What if the fathers of the famous principle of 20th-century modernist architecture and industrial design had preached ‘form follows finance’? And following this thought – how does the economy and the value of money relate to and affect the design discipline? And how does design shape the economy and the practice of economics, finance and the world of money?
These are some of the questions this compendium ‘Form Follows Finance’ will explore and articulate.
Today we see a close coherence between the built environment and the logics of the market, between the development of products and annual accounts of companies, and even in the way commercial strategies are formed by “design thinking”. On top of this, the financial market has been saturated by new forms of assets and financial products, which are specially designed to form new ways of trading.
The Intention with the compendium and its title should not be seen as a simple rearticulation of the old maxim, but rather as a way to frame thoughts and perspectives on the relationship between design, the economy and practice of economics. The title is therefore meant as a challenge, that addresses the state in which design cannot detach itself from its inherent connection to capitalism. Could we for instance imagine design in other future economies or outside the ‘wheels’ of the capitalist economy?
In an ideal world, designers would create ways of living to meet human needs and desires without undermining the climate system and contributing to the sixth extinction event. In the political system we inherited, designers work within an economic context that harnesses our skills to reproduce unsus...
In neoliberal times design has become an instrument of economic policy and commercial opportunity, more generally. This is in both its basic role in creating and controlling assets through intellectual property rights, and in its symbolic role as a leading innovator in the transformation of labour...
Something seemed deadly about the »sardonic funeral towers of metropolitan finance«. In 1938, when Lewis Mumford was looking for the possibilities of creating form under the conditions of his time, what concerned him was the »fatal lack of connection between architecture and the dominant social s...
From a one dollar everyday item in a convenience store, to a holy object at an ancient shrine,the mirror is one of the most diverse cultural objects embedded within financial interpretations. To most, the mirror is used as a tool for personal care and is an essential part of our everyday lives....
“Belum bisa” the barista told me when I asked if I could pay for my coffee with a digital wallet. You can’t yet. It was one of my first weeks of fieldwork on digital payments in Yogyakarta, and I was confused because I had particularly selected this coffee shop after having seen it listed in the Ind...
Community currencies are based upon cohesion between their members and often aim to circumvent issues related to a lack of monetary supply, particularly within more marginalized populations. Based on trust and an aim to secure the local economy, it can be said that these currencies re-frame money as...
Financial crises are temporal crises. They are created in mechanical circuits by new technologies acting so fast that we cannot perceive them until the damage is done. The speculative design can help us understand the crises by making them visible and in this way open up the future that the mechanic...
In 2008, somewhere in the National Bank of Denmark in Copenhagen, the seal on two steel boxes was broken. The contents made up an antiquated crisis package from the Cold War contingency plan, including all the necessary equipment for the production of special emergency money....
Hvad laver en økonom i Designrådet? Det spørgsmål var udgangspunktet for en uformel samtale med tidligere departementschef i Erhvervsministeriet Jørgen Rosted, som fandt sted i efteråret 2020 i Christianshavns Beboerhus. Det blev en samtale, som udfoldede dansk designhistorie fra 1990’erne og......