Practices, Materiality and Product Design (Workshop)

Designing and consuming: objects, practice and processes is a theoretical project that seeks to enrich and extend understanding of the relation between product design and consumption, and the dynamics of both. It does so by exploiting the potential for theoretical development at the interface of science and technology studies, design theory and the sociology of consumption. Four strategically positioned case studies, each addressing specific gaps in the existing literature, promise to generate new ways of conceptualising the objects, practices and processes of consumption.

The project is part of the Cultures of Consumption research programme funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board and the Economic and Social Research Council (award no. RES-154-25-0011). The project is running collaboratively between Lancaster University Department of Sociology, University of Durham Department of Geography, and Birmingham Institute of Art and Design at University of Central England. The project runs for 24 months to December 2006.

http://www.dur.ac.uk/designing.consuming/index.html

http://www.dur.ac.uk/designing.consuming/media/flier%20july%2006.pdf