Time Line - Design Activism

The author needs  input from readers about what is missing or debated.

Please comment directly in the post: http://designactivism.net/archives/385#comment-3117

 Timeline for “cause-oriented” design:

1930s and 1940s

housing and furniture
- Bauhaus and the social potential of design
- Buckminster Fuller dymaxion car and house
- Schindler’s shelters: low cost, pre fabricated housing

 

1950s

HousingBuckminster Fuller geodesic domes
Walter Segal self build system
Accessibility
“barrier free” movement (forerunner to universal design) in response to disabled veterans

1960s

Counterculture
1960s design groups: Situationists International, Superstudio, etc.
1966 Drop City community founded

1968 publication: Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand
Environment
1969 Design with Nature by Ian McHarg
Community design & appropriate technology

1965 Intermediate Technology Development Group (Appropriate Technology) founded
1968-69 Community Design Center of Minnesota founded 1969, Los Angeles Community Design Center founded 1968

1970s

Enviroment
1970s Co-evolution Quarterly
1973 AIA Energy committee, founded

1970  Cosanti Foundation began building Arcosanti, an experimental town (ongoing)
1975 Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems

1977  Soft Energy Paths by Amory Lovins
1977 A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein

1979 Passive Solar Energy Book by Ed Mazria
Design for development/consumer safety
1971 Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek
Diversity: religion

1977 Aga Khan award established for architecture recognizing good design in Islamic contexts (ongoing)

1980s

Social responsibility
1981 Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility, 1981
Environment
1981 Structural failure at a major US hotel prompts the conversion of Bob Berkibile to one of the first sustainable design champions in architecture

1982 Founding of the Rocky Mountain Institute by Amory and Hunter Lovins
Feminism
1984 Redesigning the American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life, by Dolores Hayden

1990s

Environment
1990 formation of the AIA Committee on the Environment
1993 founding of the US Green Building Council

1993 Design for Society, critiques of consumerist design by Nigel Whitely
1996 Ecological Design by Sim van Der Ryn and Stewart Cowan

1997 formalization of eco design with publications such as John Gertsakis, Helen Lewis, and Chris Ryan A Guide to EcoReDesign and Han Brezet and C. van Hemel Ecodesign: A Promising Approach to Sustainable Production and Consumption

1996-97 exhibitions of recycled material such as “Re- Materialize” and “Hello Again”
Feminism
1993 Women in Design section founded at IDSA (Industrial Designers Society of America)

1999 Design and Feminism Joan Rothschild, ed
1996 Architecture and Feminism, Debra Coleman, Elizabeth Danze and Carol Henderson, eds,
Affordability/accessibility

1993 Rural studio, University of Arkansas design build studio focusing on poor local communities
1999 Design Corps, US community focus, often rural or migrant groups

1993 Congress for the New Urbanism
Humanitarian
1999 Architecture for Humanity

1999 Architects without Frontiers
Alternative education
1998 Ecosa Institute, 1998

2000s

Humanitarian (becoming Social Design or Design for Social Impact)
2001 Designers without Borders
2003 Design that Matters

2004 Article 25 (formerly architects for aid)
2008 Project H Design

2008 Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio conference on design for social impact
2008 Change Observer blog (funded by Rockefeller for initial two years)

2010 IDEO.org, social design offshoot from IDEO
Accessible/public interest
2002 Public Architecture

2003 UK Design Council begins work on design-led solutions to social problems
2004 [Re]design, UK

2005 the 1%, Public Architecture’s initiative to professionalize pro bono work
2005 SEED (Social Economic Environmental Design), US

2008 SEED Foundation social enterprise and design, UK
2009 Design Activism: Beautiful Strangeness for Sustainable World by Alistair Fuad-Luke published by Earthscan
Prizes and conferences

2000, Conference: Structures for Inclusion 1 organized by Design Corps
2006 “ecodesign” category added to IDSA / BusinessWeek IDEA awards program

2007 The Buckminster Fuller Challenge for $100,000
2008 Curry Stone Prize, for design emphasizing social good, reaching wider segments of society, for $100,000

2008 Conference: A better world by design
Environment
2002 Architecture 2030: getting to zero carbon emission buildings by 2030
2002 Cradle to Cradle By William McDonough & Michael Braungart, North Point Press
2006 EcoLabs (developed ecoliteracy teach-in for designers in London  2009)

2007 Designers Accord originally climate driven, now expanded
2009 Living Building Challenge launched by Cascadia Chapter of US Green Building Council
Alternative education models and Politics in design education and research

2005 Biomimicry Institute, US
2005 Goldsmiths, University of London: Center for Architectural Research–design and politics/spatial politics focus

2006 Manchester Architecture Research Center, University of Manchester–design and politics/spatial politics focus
2008 Leeds School of Architecture, Landscape and Design Leeds Metropolitan University hosts “Mapping Design Activism” followed by Leeds Festival of Design Activism in 2009

2009 TU Delft Chair in Politics and Design
2009 academic network DESIS: Design for Social Innovation towards Sustainability.

2010 Austin Center for Design, educating designers for social enterprise