Overview

Considered as an operator acting in relation to the daily environment, the designer s ultimate responsibility can only be to contribute to the production of a habitable world, a world in which human beings do not merely survive but also express and expand their cultural and spiritual possibilities. The term habitable, referring to the environment, indicates a complex existential condition that cannot be reduced to its functional component. It is a condition arising from the intersection of a multiplicity of questions rooted in the anthropological and social nature of the human race. E. Manzini, Prometheus of the Everyday: The Ecology of the Artificial and the Designer s Responsibility

To contribute to the production of a habitable world, design needs to be transformed, expanding its scope to include speculation on how best to provide the conditions for inhabitation. It must not just visualize a better world but arouse in the public the desire for one. Design approaches are needed that focus on the interaction between the portrayed reality of alternative scenarios, which so often appear didactic or utopian, and the everyday reality in which they are encountered.

Many issues touched on here, such as art s relation to everyday life, and the need for art to resist easy assimilation, overlap with those already addressed by the Frankfurt School and others in relation to disciplines such as music (Adorno), painting (Marcuse), art (Benjamin), and drama (Brecht). The similarities between these issues and those addressed by Marxist approaches to aesthetics do not imply an identification...