Dunne & Raby is a London-based design studio established 1994.
Dunne & Raby uses design as a medium to stimulate discussion and debate amongst designers, industry and the public about the social, cultural and ethical implications of current and emerging technologies. Its practice is centred on Critical Design, a critical theory approach to design.
Anthony Dunne studied Industrial Design at the RCA before working at Sony Design in Tokyo. On returning to London he completed a PhD in Computer Related Design at the RCA.
From 2005 to 2015 he was Professor and Head of the Design Interactions Archived 2008-01-27 at the Wayback Machine department at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London. Upon his resignation from the RCA, MoMA senior curator Paola Antonelli stated that Dunne and Raby's tenure had "changed the course of design". [1]
Fiona Raby studied Architecture at the RCA, and an MPhil in Computer Related Design at the RCA.
They were founding members of the CRD Research Studio, where they also worked as Senior Research Fellows.
After leaving the Royal College of Art they moved to New York to take up teaching positions at the Parsons New School and direct the Designed Realities Studio [2] [3]
Dunne and Raby were shortlisted for the Perrier-Jouet Selfridges Design Award in 2000. [4] In July 2015 they received the inaugural MIT Media Lab Award at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. [5]
Their projects have been exhibited and published internationally and are in the permanent collection of several museums including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, [6] the Victoria and Albert Museum [7] in London and FrAC centre and they have exhibited at The Science Museum (London), [8] and The Pompidou Centre (Paris) (group exhibition). [9] Dunne & Raby have worked with Sony UK, National Panasonic, France Telecom and The Science Museum. They have published three books, Hertzian Tales (The MIT Press), Design Noir (Princeton Architectural Press), and Speculative Everything (MIT Press).
Interaction design, often abbreviated as IxD, is "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services." While interaction design has an interest in form, its main area of focus rests on behavior. Rather than analyzing how things are, interaction design synthesizes and imagines things as they could be. This element of interaction design is what characterizes IxD as a design field, as opposed to a science or engineering field.
Critical design uses design fiction and speculative design proposals to challenge assumptions and conceptions about the role objects play in everyday life. Critical design plays a similar role to product design, but does not emphasize an object's commercial purpose or physical utility. It is mainly used to share a critical perspective or inspire debate, while increasing awareness of social, cultural, or ethical issues in the eyes of the public. Critical design was popularized by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby through their firm, Dunne & Raby.
The Sacco chair, also known as a bean bag chair,beanbag chair, or simply a beanbag, is a large fabric bag filled with polystyrene beans. It was designed by Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini and Franco Teodoro in 1968. "Sacco" is Italian for "bag" or "sack". The product is an example of an anatomic chair as the shape of the object is set by the user.
Muriel Cooper was an American pioneering book designer, digital designer, researcher, and educator. She was the first design director of the MIT Press, instilling a Bauhaus-influenced design style into its many publications. She moved on to become founder of MIT's Visible Language Workshop, and later became a co-founder of the MIT Media Lab. In 2007, a New York Times article called her "the design heroine you've probably never heard of".
Alice Rawsthorn OBE is a British design critic and author. Her books include Design as an Attitude (2018) and Hello World: Where Design Meets Life (2013). She is chair of the board of trustees at the Chisenhale Gallery in London and at The Hepworth Wakefield gallery in Yorkshire. Rawsthorn is a founding member of Writers at Liberty, a group of writers who are committed to supporting the work of the human rights charity Liberty. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to design and the arts.
Paola Antonelli is an Italian architect, curator, author, editor, and educator. Antonelli is the Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, where she also serves as the founding Director of Research and Development. She has been described as "one of the 25 most incisive design visionaries in the world" by TIME magazine.
Carlo Ratti is an Italian architect, engineer, educator and author. He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he directs the MIT Senseable City Lab, a research group that explores how new technologies are changing the way we understand, design and ultimately live in cities. Ratti is also a founding partner of the international design and innovation office CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati, which has offices in Turin, New York and London. He is also a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano and an Honorary Professor at TTPU Tashkent. Ratti was named one of the "50 most influential designers in America" by Fast Company and highlighted in Wired magazine's "Smart List: 50 people who will change the world".
Arturo Vittori, is an Italian artist, architect, and industrial designer. He is co-founder and director of the architecture and design team Architecture and Vision.
Objectified is a feature-length documentary film examining the role of every day non-living objects and the people who design them, in our daily lives. The film is directed by Gary Hustwit. Objectified premièred at the South By Southwest Festival on March 14, 2009.
Neri Oxman is an Israeli-American designer and former professor known for art that combines design, biology, computing, and materials engineering. She coined the phrase "material ecology" to define her work.
Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian is a London-based designer, artist and filmmaker of Armenian and Algerian descent. She serves on the Advisory Council of METI and is the designer of experiences at the SETI Institute. She is also an exhibitor and keynote speaker who has worked with museums and design centres across the world.
Sascha Pohflepp was a German artist, designer, and writer whose work focused on the role of technology’s influence on the environment, often collaborating with scientists and other artists to explore this theme.
Hiromi Marissa Ozaki, better known by her pseudonym Sputniko!, is a Japanese artist, designer and entrepreneur. She specializes in the field of speculative and critical design. She is known for her films and multimedia installation works inspired by emerging technologies’ possible impact on society and values – with a focus on gender issues.
Fiona Raby is a British artist and University Professor of Design and Social Inquiry at The New School. She served as professor of Industrial Design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She was also a member of the research and teaching staff at the Royal College of Art (RCA) from 1994 to 2015. She left to focus on her partnership with Dunne & Raby. Her work, in collaboration with partner Anthony Dunne, is part of the Museum of Modern Art's (MoMA) permanent collection.
Design fiction is a design practice aiming at exploring and criticising possible futures by creating speculative, and often provocative, scenarios narrated through designed artifacts. It is a way to facilitate and foster debates, as explained by futurist Scott Smith: "... design fiction as a communication and social object creates interactions and dialogues around futures that were missing before. It helps make it real enough for people that you can have a meaningful conversation with".
Anthony Dunne is a critical designer, educator and founder of the art group Dunne and Raby. He runs the studio with his long term partner and collaborator Fiona Raby.
Cathrine Maclennan Kramer is a Norwegian artist, designer and curator.
Speculative design is a design practice concerned with future design proposals of a critical nature. The term was popularised by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby as a subsidiary of critical design. The aim is not to present commercially-driven design proposals but to design proposals that identify and debate crucial issues that might happen in the future. Speculative design is concerned with future consequences and implications of the relationship between science, technology, and humans. It problematizes this relation by proposing provocative future design scenarios where technology and design implications are accentuated. These design proposals are meant to trigger debates about the future rather than marketing products.
Pasta by Design is a book by George L. Legendre, with a foreword by Paola Antonelli, and photography by Stefano Graziani. It is based on an idea by Marco Guarnieri.