ARCH+ FEATURES 37
The Design of Design
Standardization is linked to normalization, both expressing social – not merely technological – aims and aspirations. Both use "invisible" tools such as text and education to "design" design, and to coordinate, or rationalize, how consumers and producers interact.
The New York-based architectural researcher Nader Vossoughian examines the way in which certain norms permeate design disciplines. His publication Otto Neurath: The Language of the Global Polis(2011) and the related exhibition After Neurath (Den Haag, 2008) have gained widespread recognition. He will show in particular, how one book - Ernst Neufert's Bauentwurfslehre (instructions to construction planning from 1932) as well as the two norms of the paper format DIN 476 and the building construction measurement order 4172 have effected the establishment of a new informal infrastructure, and why they influence the "design of design" still today.