Ethel Leon

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Abstract
Self-production is a way young designers worldwide spread their objects, showing them in institutional spaces such as design fairs and exhibitions. As a result of so-called flexible or new capitalism, and the consequent rise of many private design schools, this self-production aims very precisely a market around tourism circuits, but is no response to peripherical societies design demands. 

Marisa Maass

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Quotidian Poetry — Reading an Utilitarian Object as a Work of Art

Abstract
O estudo a seguir ilustra a possibilidade de leitura do objeto utilitário como obra de arte. Pretende-se com esse tipo de análise, possibilitar a comparação objetos utilitários de origens diversas, como os que são provenientes de um modo de produção industrial — objeto de trabalho de um designer — e os que são fruto de um modo de produção artesanal — objeto do trabalho de um artesão. O objeto de nossa leitura é uma lamparina do nordeste brasileiro, a partir da análise dos atributos plásticos presentes no próprio objeto ou seja, a sua dimensão artística — livre.

The present study illustrates the possibility to read an utilitarian object as a work of art. This kind of analysis is intended to allow the comparison of utilitarian objects of different origins, such as those originated from industrial production — object of an industrial designer`s work — with those resulting from artisanship. The object of our observation is an oil lamp crafted in the Brazilian northeast, focusing on the analysis of the plastic attributes of the object, that is, its free artistic dimension.

Eduardo Côrte-Real

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Abstract
Na primeira reunião de avaliação em que participei como assistente de Daciano da Costa, ainda nos anos oitenta do século passado, fui surpreendido com um aspecto aparentemente decisivo na avaliação dos desenhos: a qualidade da “Perspicácia”. Nos desenhos dos melhores alunos, aqueles que eu julgava que tinham obtido melhores resultados e consequentemente conseguiam produzir imagens com verosimilhança, existiam alguns que eram mais perspicazes que outros.

“Este, é muito mais perspicaz — dizia-nos Daciano, — não te parece?”

Confesso que não a sabia distinguir, nem me ocorria como tal qualidade poderia ser evidente. Como em muitas outras coisas, o aprendiz deve fingir que percebeu e esperar por melhor oportunidade para ir percebendo.

Alguns anos depois li um livro de Peter Dormer, The Art of the Maker, onde era apresentado o papel da transmissão de conhecimento tácito no ensino e aprendizagem das artes ditas práticas. Posso, à distância de vinte anos, reconhecer que reconhecer perspicácia era uma tarefa pedagógica que foi sendo transmitida tacitamente no decurso de muitas sessões de avaliação.

Este texto procura estabelecer a importância do desenho de observação no edifício teórico — didáctico de Daciano da Costa, reflectindo especificamente no conceito de Perspicácia e quanto este é útil aos candidatos a designers e a arquitectos.

Mauro Pinheiro

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Abstract
Este artigo discute o papel dos designers e dos usuários como co-autores de mensagens e produtos. Para tanto, destaca três momentos da história do design, nos quais a noção de autoria aparece distintamente: o período relativo ao design modernista, com a preponderância do Estilo Internacional; o final dos anos 80 e início dos anos 90, com a retórica visual pós-moderna; o começo do século XXI, com o advento da revolução informacional e da Web 2.0, destacando suas repercussões para o design de interação. Ao final, tendo em vista o futuro de pervasividade e ubiqüidade computacionais, aponta questões latentes que atualizam a discussão sobre a co-autoria de mensagens e produtos, ressaltando a importância de aprofundar as discussões sobre os processos de comunicação no campo do design.

Discusses the role of designers and users in the authorship of messages and products. It highlights three moments in design history, in which different notions of authorship are perceived: the period related to the modernist design and the International Style; the first years of the 90’s, with the post-modern visual rhetoric; the beginning of the XXI century, with the information revolution and Web 2.0. As a conclusion, considering the presence of ubiquitous computing in the future, addresses some topics that update the discussion about authorship, emphasizing the importance of deepening the discussions about communication processes in the design field.

Keith Russel

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Abstract
While Art and Design share a large number of concepts, there is a fundamental tension, at the level of both theory and practice, between Art and Design in the articulation of their concepts. For example, reference is common to both domains. A painter may sketch and make a painting of a chair; a designer may design and build a chair. The references for each may be similar in terms of the history of an object, but the actual use-references will be at extreme ends of a continuum. In simple terms, the built chair can be sat on; the painted chair is for looking at.

Use and purpose tend to hold Art and Design theory apart. Design students are taught Art theory at a distance, as part of a general history of artefacts. Art students are taught Design theory indirectly as an aspect of creativity and process. Both domains tend to keep to themselves on the basis of the tension between them that is determined at the conceptual level.

This tension is available as a structure that can help inform both domains. By calling on the strong differences between Art and Design concepts, it is possible to draw both domains into a common understanding of the theoretical issues of Art and Design. Design theory is on the outer edge of the post-modern: its concerns are still largely those of an innocent modernism. Art theory, while it has embraced the richness of everything "post", is on the outer edge of use-value: its concerns have become, for many, those of an anonymous interior.

Beyond this tension there remains the general avoidance of concepts that inform both Art and Design. This may be less of an issue in Art where the rush of recent social theory has been powerful if not overpowering. The resistance of Design to this body of theory is instructive in that Design has managed to retain a coherence. Between these two responses (embracing and resistance) there is the possibility for a new shared domain of Art and Design theory secured by the tension and openness to other domains such as archaeology, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, psychology, theology, history, literature, biology and technology.

Michael Ostwald and Michael Chapman

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Abstract
The Coop Himmelblau partnership of Wolf Prix and Helmut Swiczinsky has, since the 1960s, been engaged in an attempt to break away from mainstream approaches to architectural design and production. Originally contemporaries of Archigram, Archizoom and Superstudio, Coop Himmelblau’s manifestos for architecture have, since that time, portrayed a growing preoccupation with feed-back mechanisms, looping, folding, instantaneity and the attempt to recast architecture as metaphorically chaotic. While there have been extensive critical analyses of Coop Himmelblau’s early post-Vitruvian, or anti-humanist propositions, their approach to design in the late 1980s and early 1990s has rarely been considered in such detail. Throughout this latter period, Coop Himmelblau merged surrealist concepts like “automatism” with the rhetoric of complexity scientific including “interference”, “chaos”, “indeterminacy”, “iteration” and “open systems”. The focus of this paper is Coop Himmelblau’s celebration of the original design impulse, instance or event – what they call the psychogram – and its interpretation by Michael Sorkin as a reference to both surrealist automatism and scientific complexity.

Leon Cruickshank

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Abstract 
With the reaction to the death of Jacques Derrida receding, the time seems right to re-evaluate his impact on design and in particular to examine how the concept of deconstruction, propagated in his name and coming from his work building on the ideas of Martin Heidegger were misrepresented when related to design by many people including the explicitly deconstructive architects, including even Derrida.

This paper will argue for deconstruction as a stimulating provocation with utility for designers, but it will argue against many of the actions, practices and ideas historically associated with deconstruction in design and the wider theory. This will be achieved through an exploration of the collaborative project undertaken by the architect Peter Eisenman and Jacques Derrida — Choral Works and the theoretical micro-landscape on which the project sits.