A Reply to Adrian Forty

Abstract

In The Journal of History (also appeared Arttu 6/1992) Adrian Forty took considerable issue with my article Design History or Studies: Subject Matter and Methods which appeared in Studies (also appeared Arttu 5/1992). Forty wants to defend design history as it is currently practiced and suggests that I have not recognized the field's accomplishments. He states that a concern with design quality is a central topic for design historians and he defends the historian's concern with quality as a contribution to the consumer's understanding of how to discriminate between good and bad In doing so, he presumes a common understanding of what is intended by the word design. I disagree with Forty and this is precisely the point of my critique. I noted in my article that from the beginning the boundaries of subject matter in design history were slippery. There is a huge gap, for example, between Pevsner's celebration of the Dessau Bauhaus building and Reyner Banham's promotion of Archigram's Instant City in the 1960s. And much that we can call design has not even been considered by design historians. I claim that design history has not addressed the issue of subject matter boundaries and by neglecting this topic have thus heavily relied on traditional categories of objects established by art history and decorative arts as powerful determinants of historical narrative. I certainly don't mean that design historians have not embraced products of the contemporary world such as electric appliances and automobiles, nor that they have accepted traditional methods of interpretation, but I do believe that these early categories, have had a strong influence on the field. My concern is that design history has not developed a selfconscious process of questioning its subject matter and asking why the particular objects that constitute the bulk of historical research should be the primary one studied by the field. I have also argued in the past that design history has not been able to lay exclusive claim to the things it does study because it has no distinctive methodology or methodologies that have grown from the unique experience of research in the field. Forty says that some of the most interesting work in design history recently owes its interest to the influence it has received from other disciplines. He mentions anthropology and cultural studies as two examples. But what then makes the work produced under these influences design history rather than cultural studies or anthropology? This is