"Failed Design: What were they thinking?"

Call for Papers--

Failed Design: What were they thinking?
Graduate Student Symposium
Friday, April 24, 2009

The Bard Graduate Center for
Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture
New York, NY

Design is a process, yet in our success-driven world, we tend to focus on
the end result.

The goal of this symposium is to think about this distinction--process
versus end result--by considering the significance of failed design and the
insight it offers into societies and individuals. Pruitt-Igoe, Zeppelins,
Ford Edsel, and Crystal Pepsi: Why do some designs succeed and others fail,
and who decides? What is the distinction between bad and failed design? Does
studying "failure" offer the prospect of a unique historical perspective?

Our aim is to gather speakers who will explore these issues, from all
disciplines and time periods.

Topics may include but are not limited to:
- scale of failure--humiliation, disaster, catastrophe
- commercial versus functional failure
- reformist and utopian visions
- conceptual design
- emotional investment in design
- the function of taste: Why do some bad designs become popular?
- changing criteria of success over time
- being "ahead of one's time"
- ergonomics
- the role of obsolescence
- intellectual property

Please send a one- to two-page abstract for a twenty-minute presentation,
together with a CV, to GradSympbgc.bard.edu by 5 p.m. on Friday, February
27, 2009. Selected participants will be notified by Friday, March 6, 2009.

Rebecca Klassen
MA Candidate 2010
Bard Graduate Center
for Studies in Decorative Arts, Design and Culture
410 W. 58th St.
New York, NY 10019