Book List of the Week

Book List of the Week: Anthony Dunne

Parallel worlds, the imagination, and unreality

By Steve Kroeter March 24, 2014

Anthony Dunne, Interaction and Product/Industrial Designer: Dunne & Raby and Royal College of Art (London)

“I didn’t have any specific criteria in mind when selecting these books, but I see they all celebrate parallel worlds, the imagination, and unreality in some way,” writes Anthony Dunne about the choices on his book list.

Head of the Design Interactions (formerly Computer Related Design) program at London’s Royal College of Art, Dunne is also a partner, with Fiona Raby, in the design studio Dunne & Raby, which, says Dunne, “uses design as a medium to stimulate discussion and debate among designers, industry, and the public about the social, cultural, and ethical implications of existing and emerging technologies.” Their work is as much—if not more—about generating ideas and imagining new paths of thought as it is about creating products. This approach is explored in Dunne and Raby’s new book, Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming (The MIT Press), published this past December.

Among the titles on Dunne’s book list that delve into “parallel worlds, imagination, and unreality” is Between Zero and Infinity by architect Daniel Libeskind (also a Designers & Books contributor), about which Dunne comments: “I was given this book when I was in my first year at the Royal College of Art for a project we were doing about drawing the invisible. It opened my mind to the possibility of designing things that didn’t have to be real, didn’t even have to be built, but could happily exist as a drawing or an idea.”

There is also Stephen Duncombe’s vision for progressive politics, Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy, which, says Dunne, is “an inspiring take on the need to combine political critique and imagination . . . and a rallying cry to embrace the impossible.” Another is industrial designer Andrea Branzi’s 1984 history of Italian New Wave design, The Hot House, which “hints at some of the things design could have been, and maybe still can be.”

Digiland, part of Dunne & Raby’s project United Micro Kingdoms (2012–13), featured in Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, 2013 (The MIT Press). Photo: courtesy of Dunne & Raby

Dunne also includes Solution 239–246: Finland–The Welfare Game, part of the Berlin-based Sternberg Press’s Solution Series, which he calls “a collection of books where writers reimagine existing countries to entertain, provoke, and tickle the imagination.” Dunne and Raby, in fact, were recently commissioned by the Design Museum in London to create a project, United Micro Kingdoms, that could well fit into this series. According to the partners’ website, the project “presents perspectives on a fictional future for the United Kingdom. It sees England devolved into four self-contained counties, each free to experiment with governance, economy and lifestyle. These ‘live laboratories’ interrogate the cultural and ethical impact of existing and new technologies and how they alter the way we live.” One of the counties is Digiland. “Digitarians depend on digital technology and all its implicit totalitarianism: tagging, metrics, total surveillance, tracking, data logging, and 100% transparency. Their society is organized entirely by market forces; citizen and consumer are the same.” The project is featured in Speculative Everything.

In the coming weeks we’ll be publishing the book list that Dunne’s partner, Fiona Raby, sent along.

View Anthony Dunne’s Book List.

Interaction and Information: Carola Zwick’s Book List

A Tool for Understanding Our Relationship with the World Around Us: Books Every Product Designer Should Read—Zoë Ryan

comments powered by Disqus

Announcements

Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister

Now is Better

By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023

Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.

Order the book.

Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli

Design Emergency: Building a Better Future

By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022

Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.

Order the book.

Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman

Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People

By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022

Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.

Order the book.

Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber

Milton Glaser: POP

By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023

This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.

Order the book.

Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange

Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall

By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022

Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”

Order the book.

Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller

Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)

By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023

This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.

Order the book.