Design, Nature, and Revolution ― Toward a Critical Ecology

A landmark text in design discourse for a world desperately in need of redesign—back in print

What good is design? In a world facing social unrest, political tribalism, and impending ecological doom, Tomás Maldonado poses philosophical inquiries into the role design plays during a moment of crisis and analyzes what “design” might mean as an ever-enlarging compass beyond stylization of specific objects. He discusses how design is both influenced by and central to ecological crisis. Written as a kind of obituary to the Modern movement’s wave of failed “concrete utopias,” Maldonado combines philosophy, sociology, radical countercultural thought, and the ecological sciences into a polemic that recenters design in the human environment. 

Tomás Maldonado (1922-2018) was an Argentine painter, designer, and intellectual. He was professor of environmental design at Politecnico di Milano University and is considered one of the most significant design thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. 

Larry Busbea is associate professor of art history at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and author of Topologies: The Urban Utopia in France, 1960–1970.