Design Noir

<p>The first book to be published on the work of their partnership (in 2001) <i>Design Noir</i> is the essential primary source for understanding the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings for Dunne & Raby's work. <p/>Consisting of three elements - a 'manifesto' on the possibilities of designing with and for the 'secret life' of electronic objects; notes for an embryonic network of critical designers and most famously the presentation of the Placebo Project - a prototype for a critical design poetics enacted around electronic furniture-objects - <i>Design Noir</i> offers an in-depth exploration of one of the most seminal design projects of the last two decades one that arguably initiated speculating through design in its contemporary forms. <p/>By detailing the logic and character of the objects that were constructed; the involvement of users with these objects over-time and in the creation of a new kinds of spatially and temporally distributed moments of critique and engagement with things <i>Design Noir</i> presents the case-study of the Placebo projectas a far more complex and subtler project than is often thought. <p/>As a bold and in many ways unprecedented experiment in design writing and book designing <i>Design Noir </i>is itself an instance of the speculative propositional design it expounds.</p>