Design in Crisis

Design in Crisis
Author: Tony Fry
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2020-12-29
Genre: Design
ISBN: 100032009X

This book is an essential contribution to the transdisciplinary field of critical design studies. The essays in this collection locate design at the center of a series of interrelated planetary crises, from climate change, nuclear war, and racial and geopolitical violence to education, computational culture, and the loss of the commons. In doing so, the essays propose a range of needed interventions in order to transform design itself and its role within the shifting realities of a planetary crisis. It challenges the widely popular view that design can contribute to solving world problems by exposing how this attitude only intensifies the problems we currently face. In this way, the essays critique the dominant modes of framing the meaning and scope of design as a largely Anglo-European 'problem-solving' practice. By drawing on post-development theory, decolonial theory, black studies, continental philosophy, science and technology studies, and more, the contributions envision a critical and speculative practice that problematises both its engagement with planet and itself. The essays in this collection will appeal to design theorists and practitioners alike, but also to scholars and students generally concerned with how the past and future of design is implicated in the unfolding complexity of ecological devastation, racial and political violence, coloniality, technological futures, and the brutality of modern Western culture generally.

Idealized Design

Idealized Design
Author: Russell Lincoln Ackoff
Publisher: Ft Press
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2006
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780137071111

Don't settle for incremental change: invent tomorrow today! bull; Discover your 'ideal' solution: then, work backwards to make it happen! bull; The definitive guide to idealized design, authored by its legendary creator, and leading practitioner. bull; Start-to-finish techniques and examples drawn from hundreds of companies, nonprofits, and government organizations. [Source : 4e de couv.].

Managing the Climate Crisis

Managing the Climate Crisis
Author: Jonathan Barnett
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2022-07-14
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1642832006

Natural disasters from heat waves to coastal and river flooding will inevitably become worse because of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. Managing them is possible, but planners, designers, and policymakers need to advance adaptation and preventative measures now. Managing the Climate Crisis: Designing and Building for Floods, Heat, Drought and Wildfire by design and planning experts Jonathan Barnett and Matthijs Bouw is a practical guide to addressing this urgent national security problem. Barnett and Bouw draw from the latest scientific findings and include many recent, real-world examples to illustrate how to manage seven climate-related threats: flooding along coastlines, river flooding, flash floods from extreme rain events, drought, wildfire, long periods of high heat, and food shortages.

Smart Design

Smart Design
Author: Richard Hu
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2021-11-24
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1000475336

This book tackles the emerging smart urbanism to advance a new way of urban thinking and to explore a new design approach. It unravels several urban transformations in dualities: economic relationality and centrality, technological flattening and polarisation, and spatial division and fusion. These dualities are interdependent; concurrent, coexisting, and contradictory, they are jointly disrupting and reshaping many aspects of contemporary cities and spaces. The book draws on a suite of international studies, experiences, and observations, including case studies in Beijing, Singapore, and Boston, to reveal how these processes are impacting urban design, development, and policy approaches. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated many changes already in motion, and provides an extreme circumstance for reflecting on and imagining urban spaces. These analyses, thoughts, and visions inform an urban imaginary of smart design that incorporates change, flexibility, collaboration, and experimentation, which together forge a paradigm of urban thinking. This paradigm builds upon the modernist and postmodernist urban design traditions and extends them in new directions, responding to and anticipating a changing urban environment. The book proposes a smart design manifesto to stimulate thought, trigger debate, and, hopefully, influence a new generation of urban thinkers and smart designers. It will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners in the fields of urban design, planning, architecture, urban development, and urban studies.

Fragile by Design

Fragile by Design
Author: Charles W. Calomiris
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 584
Release: 2015-08-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691168350

Why stable banking systems are so rare Why are banking systems unstable in so many countries—but not in others? The United States has had twelve systemic banking crises since 1840, while Canada has had none. The banking systems of Mexico and Brazil have not only been crisis prone but have provided miniscule amounts of credit to business enterprises and households. Analyzing the political and banking history of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil through several centuries, Fragile by Design demonstrates that chronic banking crises and scarce credit are not accidents. Calomiris and Haber combine political history and economics to examine how coalitions of politicians, bankers, and other interest groups form, why they endure, and how they generate policies that determine who gets to be a banker, who has access to credit, and who pays for bank bailouts and rescues. Fragile by Design is a revealing exploration of the ways that politics inevitably intrudes into bank regulation.

Defensive Design for the Web

Defensive Design for the Web
Author: Matthew Linderman
Publisher: New Riders Publishing
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2004
Genre: Customer relations
ISBN:

Written by the experts at 37signals, this book shows hundreds of real-world examples from companies like Amazon, Google, and Yahoo that show the right (and wrong) ways to get defensive. Readers will learn 40 guidelines to prevent errors and rescue customers if a breakdown occurs. They'll also explore how to evaluate their own site's defensive design and improve it over the long term.

Crisis by Design

Crisis by Design
Author: John Truman Wolfe
Publisher:
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2011-03-01
Genre: Financial crises
ISBN: 9780982201558

There's been a coup d' tat. It was not a mob of AK-47 wielding militia overthrowing a dictator in a third-world country. This one was different. On April 2, 2009 at a meeting of the G-20 in London, the fiscal autonomy of the United States (and other nations) was quietly turned over to a little known bank with a troubling Nazi past. The story of this coup sounds like something out a Ludlum novel, but this is real and John Truman Wolfe has documented one of the most enormous power grabs in history, the establishment of what international bankers call a GMA, a Global Monetary Authority. How it was done, who did it, and why, is the subject of Crisis by Design, a no-holds-barred expose of a takeover of the planet's central banks. Wolfe not only exposes the dark side of this operation, he tells you how you can protect yourself as well as what public policy actions need to occur to take back control of our national economic life. Wolfe does not spew economic psychobabble. Instead, he writes in a smooth and easy-to-understand style. And the message in clear-an international financial coup has occurred. We must protect ourselves as well as our national sovereignty.

Writing Design Fiction

Writing Design Fiction
Author: Tony Fry
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2021-10-21
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1350217328

Written by leading design philosopher Tony Fry, Writing Design Fiction: Relocating a City in Crisis is both an introduction to the power of “design fiction” in the design process, and a novella-length work of fiction in itself-telling the dramatic story of the relocation of the City of Harshon. Set in the near future, Harshon, a delta city, is facing environmental catastrophe due to rising sea levels-consequently, a decision is made to relocate the entire city inland. A diverse cast of voices-including an architect, a journalist, an economist, a construction worker, and residents-narrate the extraordinary challenges and complexities which follow. This work presents a real-world scenario which, in coming decades, will face many of the world's cities. The fictional format provides a novel way of exploring the very serious inherent technical, social, political, economic and cultural challenges. The story provides a rehearsal of the design challenges which are likely to face architects, planners, and designers in an uncertain global future. “Design fiction” is a fast-growing area within design and architecture, increasingly deployed as a serious methodology by designers as a tool in scenario planning. Writing Design Fiction takes the practice to a higher level conceptually and theoretically, but also practically. The book is divided into four parts, with the fictional narrative bookended by further critical analysis. Part One shows how a critique of existing modes of design fiction can lead to more grounded and critical thinking and practice. Part Three critically reflects on the narrative, while Part Four presents the practical application of the second order design fiction approach. This book demonstrates the value of a more developed mode of design fiction to students, professional designers and architects across the breadth of design practices, as well as to other disciplines interested in the future of cities.

Crisis Management

Crisis Management
Author: Janine L. Reid
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2000-06-19
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9780471354192

The only step-by-step guide to crisis management for the design andconstruction industry Accidents, lawsuits, labor walkouts . . . A crisis can come out ofnowhere to strike even the most responsible and safety-consciousdesign and construction companies. The good news is that when badthings happen, there are ways to navigate successfully through thetough times to get your company back on track and back in businessas soon as possible. The secret is to be prepared--and this bookshows you how. Written by one of the best-known experts in the field. Crisis Management gives you the detailed practical knowledge,tools, and techniques you need to get ready for virtually anycrisis situation--before it happens. With proven procedures, forms,and checklists to guide you through every step of the process, ithelps you to: * Anticipate, identify, and prevent potential crises whenpossible * Assemble and manage a quick-response crisis managementteamDevelop a comprehensive crisis management plan * Understand and use media communications effectively * Establish and cultivate good media relationships * No matter what area of design or construction you work in, Crisis Management will make a vital contribution to the overallhealth and survival of your business--because when it comes to theunexpected, preparation really is everything.

Project of Crisis

Project of Crisis
Author: Marco Biraghi
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2013-08-30
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0262519569

An examination of the influential Italian architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri's historical construction of contemporary architecture. The influential Italian architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri (1935–1994) invoked the productive possibilities of crisis, writing that history is a "project of crisis" (progetto di crisi). In this entry in the Writing Architecture series, Marco Biraghi explores Tafuri's multifaceted and often knotty oeuvre, using the historian's concept of a project of crisis as a lens through which to examine his historical construction of contemporary architecture. Mindful of Tafuri's statement that there is no such thing as criticism, only history, Biraghi carefully maps the influences on Tafuri's writing—Walter Benjamin, Karl Krauss, Massimo Cacciari, and the architect Ludovico Quaroni, among others—in order to create a portrait of one of the most complex minds in twentieth-century architecture and architectural history. Tracing an arc from Tafuri's first articles in the magazine Contropiano to the idea of contradiction at the center of the project of crisis, Biraghi cites Tafuri's writing on some of his contemporaries, including Louis Kahn, Le Corbusier, Robert Venturi, Aldo Rossi, and the "Five Architects" (Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, John Hejduk, and Richard Meier). Tafuri's historical construction of the contemporary, Biraghi explains, is based on the idea that the past is open, providing the present with ever-changing and indeterminate form. There is no contradiction between Tafuri the historian and Tafuri the contemporary critic, only the greatest possible integration. The importance of Tafuri's interpretation of architecture goes beyond mere academic or historiographic interest, Biraghi argues; Tafuri's notion of the project of crisis is fundamentally important in understanding our present-day architectural condition