In Design by Accident, Alexandra Midal declares the autonomy of design, in and on its own terms. This meticulously researched work proposes not only a counterhistory but a new historiography of design, shedding light on overlooked historical landmarks and figures while reevaluating the legacies of design’s established luminaries from the nineteenth century to the present. Midal rejects both linear narratives of progress and the long-held perception of design as a footnote to the histories of fine art and architecture. By weaving critical analysis of the canon of design history and theory together, with special attention to the writings of designers ...

This week we’re visiting the the one and only Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design and Director of Research and Development at the Museum of Modern Art. Paola is quite frankly is a legend  – not only because she made MoMA’s first ever homepage on the World Wide Web in 1995 – but for decades she has been pushing the envelope and really reshaping what it means for museums to collect. For instance, what does it mean for a museum to collect something that is in in the public domain, and something that is rather intangible, such as ...

Paola Antonelli is the senior curator of the Department of Architecture and Design and the Director of R&D at MoMA where she’s expanded the traditional definition of design by acquiring pieces like the @ sign, the original emoji set, and Minecraft. Originally trained as an architect, Antonelli has written and edited for publications like Domus, Metropolis, ID, and Harper’s Bazaar and was previously taught at the University of California and Harvard University Graduate School of Design. In this wide ranging episode, Paola and I talk about design as a methodology, the problems with design education, and why she wants to ...

The 2019/20 issue of The Serving Library Annual is entirely devoted to the late Italian designer, artist, inventor and polymath Bruno Munari. The core of the annual is the first English translation of Obvious Code, the 1971 collection of Munari‘s own writings, sketches and poems about his own work, published by arrangement with Corraini, who issued the book’s anastatic edition in 2017. It includes iconic design objects such as the Abitacolo, ground-breaking artworks such as his 1952 series of hand-made projection slides, and little known rhymes about the art market, as well as an original piece from his “unreadable books” ...