Design and Development: Histories, Legacies and Futures

Organised by Heng Zhi with Alison J. Clarke

Design and architecture assumed a critical role in shaping global development policies during the Cold War, responding to competing political ideologies and rapid technological change. Today, amid intensifying geopolitical tensions and profound transformation driven by digitalisation and AI, design once again occupies a central position in the reconfiguration of global development agendas. Set against post-colonial legacies and the rise of South–South networks, both historical and contemporary practices of “design for development” call for more pluralistic debate around diverse power relations and forms of agency.

Challenging reductive frameworks such as universal modernism, neocolonial narratives, and centre-periphery binaries, this symposium examines the networks, platforms, and assemblages shaped, negotiated, and contested by the local and transnational actors involved in designing, constructing, manufacturing, trading, and consumption. What are the enduring legacies of traditional development models? What new dynamics, infrastructures, and power structures are emerging beyond Eurocentric analytical frames? How do designers, users, communities, and institutions contribute to the reconfiguration of global and social hierarchies?

Bringing together leading international researchers in design history, media and cultural studies, fashion studies, and architectural theory, this event explores diverse ways of understanding design’s role in global development politics across the multi-layered conditions of post-colonial worlds.

Programme

9:30am – 9:45am Welcome and Opening Remarks

9:45am – 12:30pm Panel 1 Contemporary Practices of Design and Development  

Chair: Heng Zhi, University of Applied Art Vienna

Miao Lu, Lingnan University, Hong Kong

Tommy Tse, University of Amsterdam

Innocent (Ib) Batsani-Ncube, Queen Mary University of London

11:30am Response: Alpay Er, Özyegin University Istanbul

Panel Discussion

12:30pm – 2:00pm Lunch Break

2:00pm – 5:00pm Panel 2 Cold War Politics and Histories of design and development

Chair: Alison J. Clarke, University of Applied Art Vienna

Vishal Khandelwal, Harvard University

Bahar Emgin, Izmir University of Technology

Danielle Charlap, Wolfsonian–Florida International University

3:45pm Response: Tanishka Kachru, National Institute of Design, India

Panel Discussion

4:45pm - 5:00pm Closing remarks and End

For detailed programme please visit: https://designanthropology.org/

Design and Development: Histories, Legacies and Futures is an event organised by the Department of Design History and Theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria, as part of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)-funded research project directed by Professor Alison J. Clarke: “Design Anthropology: Cold War Industrial Design & Development” (Grant DOI 10.55776/PAT4411223).