Featuring rich and previously unexplored materials from the Victor Papanek archive in dialogue with the work of emerging designers from Vienna, London, and New York City, this exhibition challenges Victor Papanek’s legacy of socially committed design by bringing it into conversation with contemporary work by a new generation of speculative and critical designers.

In the four decades since How Things Don’t Work (1977) was written by controversial design critic Victor Papanek and his co-author James Hennessey, the context for design has grown ever more complex. Globalization and the rise of information technologies have created both opportunities and challenges that did not exist when Papanek, an outspoken advocate for social design, was first practicing. Innovations in computer, biological, and financial systems have collided with a looming environmental catastrophe to deeply challenge the core presumption of design as a social good. The rise of interconnected information networks has created unprecedented communication and collaborative possibilities while also inundating us with more information than we can reasonably process.

This tension – between awareness and paralysis and between too much and too little – has intensified exponentially since the 1970s when Papanek’s ideas were most influential. Moreover, design culture over the past decade has seen a dramatic shift from the designing of products to that of systems that support social change and speculation. This has challenged designers to reimagine how they design and for which contexts.

The exhibition’s four sections feature video, digitized slides, and print that juxtapose contemporary, speculative projects from emerging designers with visionary excerpts from the Papanek archive. Together, they create a kaleidoscopic “dreamspace” built out of fragments of our social imaginary and challenging the viewer to consider how we might design ourselves out of our dystopian present.

Curated by Alison Clarke, Director of the Victor Papanek Foundation (University of Applied Arts, Vienna), Jamer Hunt (Director, Transdisciplinary Design graduate program, Parsons School of Design), and Fiona Raby (Professor, Industrial Design, University of Applied Arts, Vienna, and Reader, Design Interactions, Royal College of Art, London).

The exhibition is a collaboration between Parsons School of Design and the University of Applied Arts, Vienna.

Public Programs:

Permanent Garbage: Victor Papanek and Beautiful Visions of Failed Systems
Thursday, December 4, 2014, 5:00-7:30 pm
Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center
2 West 13th Street

Building upon the exhibition How Things Don’t Work: The Dreamspace of Victor Papanek, this symposium will explore design, future-making and speculation at the intersection of broken systems and social change.

Guests:

• Stuart Candy, Futurist
• Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, MoMA
• Gerald Bast, Rector, University of Applied Arts Vienna
• Alison Clarke, Director, Papanek Foundation, University of Applied Arts Vienna
• Fiona Raby, Professor Industrial Design, University of Applied Arts Vienna
• Jamer Hunt, Director, Graduate Program in Transdisciplinary Design, Parsons School of Design

Free; No tickets or reservations required.