Design and Truth
The faddish exaltation of design as an all-encompassing force reaches an apogee in this scattershot manifesto. English prof Grudin (Book) discusses a hodgepodge of phenomena as exemplars of good or bad design, including St. Peter's Basilica, Edsel automobiles, Microsoft Word, Heidegger's philosophy, human liberty, and a Velcro doohickey he rigged up to fix his TV remote. Grudin has a cosmic conception of his subject (the entire universe is a knowledge design) and draws correspondingly vast conclusions that go beyond engineering and aesthetics into morality and politics: good design, he contends, expresses honesty and integrity, while bad design embodies falsehood, corruption, and abusive power. Unfortunately, these notions get lost in a rambling text that jumbles together perceptive criticism (the artist Christo's installations were a massive multiplication of banalities) with self-help exhortations and leadership bromides (corporate activity on all levels should be value-driven). There's little payoff to Grudin's inflation of design into a theory of everything beyond abstractions (The energy field created by a given design is situated within the larger energy that is the marketplace) and clunky analogies (The U. S. Constitution is the design equivalent of the Jaguar XKE). The result is a promising but ill-designed treatise. Photos.(May)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.