Design and Development: Histories, Legacies and Futures
Organised by Heng Zhi with Alison J.
Clarke, Department of Design History and Theory
Design and architecture assumed a critical role in shaping
global development policies during the Cold War, responding to competing political ideologies and rapid technological change.
Today, amid intensifying geopolitical tensions and profound transformation driven by digitalisation and AI, design once again
occupies a central position in the reconfiguration of global development agendas. Set against post-colonial legacies and the
rise of South–South networks, both historical and contemporary practices of “design for development” call for more pluralistic
debate around diverse power relations and forms of agency.
Challenging
reductive frameworks such as universal modernism, neocolonial narratives, and centre-periphery binaries, this symposium examines
the networks, platforms, and assemblages shaped, negotiated, and contested by the local and transnational actors involved
in designing, constructing, manufacturing, trading, and consumption. What are the enduring legacies of traditional development
models? What new dynamics, infrastructures, and power structures are emerging beyond Eurocentric analytical frames? How do
designers, users, communities, and institutions contribute to the reconfiguration of global and social hierarchies?
Bringing together leading international researchers in design history, media and cultural studies, fashion studies, and
architectural theory, this event explores diverse ways of understanding design’s role in global development politics across
the multi-layered conditions of post-colonial worlds.Please register in advance: Registration
Programme
9:30am – 9:45am
Welcome and Opening Remarks
9:45am – 12:30pm
Panel 1 Contemporary Practices of Design and Development
Chair: Heng Zhi, University
of Applied Art Vienna
With: Miao Lu (Lingnan University, Hong Kong) Tommy Tse (University of Amsterdam)
Innocent (Ib) Batsani-Ncube (Queen Mary University of London)
11:30am
Response: Alpay Er
(Özyegin University Istanbul)
Panel Discussion
12:30pm – 2:00pm
Lunch Break
2:00pm – 5:00pm
Panel 2 Cold War Politics and Histories of design and development
Chair: Alison J. Clarke
(University of Applied Art Vienna)
With: Vishal Khandelwal (Harvard University), Bahar Emgin (Izmir
University of Technology), Danielle Charlap (Wolfsonian–Florida International University)
3:45pm
Response:
Tanishka Kachru (National Institute of Design, India)
Panel Discussion
4:45pm - 5:00pm
Closing
remarks and End
For detailed programme please visit: https://designanthropology.org/
Design and Development: Histories, Legacies and Futures is an event organised by the Department
of Design History and Theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria, as part of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)-funded
research project directed by Professor Alison J. Clarke: “Design Anthropology: Cold
War Industrial Design & Development” (Grant DOI
10.55776/PAT4411223). 
