What is a Design Culture?

Here is where culture enters the picture. I mean“culture” in its anthropological rather than artisticsense. What values and practices can hold people to-gether as the institutions in which they live fragment? My generation suffered from a want of imagination inanswering this question, in advancing the virtues ofsmall-scale community. Co

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human behavior is the engine of consumerism, capitalism, and culture. What’s more, human behavior doesn’t really change. Yes, each generation brings new ideas and worldviews, but we’re all fundamentally the same, shaped by millions of years of evolution: we all get angry; we all get jealous; we all need to feel respected.

I used to be much more of a technological determinist, where I believed that the course of history would play out according to what was technologically possible, and that technology shapes our world in a strong way. I've come to appreciate that culture actually plays such a large role in shaping our world. The ways in which people decide to use tec... See more

Design has evolved to meet the challenge of the new relationship between people and the material goods they need. Today, designers — artisans, manufacturers, engineers, architects — think far beyond the way things look. Comparing pre-industrial design to post-industrial design with a picture is absurd. Critiquing a modern object based on its appear... See more