Designing Our Way to a Better World

Thomas Fisher is the former dean of the College of Design and the new director of the Metropolitan Design Center at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Designing to Avoid Disaster: The Nature of Fracture-Critical Design. His books The Invisible Element of Place: The Architecture of David Salmela, In the Scheme of Things: Alternative Thinking on the Practice of Architecture, and Salmela Architect are also published by the University of Minnesota Press.

• ContentsIntroductionPart I. Invisible Systems1. The Design of the Invisible2. Design Thinking3. The Logic of CreativityPart II. Education4. Creative Education5. Schools and Communities6. Reconstructing Design EducationPart III. Infrastructure7. Fracture-Critical Failures8. Over-Extended Infrastructure9. Designed DisastersPart IV. The Public Realm10. The Infrastructure of Health11. Healthy Landscapes12. Viral CitiesPart V. Politics13. Designer Politics14. The Politics of No15. Politics: Right and WrongPart VI. Economics16. An Opposable Economy17. A Third Industrial Revolution18. Meta-designPart VII. Beliefs19. Community Resiliency20. Evolutionary Transformation21. Spatializing KnowledgePostscript: A Past and Possible FutureNotesIndex

"Though architecture theory's autonomous turn has been crumbling for some time, you can sense Tom Fisher's sledgehammer here hastening the process. Designing Our Way to a Better World takes on such expansive topics as education, environmental rescue, politics, and economics to raise our horizons for an architecture of true engagement."-Tom Spector, Oklahoma State University"Finally! A great design thinker who truly connects the objects we put on the land with the planet below them. Thomas Fisher's breakthrough perspective challenges us to rethink almost everything-education, movement, consumption-to dramatically reshape the world each action designs."-R.T. Rybak, former mayor of Minneapolis, executive director of Generation Next, and author of Pothole Confidential: My Life as Mayor of Minneapolis"[Designing Our Way to a Better World] tosses out ideas like a firework tosses out sparks."-Planning Magazine"Fisher lays our a compelling case for addressing the 'wicked problems' of our day with the power of design thinking. And he does so in a voice that seeks to appeal to a general audience--not just experts in various fields. Highly recommended Reading."-Architecture Minnesota