Total(itarian) Design
Editors: Zsolt Gyenge, Olivér Horváth (Managing Editor), Márton Szentpéteri, Péter Wunderlich (Project Manager). Founding Editor: Heni Fiáth (2014–2018)
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
Olivér Horváth: The Russian Dolls of Being, or What God’s Eye Tells the Bot’s Brain
RESEARCH PAPERS
- Dávid Csűrös and Ákos Schneider: From Participation to Extraction: The Rise of Predictive Design
- Sándor Őze: Cybernetic Modern Design in Emerging Post-Fordism: Systems Thinking, Industrial Transformation, and the Logic of Flexible Accumulation
ESSAY
Márton Horn. The Shifting Institutional Logic of Museums: Economy, Audiences, and Architecture
GUEST ESSAY
Dennis Meadows: Preface to the 50th Anniversary Special French Edition of
The Limits to Growth
REVIEW
INTERVIEWS
- Objects in Exile: An Interview with Robin Schuldenfrei by Ágnes Anna Sebestyén
- The Capacious Umbrella of Design Culture: An Interview with Ben Highmore by Márton Szentpéteri
- Calculating Empires, Fog of War, Zelda and Navigating in Post-Ideological Networks: An Interview with Vladan Joler by Ábris Gryllus
Olivér Horváth: The Russian Dolls of Being, or What God’s Eye Tells the Bot’s Brain
Disegno 2024/2, page range: 4–9. https://doi.org/10.21096/disegno_2024_2oh
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Dávid Csűrös and Ákos Schneider: From Participation to Extraction: The Rise of Predictive Design
Disegno 2024/2, page range: 10–35. https://doi.org/10.21096/disegno_2024_2dcsasch
This paper introduces the concept of predictive design (PD) to critically examine how data-driven design methods are reshaping human-centred design (HCD). While HCD traditionally emphasises participation, empathy, and qualitative insight, the rise of predictive practices—such as anticipatory design and predictive UX—signals a shift toward a different mode of futuring in digital environments: one rooted in data science rather than open-ended dialogue with users. At the same time, the rhetoric of user-centredness is often used to justify large-scale data extraction, blurring the line between service and surveillance. This shift creates a tension with HCD’s commitment to designing by, for, and with people. Drawing on historical, epistemological, and cultural perspectives, we trace how predictive practices have gained momentum in design, particularly within the platforms of Google and Facebook. The paper outlines the epistemic logic of PD, distinguishes it from adjacent concepts, and explores its implications for user agency, participation, and the role of design in surveillance capitalism.
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Sándor Őze: Cybernetic Modern Design in Emerging Post-Fordism: Systems Thinking, Industrial Transformation, and the Logic of Flexible Accumulation
Disegno 2024/2, page range: 36–57. https://doi.org/10.21096/disegno_2024_2os
The article investigates how early cybernetics shaped late modern design within the broader transformation from Fordist mass production to post-Fordist regimes of flexible accumulation between 1945 and 1975. It argues that transformations of capitalist production regimes constitute a necessary framework for analysing the designed environment. Part I outlines Norbert Wiener’s cybernetics as an interdisciplinary methodology emerging from the Fordist military–industrial production, highlighting its implications for automation, networked infrastructures, and information-based conceptions of economy and labour. Part II examines two Bauhaus successor institutions—the HfG Ulm and The New Bauhaus/Institute of Design—to show how cybernetic concepts informed the shift from object-centred to systems-oriented design, redefining the designer as a coordinator of complex socio-technical networks. The article argues that cybernetics simultaneously expanded design’s methodological repertoire and integrated it more tightly into industrial rationalisation and f lexible production, while also contributing to the depoliticisation of modernist utopias by reframing political and social projects as technical problems of control, communication, and optimisation.
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Márton Horn: The Shifting Institutional Logic of Museums: Economy, Audiences, and Architecture
Disegno 2024/2, page range: 58–69. https://doi.org/10.21096/disegno_2024_2mh
This paper examines the contemporary transformation of museums as hybrid institutions situated at the intersection of cultural representation, public engagement, and market dynamics. It argues that museums have shif ted from collection-centred, scholarly spaces toward experience-driven, audience-oriented cultural hubs shaped increasingly by economic pressures, evolving visitor expectations, and new architectural paradigms. The study analyses how changing funding structures, the integration of popular culture, and the rise of the experience economy have redefined the museum’s social role and internal logic.
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Dennis Meadows: Preface to the 50th Anniversary Special French Edition of The Limits to Growth
Disegno 2024/2, page range: 70–76. https://doi.org/10.21096/disegno_2024_2dm
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Ármin Tillmann: The Somaesthetic Impulse, or How Can Design Culture Shape Our Life Forms? Richard Shusterman and Bálint Veres, eds: Somaesthetics and Design Culture
Disegno 2024/2, page range: 78–85. https://doi.org/10.21096/disegno_2024_2at
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Objects in Exile: An Interview with Robin Schuldenfrei by Ágnes Anna Sebestyén
Disegno 2024/2, page range: 86–97. https://doi.org/10.21096/disegno_2024_2aasrsch
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The Capacious Umbrella of Design Culture: An Interview with Ben Highmore by Márton Szentpéteri
Disegno 2024/2, page range: 98–108. https://doi.org/10.21096/disegno_2024_2mszbh
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Calculating Empires, Fog of War, Zelda and Navigating in Post-Ideological Networks: An Interview with Vladan Joler by Ábris Gryllus
Disegno 2024/2, page range: 110–119. https://doi.org/10.21096/disegno_2024_2vjag
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About the Authors
Disegno 2024/2, page range: 120–123.