Designing is Mining: Historicizing Material Ecologies of Design

Abstract

The modern design profession is often considered a product of the Industrial Revolution's division of labor, which separated the ideation of artifacts from their execution. As part of the same legacy, where industrial manufacturing—as a system—was premised on the exploitation of extractive materials and fossil fuels, designers are natural-born miners. Designing entails crucial decisions on which and how much materials to mine, blast, drill, excavate, or fell. This article argues for an expanded view of the subject matter and the methods of design history, as designing with, designing without, and designing out extractive materials are crucial parameters in both the history and the future of the human-built world.