Design and Agency

John Potvin is Professor of Modern Art and Design History at Concordia University, Canada. He is the editor of Oriental Interiors (Bloomsbury 2015). Marie-Ève Marchand is Affiliate Assistant Professor of Art History at Concordia University, Canada.

• List of FiguresNotes on ContributorsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Reassessing Design through AgencyJohn Potvin, Concordia University, CanadaSECTION I – Designing IdentitiesIntroductionMarie-Ève Marchand, Concordia University, Canada1. Period Decor and the Negotiation of Social Relationships in the HomeMarie-Ève Marchand, Concordia University, Canada2. Designs on Modernity: Gertrud Loew’s Vienna Apartment and Situated AgencySabine Wieber, University of Glasgow, UK3. Gifted Design: Imperial Benevolence in the Needlework of Mary Seton WattsElaine Cheasley Paterson, Concordia University, Canada4. Beyond the Couch: Anna Freud and the Analytic EnvironmentAmélie Elizabeth Pelly, Concordia University, Canada5. Multum in parvo: Scale and Agency in the Thorne Miniature RoomsErin J. Campbell, University of Victoria, Australia6. Listening for Design: Agency and History in a Philips Aachen-Super D52Michael Windover, Carleton University, Canada7. Agency, Art and Architecture in Medical Murals by Mary Filer and Marian Dale ScottAnnmarie Adams, McGill University, Canada8. Duelling Over Domes: Jeffrey Lindsay and Buckminster Fuller Cross Struts and Sprits in the US Patent OfficeCammie McAtee, National Gallery of Canada, Canada9. Desperately Seeking Sunlight: Le Corbusier’s Casa Curutchet and The Man Next DoorMark Taylor, Swinburne University of Technology, AustraliaSECTION II – Systems & Institutions of DesignIntroductionMarie-Ève Marchand, Concordia University, Canada10. The Dry Goods Economist and the Role of Mass Media in the Creation of a Global Window Design Aesthetic at the End of the Nineteenth CenturyAnca I. Lasc, Pratt Institute, USA11. National Cash Register Company’s Boys’ Garden: Shaping Working-Class Childhoods and Future Workers, 1897-1913Sara Nicole England, independent, Canada12. Women as Agents of Change in the Design of the WorkplaceLynn Chalmers, independent, Canada13. Stand-in or Act-out: Period Rooms as Spaces of AgencyÄnne Söll, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany and Stefan Krämer, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany14. Agent Bruce Mau and the Audacity of DesignRachel Gotlieb, Sheridan College, Canada15. From Indian to Indigenous Agency: Opportunities and Challenges for Architectural DesignDavid Fortin, Laurentian University, Canada16. Design History and DyslexiaAnne Massey, University of Huddersfield, UK17. Textual Agency: Pitfalls and PotentialsJessica Hemmings, University of Gothenburg, Sweden18. Design’s Performative Agency: Thoughts and New Directions for Materiality, Ontology and Identity-MakingEce Canli, Research Insitute for Design, Media and Culture, PortugalIndex

Design and Agency shows design (people, spaces and objects) to be powerful, politically engaged and, often, highly personal. Through a range of examples from the later nineteenth-century to the present, an international group of authors explores the role of the systems and institutions of design in constructing identities. This thoughtful and thought-provoking volume provides an agenda for design and its histories, and calls for a new ethical way of being, knowing and designing.