Victor Papanek (1923 – 1998) was a socially responsible designer. Papanek was born in Vienna, spent a brief period of time in the UK during the Second World War, and then immigrated to the US, where he attained citizenship in 1946.
Education
He had a broad and in-depth education. In 1948, he completed a diploma programme in industrial design and architecture while being a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. Additionally, Papanek travelled widely, interacting with and studying indigenous cultures.
Biography
His popularity with the ecology movement in the late 1970s came from his critical reevaluation of American design. Design for the Real World, his book, was released in 20 different languages in 1969. It was created out of his personal conviction that designers in the United States were not addressing the actual needs of people, as “planned obsolescence” and “conspicuous consumption,” both of which amounted to resource waste, were the dominant design ideals. Despite the fact that Design for the Real World is still the most well-known of his works, he has examined the themes of realistic design’s aims and effects in later ones.
Design has a social and moral purpose.
Design has a “social and moral” purpose, according to Papanek, a longtime professor of design at the University of Kansas. This implies that it must address the needs of underrepresented groups in society and developing nations while judiciously using resources. Papanek has been able to put his beliefs into reality with considerable success, despite the fact that he is better renowned for his writing and teaching than for the things he has created. For the governments of Tanzania and Nigeria in 1981, he created the Batta-Koya low-cost tape cassette, which is meant to be produced locally and utilised as a “talking teacher” to impart health information.
Works
In addition, he created a wheelchair for Sweden, a solar-powered refrigerator for Tanzania, and a cross-country vehicle for Brazil that runs on alcohol. For a Japanese client, he worked on inventing biological packaging, in which a growing plant creates 100 per cent biodegradable packaging around a product.
Sources
Dormer, P. (1991). The illustrated dictionary of twentieth-century designers: The key personalities in Design and the applied arts. Mallard Press.
Additional Reading
Clarke, A. J. (2021). Victor Papanek: Designer for the real world. MIT Press. Retrieved from https://amzn.to/3vRVmcT.
Clarke, Klein, & Kries. (2018). Victor Papanek: The Politics of Design. Vitra Design Museum; Vienna. Retrieved from https://amzn.to/3GqvlWI.
Gowan, A. (2015). Victor Papanek: Path of a design prophet. Merrimack Media. Retrieved from https://amzn.to/3ipnQHT.
Papanek, V. (1985). Design for the real world. Thames & H. Retrieved from https://amzn.to/3IFINZD.
Papanek, V. (2003). The green imperative: Ecology and ethics in design and architecture. Thames & Hudson. Retrieved from https://amzn.to/3XdRYEO.
Pater, R. (2016). The Politics of Design: A (not So) Global Manual for Visual Communication. BIS Publishers. Retrieved from https://amzn.to/3W0LfwT.