Thinking Design Through Literature

by Susan Yelavich

This book deploys literature to explore the social lives of objects and places. The first book of its kind, it embraces things as diverse as escalators, coins, skyscrapers, pottery, radios, and robots, and encompasses places as various as home, country, cities, streets, and parks. Here, fiction, poetry, and literary non-fiction are mined for stories of design, which are paired with images of contemporary architecture and design. Through the work of authors such as César Aires, Nicholson Baker, Lydia Davis, Orhan Pamuk, and Virginia Woolf, this book shows the enormous influence that places and things exert in the world.

346 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 28, 2019

Reviews

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review will be published in the Journal of Design History.

[DFN · Rating 1 out of 5]

A true bore. I really tried to finish this book since a friend recommended it. I could feel the author's monotone and her trying really hard to make the subject interesting.