What was design? Declarations and definitions from a century of creative quest

‘What was design?’ is a quick starter to one of modernity’s most contested terms. In its brief but steep career ‘design’ was subject to vast controversy. Celebrated as an agent of change, accused as commercialization’s driving force, and regularly denounced as overused, the inquiry of its innermost meaning is ongoing. While the answers to the question “what is design?” are in permanent redefinition, it is high time for a review. What was design? presents a collection of 87 historic single-sentence answers from practitioners, design scholars and philosophers: pointed and often strikingly contradictory.