Title: The Bureaucracy of Beauty
First published: October 24, 2006
Description: Designing the Present is a wide-ranging work of cultural theory that connects literary studies, postcoloniality, the history of architecture and design, and the history and present of empire. Professor Ananya Roy of UC Berkeley calls it a "fantastic book," and in many ways this is the best description of it. Designing the Present begins with nineteenth-century Britain's Department of Science and Arts, a venture organized by the Board of Trade, and how the DSA exerted a powerful influence on the growth of museums, design schools, and architecture throughout the British Empire. But this is only the book's literal subject: in a remarkable set of chapters, Dutta explores the development of international laws of intellectual property, ideas of design pedagogy, the technological distinction between craft and industry, the relation of colonial tutelage to economic policy, the politics and technology of exhibition, and competing philosophies of aesthetics. His thinking across these areas is ignited by
engagements with Benjamin, Marx, Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham, Kant, Mill, Ruskin, and Gandhi.A rich study in the history of ideas, of design and architecture, and of cultural politics, Designing the Present converges on the issues of present-day globalization. From nineteenth-century Britain to twenty-first century America, Designing the Present offers a theory of how things - big things -change.
Subjects: Architecture, Nonfiction, Great britain, colonies, India, cultural policy, Nationalism, india, Architectural design, Cultural policy, History, Colonies, Economic policy, Nationalism, Colonial influence, Great Britain. Department of Science and Art, Great Britain, Histoire, Design architectural, Nationalisme, Politique culturelle, Politique économique, Influence coloniale, Urban & Land Use Planning, British colonies, Grande-Bretagne. Department of Science and Art, Grande-Bretagne