Design for the real world
Design for the Real World has been translated into over twenty languages since it first appeared in 1971; it has become the world's most widely read book on design and is an essential text in many design and architectural schools. This edition offers a blueprint for survival in the third millennium. Victor Papanek's lively and instructive guide shows how design can reduce pollution, overcrowding, starvation, obsolescence and other modern ills. He leads us away from 'fetish objects for a wasteful society' towards a new age of morally and environmentally responsible design.
Stats for nerds
10recommend
15mentions
13people
2010–2026years
80% recommend20% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Victor Papanek's Design for the Real World [0] is a foundational text in the area of Appropriate Technology (cited here by others).
Essential reading alongside the Illich (also linked by others), Pye's Nature and Art of Workmanship [1], and Winner's "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" [2] for those interested in.... Let's call it an ecology OF technology?
And also the Papanek was probably the book that felt most like a forbidden text in undergraduate architecture school...
[0] https://archive.org/details/designforrealwor0000papa/page/n6...
- I'm a huge fan of the book "Design for the Real World" by Victor Papanek. One of the things that he talked about is the importance of using materials honestly: not trying to pass plastic off as wood, using the given material to it's best ability (even if itis plastic).
I've always thought the Windows 3.1 to Win2K era were exactly that. The medium is pixels on a screen, the mouse and keyboard. And there is no artifice, it's just the bare essentials.
- Off to one side, but riffing on the WEC thing..
I grew up with the Whole Earth Catalog, and it was a fantastic repository of knowledge but wierdly, quite hard to use to find the "tools for everyman" it claimed to be: the one thing it wasn't was well organized. What sticks in the mind was the tone, and one really weird article about using a swiss army knife to kill warts. (it works, sometimes: if you irritate a wart enough you can switch on the body's defensive network. Thats why the aspirin cream method works)
Victor Papanek "Design for the real world" is in many ways, better. Less entertaining, less anarchic, but I used some of the ideas to get furniture made over 25 years ago I still use (the plywood single-cut slotted shelves which stack)
Or Eric Sloane's "Reverence for wood" which is lyrical but surprisingly direct about tools and how they work.
- For example, in my case I got interested in:
- Design when I read “The Design of Everyday Things” and “Design for the Real World”
- Cognitive psychology when I read “Thinking Fast and Slow”
- Computers & Education when I read “Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas”
Would love to know about the books that got you inspired and curious about other fields :)
- For example, in my case I got interested in: - Design when I read “The Design of Everyday Things” and “Design for the Real World”
- Cognitive psychology when I read “Thinking Fast and Slow”
- Computers & Education when I read “Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas”
Would love to know about the books that got you inspired and curious about other fields :)
- Anyone who appreciates Buckminster Fuller should have a read of Victor Papanek. His book 'Design For The Real World' is exceptionally good. - http://playpen.icomtek.csir.co.za/~acdc/education/Dr_Anvind_...
Related
The nature and art of workmanship
4 recommend · 6
Notes on the synthesis of form
34 recommend · 94
Visual Explanations
11 recommend · 21
Design for Real Life
2 recommend · 3
Universal principles of design
24 recommend · 42
Design paradigms
4 recommend · 4
