Design for life : creating meaning in a distracted world
- Submitting institution
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The University of Lancaster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 231718132
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Routledge
- ISBN
- 9781138232471
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- April
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Design for Life results from a lengthy period of data collection and creative investigation through theory and design engagement. It combined extensive desk research from an exceptionally wide-range of sources with a large collection of entirely original examples of ‘research-through-design’, in the form of critical and speculative designs that have been fully prototyped by the author. This work is supplemented with complete documentation of the theoretical underpinnings, creative development and decision-making, materials selection, and form development of the designs. The resulting discipline-specific approach to design research synthesises theory development and design practice into a unified, mutually informing theory-practice approach.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This book adopts a creative approach to design at a time when environmental destruction is linked to economic growth based largely on consumer spending, which, in turn, is tied to the design, production and disposal of short-lived products and where high levels of social inequity adversely affect well-being. The issues are addressed via mutually informing, design-based methods. Literature review and intellectual inquiry lead to design-related recommendations, which are combined with practice-based inquiry, resulting in speculative objects or ‘arguments in form’, combined with evocative texts. This integrated outcome combines rational argument, intuitive response and aesthetic experience.
The approach to design research combines theory with practice; facts with values; and objectivity and rational argument with values-informed interpretations that involve the creative imagination and subjective decision-making. This process is used to investigate the critically important contemporary theme of design-for-sustainability in considerable depth, from a wide range of perspectives, and in relation to different contexts. Malpass’s review of Design for Life in The Design Journal commented: ‘He offers an authoritative account with a voice developed through experience and the knowhow acquired while treading the line between theoretical research and design practice.’
The publication of this book led to an invitation to Co-Lead a joint research project the Chinese Academic of Social Sciences (CASS), Beijing, MMU, and Lancaster (AHRC-Newton £73,425; PI), keynote talks in Beijing and Shanghai, University of Iowa, RCA, Carleton, and RIBA North, and a keynote talk for the Master of Studies in Sustainability Leadership for Professionals at University of Cambridge. The author was invited to contribute as environmental writer by artist Katie Paterson for her project First There is a Mountain, and an exhibition at Brantwood, Cumbria, supported by an Arts Council England Grant. The work in this book also informed the development of a subsequent AHRC Standard grant (£580,800; PI).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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