Craig BremnerCharles Sturt University · School of Communication and Creative Industries
Craig Bremner
BA, MDesign, PhD
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35
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161
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Citations since 2017
Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (35)
Malgré les reprises et les réinterprétations régulières du titre de la conférence de Cedric Price en 1966, « Technology is the question, but what was the question ?», on cite rarement la dernière diapositive de son intervention, où il fait allusion à un début de solution du problème en déclarant : « L’utilité de cette architecture est de rappeler à...
In our first State of Design Report we asked our researchers whether, as the UK Design Council asserts, design always has an answer? In this second report we ask again whether design has any answers, or are there just questions? In Cedric Price's lecture and slide show-"Technology is the answer but what was the question?"-technology is undoubtedly...
We, the authors, have been probing the state of the gesture of care for nearly a decade, and we staged our first international symposium to begin a process of re-formulating the conceptual basis of Care from the point of view of design in Copenhagen in 2015. A few years and events later the first “Does Design Care…?” workshop at Imagination Lancast...
State of Design Report
![118 Theories of Design[ing] Chart](publication/345174467/figure/fig1/AS:953418046795776@1604323984024/118-Theories-of-Designing-Chart_Q320.jpg)
![118 Theories of Design[ing] Book Cover](publication/345174467/figure/fig2/AS:953418264899587@1604324036861/118-Theories-of-Designing-Book-Cover_Q320.jpg)
Theories normally seek to explain something. 118 Theories of Design[ing] asks us to question those explanations. By focusing on a broad range of somewhat overlooked and undervalued essays, papers, book articles, words, terms, authors and phenomena that swirl around design[ing], the reader is encouraged to read, reflect and question everything.
This...
This paper presents a chronological account of design's response to the Covid-19 crisis as it unfolded globally. From January to May 2020, we documented over 500 design interventions that have been created by individuals, networks, amateurs, professionals, and public and private organizations and institutions. This international response witnessed...
The Covid-19 crisis and the designed interventions we have catalogued in this book appear to prove definitively that design does care. We have documented this as it evolved every day from the 1 January 2020 to 31 May 2020 inclusive. As the cover and back cover, influenced by the work of Sean Clarke, Antonio Voce, Pablo Gutierrez and Frank Hulley-Jo...
In 2017, the first Does Design Care...? workshop at Imagination Lancaster asked a series of question that were eventually addressed in both the publication of "The Lancaster Care Charter" (Design Issues 35:1 2019) and the DDC…? Book.
Similarly, in 2019 the second Does Design Care…? workshop in Chiba, Japan, asked more questions but this time the qu...
This illustrated A to Z for the Design of Care book was written collaboratively by nearly 50 design researchers and practitioners during the Does Design Care…? [2] workshop held at Chiba University, Japan, 1–3 July 2019.
This workshop extended the explorations of design thought and action of the first Does Design Care…? workshop held at Imaginatio...
What is Care? A word, a concept or a myth? In this paper we explore some of the key formulations of Care that should be considered if Care is to become instrumentalised in design. Primarily, we revisit that meaning of Care which could be of most value to design. After all, Care, at least to some, is the essence of what it means to be human. The goa...
In the fall of 1991 the Munich Design Charter was published in Design Issues. This charter was written as a design-led "call to arms" on the future nations and boundaries of Europe. The signatories of the Munich Design Charter saw the problem of Europe, at that time, as fundamentally a problem of form that should draw on the creativity and expertis...
Is design the best tool available to us to make sense of the contemporary, complex modern world? If so, how might a design school best prepare future designers for this world? This publication records the proceedings of three research summits on the future of the design school. Funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and in partners...
In an era of digital production and disruption this chapter probes how design might now best labour under a philosophy of nothing. Nothing is a pronoun for something and nothing is now the derivative project for design. As such design requires a new form of inquiry to produce new insights and a new working philosophy from the design of nothing. Des...
In their previous work, the authors have demonstrated that the discipline of design has been superseded by a condition where conventionally set design disciplines have dissolved.[1][2][3] In this age where design is typified by fluid, evolving patterns of practice that regularly traverse, transcend and transfigure historical disciplinary and concep...
Care, like design, is both a noun and a verb. As a noun, care is defined as the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance, or protection of someone or something (e.g. care of the elderly, taking care of business). In this usage, care is concerned with giving serious attention or consideration to doing something correctly o...
This paper presents a critical examination of the current state of design by exploring a number of paradoxes – sustaining the unsustainable, disciplining the undisciplined, reconciling future visions with harsh realities, and others. We suggest that whilst design researchers have been probing design, it is highly likely design might never have been...
Taking our cue from the impact of Joseph Kosuth’s 1965 conceptual artwork One and Three Chairs, there has always been one and three museums—the cosmos is the museum of light, the city is the museum of space and given the job of the museum is to indefinitely accumulate time the museum today is the museum of time. In this paper we present a fourth—th...
This paper is being written in an unorthodox manner by nine design researchers, educators and practitioners spanning four countries and three continents. The approach is that each author writes 100 or so words and then passes it on to the next author to respond and so on. The paper will be finished when all of the nine authors think there is someth...
In 2001, Hal Foster wrote his paper ‘The ABCs of Contemporary Design*’ (Foster, 2002a) as a supplement (part glossary, part guide) to his book
Design and Crime (and Other Diatribes) (Foster, 2002b). Foster’s ABCs paper paints design as being a near-perfect circuit of production and consumption. Foster claims that critical reflection is outdated, wh...
The objects brought to the domestic table reveal valuable insights into how people perceive themselves and reflect the cultural, social, and technological settings through which they become available for “consumption.” In this paper we draw on a project and exhibition – Domestic Renewal: A Table Reset – and position it alongside similar projects by...
Modern design practice is a fluid, conceptual and discipline-breaking activity. This unpredictable creative practice regularly traverses, transcends and transfigures conventional disciplinary and conceptual boundaries. As the fragmentation of distinct disciplines has shifted creative
practice from being “discipline-based” to “issue- or project-base...
Design, again, finds itself in the midst of a crisis from a number of different perspectives, including professional, cultural, technological, and economic forces. The present crisis, however, is not new. Almost 20 years ago, design’s crisis of identity was highlighted
in Adam Richardson’s paper, “The Death of the Designer,” in which he reminded us...
Contemporary design is typified by fluid, evolving patterns of practice that regularly traverse, transcend and transfigure historical disciplinary and conceptual boundaries. This mutability means that design research, education, and practice is constantly shifting, creating, contesting and negotiating new terrains of opportunities and re-shaping th...
This paper explores an approach to design research that is becoming more prevalent in practice-based doctoral studies and examines what it tells us about the current state of design research. A previous examination of design PhD case studies has shown that the bricolage approach is evident in a majority of contemporary practice-based design PhDs [1...
This paper is placed within a contemporary context where conventionally set design disciplines are rapidly dissolving. Currently design is typified by fluid, evolving patterns of practice that regularly traverse, transcend and transfigure historical disciplinary and conceptual boundaries. This mutability means that design research, education, and p...
In 1998 the School of Design (SoD), University of Western Sydney Nepean (UWSN) began running an offshore articulation programme in graphic design in partnership with the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art, Singapore (NAFA). The successful completion of this one year programme was built upon three year diploma studies and resulted in the award of Bachelor...
Projects
Projects (2)
This collaborative research project with Imagination, Lancaster University, UK, Charles Sturt University, Australia, and the Design Museum, London, UK has the following objectives:
* To develop an international perspective on the state of the contemporary Design School.
* To explore whether the Design School of the future needs to be more "undisciplined" (not interdisciplinary) in its approach to increasingly complex global crises.
* To examine the conditions that are impacting on the Design School in ways that the history of the discipline has not traced.
* To review the effects of the shift from disciplinary autonomy to interdisciplinarity.
* To appraise the challenges for the future Design School and the practice of design from globalised information flows and
the spectacle of image making.
This research is proposed at a time when governments and markets across the world are actively reshaping the university and hence the Design School. What was always a trickle of complaints about the domestication of the modern university has become a flood of books, reports, opinions and editorials, public admonishments, proposals and counterproposals. In this time of rapid and intensive change, the network will foster new international relationships to debate the Design School of the future.
These changes have forced design schools to revise their offerings. The first revision was the turn from the discourse of disciplinary autonomy to interdisciplinarity; and the second was the emergence of consumer culture and information and communication technologies. These developments have had three consequences for the teaching of design. First, instead of the emphasis on “design”, there was a shift to gain academic legitimacy by establishing a dialogue with history and theory developed in firstly scientific and then philosophical realms. Second, the traditional notion of “creativity” was replaced with that of “invention” that led to the search for legitimisation through design science. And the third consequence was the push toward interdisciplinarity in an allegiance with technology. Is the shift from disciplinary autonomy to interdisciplinarity, which is now seen as normal and even desirable, in fact cultivating a very different landscape for the design school?
