent rulers, who use it to keep to keep a docile population under their thumbs…. Continue Reading →
Wes Janz onesmallproject
Every human who has walked the surface of our planet has thought and acted in relation to the landscape. We have some understandings of these dynamics including Ansel Adams’ photography of the U.S. southwest, Frank Lloyd Wright’s design for Fallingwater,… Continue Reading →
Design-Altruism-Project has been included in the recently published Blogs: Mad About Design from Barcelona’s maomao publications, and Singapore’s Page One. Edited by Macarena San Martin and featuring over 500 pages and 243 sites from the design blogosphere,… Continue Reading →
Wes Janz
In Part 1 of this two-part post, I called for a “humane architecture” and reflected on the challenges and potentials found when designers put people at the center of our work.
Among the individuals and architectures discussed: Mary Martha and a dormitory for border crossers returned to Mexico;… Continue Reading →
Wes Janz
1. It’s two years since the Midwess Distress Tour, a 6-day drivathon with architecture students, organized by Olon Dotson and me. To challenged places, abandoned lives, upstart efforts. Detroit, Flint, Gary, Chicago,… Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
Illustration by Lucien Stairs
As a remedy to the current economic downturn, economists tell us that we have to spend more money to keep the financial system from collapsing. This advice is on a collision course with the admonition to conserve resources for ecological reasons and save money for future needs…. Continue Reading →
Editor’s Note: With this article we celebrate the third anniversary of the Design-Altruism-Project. Always intended as an outlet for the unheralded young who are doing good work for the unknown and forgotten, it is appropriate that we enter our fourth year with the following account by a Ugandan-born designer,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Kasule Kizito is not your everyday Ugandan. For one thing, he’s too direct. He says what he thinks without undue regard for taboos or political correctness. In an oral culture this of itself is amazing. For example,… Continue Reading →
Raymond Prucher
“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” – Desiderius Erasmus
Images taken at the Qalandia checkpoint inside the West Bank, well beyond the ‘Green Line’ that was set up by the 1949 Armistice…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
I was trudging through my local neighborhood big-box megastore the other day en route to my weekly rendezvous with groceries when I found myself in what passes for the book section. This isn’t a Borders experience;… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
A Profession, of sorts
I’ve never been a joiner. When I was eleven years old I signed up for the Boy Scouts. All my friends were in Scouts. It was the thing to do in those days…. Continue Reading →
Jonathon Russell
My experience in the United Arab Emirates started with a trip to visit my in-laws in Dubai for spring break in 2003. It was a fun trip with my wife and our 7-month old daughter Emma and included visits to 3 of the 7 emirates,… Continue Reading →
by Victor Margolin
Anyone with doubts about Barak Obama’s ability to lead the United States should look at how he has run his campaign. Whereas John McCain’s considerably smaller organization has imploded more than once and is now in the process of self-destructing – riven with accusations and recriminations from within – Obama’s army of workers continues to bring out overwhelming numbers of supporters in states with a long history of delivering electoral college votes for the opposing party…. Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
Most anthropologists would agree that the number of languages in the world is declining. This is particularly true for those spoken by small communities that over the years have either dwindled to a few survivors or become extinct. While it is common for languages spoken by large groups to overwhelm those spoken by smaller ones,… Continue Reading →
Since June, Wang Jing in Nanjing and AGI member Robert Appleton in Toronto have been working on an international exhibition of design, art and music to benefit the survivors of the Sichuan earthquake. It opens in Nanjing this Sunday for one week only…. Continue Reading →
Catherine Jo Ishino
Hong Kong and PRC Design from the Reform Era (ca.1978)
In the next two sections, I will explore how China’s marketplace, citizenry, and identity have begun to transform with its entry into the overarching globalization narrative that has been taking place since the last part of the 20th century…. Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
One of the most privileged populations in America today is dolls. They are the beneficiaries of powerful forces of consumption that seek ever-new audiences for the plethora of goods that is available for sale. In earlier times, dolls were not thought to be such active participants in the consumption process…. Continue Reading →
Jesse Miller
Outside “Casa Rosenda” Monterrey, Mexico
The Architectural Masters Thesis. High expectations and the culmination of one’s educational career are commonly used to describe this thing that looms as the end of graduate school approaches…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Ezio Manzini is an optimist. Four years ago he envisioned a design conference dedicated to the notion that although things must, will, and do change, perhaps we ought to spend more time planning that evolution. This vision was realized last week at the Changing the Change conference held in the World Design Capital at Torino’s Institute of Biotechnology,… Continue Reading →
Catherine Jo Ishino
Min Wang, 2008 Beijing Olympic events poster
Until recently, a positive view on the state of modern Chinese graphic design was difficult to find in the Western trade press. Hong Kong, under the rule of the British Empire up until 1997,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Ball State Visual Communications student Kat Townsend documenting a hand-painted sign on a condemned house in Flint, Michigan. Photo by Laura Huffman.
Winning and losing: the dichotomy is endemic to the American way of life. From Vegas to American Idol,4 from athletic wagers to Dancing With the Stars,… Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
I live in a densely-populated downtown Chicago neighborhood. When I moved to the neighborhood six years ago, there was a small local video store within easy walking distance and a large CD emporium, Tower Records, not much farther away…. Continue Reading →
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