This text summarises and contextualises the ideas that formed visual arts practices this century. Art, design and architecture are located in their social and political contexts, and the ideas of modernism are traced from the development of industrialised Europe at the turn of the century to the post-industrial, post-colonial present. The complex relationship between modernism and postmodernism in the visual arts is examined and the book concludes with a review of the global impact of the new technologies on art and design production.

Doing Research in Design presents new ways of thinking about the relationship between design and research by positioning design as a social as well as a material practice. This approach emphasises the social consequences of design decisions as well as the importance of the efficient functioning of a design. Doing Research in Design argues that design promotes social change and that, in order to understand that change, designers must turn to social science research methods. The book outlines the relationships between thinking and doing in design - and makes explicit links between design,...