Utility Reassessed

Book excerpt: This collection of essays both defines and reassesses the concept of utility. In considering the place of ethics in the recent history of art and design, the text offers a way into the issues which concern design decision-makers today.The text presents topics such as the investigation in to hitherto undiscovered designs for a utility vehicle, it gives a perspective on the philosophy behind the concept of utility as a design theory and offers a critique of the dangers of good design. The text approaches the subject as a continuing history that has attempted to improve the human condition, through a process of rational thought in the construction of the material world. Using the history of Utility as a design theory, the text suggests ways in which the past can teach us something of the present, and reveals why, on the cusp of the new millennium, Utility is important.