Design is Politics

Development, Part 3c

Design is Politics

Glen Mills’ excellent, short, 2006 Business Day article “Thinking out of the matchbox” (download linked below) briefly summarises the general situation in South African housing, which has not changed much in the mean time.

There is still no public discussion of design, except at the “Top billing” level of snobbery and eclecticism, or at the level of the most banal, hopeless utilitarianism, in the press.

Mills’ article brings in the vital question of design. His argument is true and tragic. Design is the politics and the propaganda of the eye, and the enabler of freedom. It is the politics that is lived in, as opposed to being merely read or spoken.

Design is terribly impoverished in South Africa. This part of politics has been neglected.

This is the last text in this part. In the next part, we look at the rural side of things.

Image: “Plug-In City”

Please download the text, and read.

Download:

Thinking out of the matchbox, Glen Mills, Business Day (1199 words)

Further reading:

Barking dogs, building bridges, Lauren Royston (5469 words)

Reform or Revolution?, Chapters 2, 7, 9 & 10, Luxemburg (10250 words)

Housing by People, C1, C6, Who Decides?, John Turner (7901 words)

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Previous main Communist University posts:
Channel [members]	Course Archive	Weeks	Last Posted
SADTU Pol Ed [434]	Development, Rural and Urban	3/10	3 August 2010
CU Africa [230]	Marx’s Capital, Volumes 1, 2 & 3	8/33	3 August 2010
CU [2859]	Philosophy and Religion	6/10	30 July 2010
Courses completed in 2010 to date:
SADTU Pol Ed	Lenin’s The State & Revolution	6	June - July
	National Democratic Revolution	12	March - June
	Basics	10	January - March
SADTU Pol Schools	3-Day School	3 days	2-4 June
CU	No Woman, No Revolution	10	March - June
	Basics	10	January – March
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