GLOBAL DESIGN HISTORY

GLOBAL DESIGN HISTORY

GLOBAL DESIGN HISTORY

The past decade has seen an explosion in discourse on ‘the global’ as a condition,
an approach and sometimes a problem. Most visibly, the impact of economic and
manufacturing globalization appears daily through the food we consume, the
products we buy, and the news that we watch. Media coverage spectacularizes both
global trade and anti-globalization activism; in the meantime, the sheer volume of
images and products now literally ‘beamed’ into our daily lives inures us to both
globalization’s implications and the anti-globalization movement’s rhetoric. Simply
put, the global has become commonplace.
This double condition – in which people are at once acutely located in global
networks yet increasingly dulled to the implications – has shaped the way we both
build new networks and respond to changes in existing ones. Thus, while such
global scares as terrorism, financial collapse and pandemics remind us precisely how
interconnected we have become, and flows of people, information, capital and
goods across national and geographical borders accelerate, we see attempts to block
movement through immigration controls, tariffs and other trade barriers, browserblocking
software and stricter controls on banking transactions. Within the design
world,
offshore manufacturing, digital design and manufacturing technologies and
automated
distribution systems have meant the intensification of transnationallytravelling
images and objects, from the latest trends in high-end footwear and avantgarde
museum architecture to engine parts, oranges and the lowly kitchen sponge.
This condition inevitably raises political issues: is such global connectivity
desirable, even ethical? What kind of system might best manage global fl
ows? Should
we privilege optimal efficiency or human rights, and are these two goals inseparable
or mutually incompatible? And to what extent can or even should we attempt to
design and control the parameters of global interactions? Arguably, right-wing
economic free market ideologies and left-wing arguments for market controls might
be understood as forms of design in their own right. An explicit assessment of the

Glenn Adamson,
Giorgio Riello and Sarah Teasley