TY - BOOK ID - 136813241 TI - Critical design in Japan PY - 2020 SN - 1526140012 1526152037 1526139987 9781526139986 9781526140012 1526139979 9781526139979 PB - Manchester [UK] DB - UniCat KW - Design KW - Avant-garde (Aesthetics) KW - Material culture KW - Avant-garde. KW - Comme des Garçons. KW - Critical design. KW - Digital design. KW - Japan. KW - Material culture. KW - Mujirushi Ryohin. KW - Postmodern design. KW - Social design. KW - Visual culture. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:136813241 AB - This book tells the story of critical avant-garde design in Japan, which emerged during the 1960s and continues to inspire designers today. The practice communicates a form of visual and material protest drawing on the ideologies and critical theories of the 1960s and 1970s, notably feminism, body politics, the politics of identity, and ecological, anti-consumerist and anti-institutional critiques, as well as the concept of otherness. It also presents an encounter between two seemingly contradictory concepts: luxury and the avant-garde. The book challenges the definition of design as the production of unnecessary decorative and conceptual objects, and the characterisation of Japanese design in particular as beautiful, sublime or a product of 'Japanese culture'. In doing so it reveals the ways in which material and visual culture serve to voice protest and formulate a social critique. ER -