The Culture of Nature in the History of Design

The Culture of Nature in the History of Design confronts the dilemma caused by design's pertinent yet precarious position in environmental discourse through interdisciplinary conversations about the design of nature and the nature of design. Demonstrating that the deep entanglements of design and nature have a deeper and broader history than contemporary discourse on sustainable design and ecological design might imply, this book presents case studies ranging from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century and from Singapore to Mexico. It gathers scholarship on a broad range of fields/practices, from urban planning, landscape architecture, and architecture, to engineering design, industrial design, furniture design and graphic design.
From adobe architecture to the atomic bomb, from the bonsai tree to Biosphere 2, from pesticides to photovoltaics, from rust to recycling - the culture of nature permeates the history of design. As an activity and a profession always operating in the borderlands between human and non-human environments, design has always been part of the environmental problem, whilst also being an indispensable part of the solution.
The book ventures into domains as diverse as design theory, research, pedagogy, politics, activism, organizations, exhibitions, and fiction and trade literature to explore how design is constantly making and unmaking the environment and, conversely, how the environment is both making and unmaking design. This book will be of great interest to a range of scholarly fields, from design education and design history to environmental policy and environmental history.

Kjetil Fallan is Professor of Design History at the University of Oslo and a founding member of the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities. He is the author of Designing Modern Norway: A History of Design Discourse (2017) and Design History: Understanding Theory and Method (2010), editor of Scandinavian Design: Alternative Histories (2012), and co-editor, with Grace Lees-Maffei, of the book series Cultural Histories of Design as well as the volumes Designing Worlds: National Design Histories in an Age of Globalization (2016) and Made in Italy: Rethinking a Century of Italian Design (2014).

List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Introduction: The Culture of Nature in the History of Design Kjetil Fallan Part 1: Conceptual Environments Design's Ecological Operating Environments Simon Sadler Pattern Watchers I: Environmental Seeing, c. 1970 Larry Busbea Computing Environmental Design Peder Anker Ludic Pedagogies at the College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley, 1966 to 1972 Timothy Stott Part 2: Ecotopian Landscapes A Cityless and Countryless World: The Total Appropriation of Nature in Victorian Utopias Nathaniel R. Walker Clean and Disciplined: The Garden City in Singapore Jesse O'Neill Desertification, or Designing New Worlds in the Dust Fattori Fraser 'There's a World Going on Underground': Ecotopian Realism in Subterranean Design Even Smith Wergeland Part 3: Design in the Garden Contested Development: ICSID's Design Aid and Environmental Policy in the 1970s Tania Messel Power in the Landscape: Regenerating the Scottish Highlands after the Second World War Frances Robertson Design for the Garden: Questioning Gardening as Environmentalism Jette Lykke Jensen Permanence and Magic: Super-Natural Metaphors of Stainless Steel Nicolas P. Maffei Part 4: Design as Ecology Forms of Human Environment (1970): Italian Design Responds to the Global Crisis Elena Formia Environmental Design Pedagogy in Leningrad in the 1980s Yulia Karpova Throwaway Houses: Garbage Housing and the Politics of Ownership Curt Gambetta The Unmaking of Autoprogettazione Avinash Rajagopal and Vera Sacchetti Index