Furthering Victor Papanek’s Legacy: A Personal Perspective Cees de Bont Keywords Abstract Consumerism Design schools around the world often state that they offer instruction on Sustainability topics such as sustainability, inclusive design, and responsible design. Fifty Inclusive design years ago, design scholar Victor Papanek had already begun teaching indus- Design leadership trial designers that they were contributing to consumerism by designing unnecessary gadgets. Papanek urged them to offer more responsible solu- tions to the real difficulties that people face daily, difficulties that spanned a range of problems from physical challenges to societal ones. His works were not appreciated—at all—by his American industrial designer contemporaries, Received but still served as powerful inspiration to European design academics whose May 19, 2020 efforts comprise some of the first PhD work on design. Here I describe Accepted Papanek’s writing and inspiration, and note how long it took before influen- August 16, 2020 tial design academics would seek to educate and inspire others based on his work. I have served as dean at three universities where his legacy lives on in teaching and research. I will reflect on some of the recent activities taking CEES DE BONT place under Papanek’s influence at these institutions, and offer a personal Loughborough School of Design and Creative perspective of these developments, and some reflections on the progress in Arts, Loughborough University, UK (corresponding author) light of Papanek’s lessons overall. [email protected] © 2021 Cees de Bont. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Tongji University. This is an open access article published under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer review under responsibility of Tongji University. http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2020.08.010 263 De Bont: Furthering Victor Papanek’s Legacy 1 Ezio Manzini, “Scenarios of Sustainable Introduction Wellbeing,” Design Philosophy Papers 1, no. 1 (2003): 5–21. In 2005, I became the dean of the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at 2 Prabhu Kandachar, “Designing for Global Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). A team of three full professors — Erik Sustainable Solutions: Challenges and Opportunities,” Sustainability in Design: Jan Hultink, Paul Hekkert, and Imre Horvath — was tasked with identifying an Now! Challenges and Opportunities for inspirational strategy that the entire faculty could get behind. In line with Ezio Design Research, Education and Practice Manzini,1 they proposed the notion of sustainable well-being, which was univer- in the XXI Century, ed. Fabrizio Ceschin, Carlo Vezzoli and Jun Zhang (Sheffield, sally embraced.2 The idea behind it was that designers have a responsibility to UK: Greenleaf Publishing, 2010), 60–76, propose attractive and also sustainable solutions. available at https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/ It was clear then, as it is now, that much knowledge and expertise is handle/2438/6726. 3 World Commission on Environment and required to do that well. Between 2012 and 2018, as the dean of the School Development, Our Common Future, ed. of Design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), I led the Jockey Club Gro Harlem Brundtland (Oxford: Oxford Design Institute for Social Innovation. During that period, we introduced a University Press, 1987), available at https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/ degree program in social design. Social issues are central to Hong Kong and content/documents/5987our-com- even more so to PolyU, where intense protests became world news in 2019. At mon-future.pdf. the Loughborough School of Design and Creative Arts, where I am currently 4 András Schubert and István Láng, “The Literature Aftermath of the Brundtland the dean, responsible design is an explicit part of the school’s mission state- Report ‘Our Common Future’: A Scien- ment. Even without me pushing these concepts, I find myself time and again tometric Study Based on Citations in in design schools where sustainability, social innovation, and responsible Science and Social Science Journals,” Environment, Development, and Sustain- design are close to the hearts and minds of my colleagues. ability 7, no. 1 (2005): 1–8, DOI: https:// The seeds for sustainable well-being ethos were planted many years ago doi.org/10.1007/s10668-003-0177-5. at TU Delft. A significant event took place in 1987 when the Brundtland 5 Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change Report,3 subtitled “Our Common Future,” was published by the United (London: Thames and Hudson, 1972). Nations. It massively raised awareness about sustainability at every societal level and spurred many a scholar into action.4 Victor Papanek, author of Design for the Real World,5 received several prestigious awards, including a Distinguished Designer fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1988. The following year, he received the IKEA Foundation International Award. Papanek was responsible for introducing several other concerns beyond sustainability into the design debate; design for disability is but one example. His work offers readers his profound intellectual musings and very partic- ular notion of societal aims and purposes, plus the findings from many stu- dent case studies — all of which continues to be a rich source of inspiration. Papanek was a professor and head of department at a number of academic institutions, and was a dean at the California Institute of the Arts. These roles require vision, and the capacity to articulate and execute a purpose and direc- tion. It would be difficult to find another scholar whose work has influenced me — either directly or indirectly — as much as Papanek. It is remarkable to me how fresh his inspiration continues to be, even after all these years. In my 15 years as a dean, I have had the honor of collaborating with many design academics investigating issues and topics raised by Papanek, and I have met many exceptional design school leaders who have articulated and imple- mented their own versions of responsible design. This article will provide some much needed background into the life and work of an influential designer whose name is often spoken, but whose work is often not very familiar to administrators of design schools or pres- ent-day design scholars. My first intention is to provide valuable inspiration to people in positions of leadership — heads of departments and deans, as 264 she ji The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation Vol. 7, No. 2, Summer 2021 6 Papanek, Design for the Real World. well as others in other fields and domains of activity — since many of Pap- 7 The book had 3388 citations as indicated anek’s views are comprehensive and they are about the essence of design by Google Scholar in July of 2020. 8 Donald A. Norman, The Psychology of as an integral part of society. Given the amplitude of today’s societal and Everyday Things (New York: Basic Books, environmental challenges — which designers have contributed to, directly 1988). or indirectly — there is no choice for designers but to help alleviate them. 9 Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World, 3rd ed. (London: Thames and Papanek’s views may support administrators as they discern a guiding Hudson, 2019). purpose for their schools. These views were a great help to me, and they helped me to determine the modules of research and educational deserving priority. My second aim is to describe how design academics at three leading design schools have been actively developing and implementing knowledge and insights built upon the ideas and views put forward by Papanek, thereby adding to his legacy. The article will offer new generations of researchers a clearer picture of how research related to environmental and social sustain- ability has progressed from the early days of academic design research. What I offer in this article is a personal perspective. The studies and au- thors I refer to are important to me in this context, and because of this, the article is in no way a comprehensive treatment of everyone or everything whose contributions have been (in some way) inspired by Papanek’s ideas. Design for the Real World came out in English in 1971, after appearing in Swedish first in 1970, yet the Swedish title was different. The book got translated into Finnish and German (1972) into Spanish (1973) and into French and Japanese in 1974. In the preface to the first edition of Design for the Real World,6 Papanek rightfully asserts that no book on design has ever focused on the designer’s responsibility to the public the way his does. Soon after it came out, it became one the most widely cited books on design, pos- sibly the most cited for several years. The 1972 edition of the book — with an introduction by Buckminster Fuller — has been cited by more authors than any of Papanek’s other publications.7 Don Norman’s now famous tome The Psychology of Everyday Things,8 written in 1988, makes reference to Papanek. Its popularity among academics (as of the writing of this article) far exceeds Design for the Real World. In all honesty, despite the inspiration I feel I have derived from Papanek’s work, it has been a long time since I have read his original writings. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the case for many design academics. When taking a closer look at his work, it is difficult to say which of his many con- tributions deserves the most attention. Table 1 offers a snapshot of some his most highly referenced works, listed chronologically according to their year of publication. The focus of this article will be restricted to the most recent (third) edition of Design for the Real World,9 as it contains the original content plus some reflections by Papanek about that content.