Renny Ramakers: Rethinking Design

Renny Ramakers is realizing projects that combine virtual technologies and social media with the craft of design to develop new social relations. For more than three decades, the Dutch art historian, critic, and curator has been influencing the nature and purpose of design. As co-founder of the Droog Design collective, she has championed the notion of furniture and industrial design as a rethinking of today’s world. When Droog first exhibited at the Milan furniture fair in 1993, its assemblies of found materials and witty forms instantly changed the landscape of design. Since then, Ramakers has worked with makers and creators to move beyond slick objects and towards critical projects that open our eyes to our multifaceted realities while offering easy access and great joy to users. Author Aaron Betsky describes the ways Renny Ramakers has emphasized the mix of high and low cultures, the reuse of images, the importance of wit, the necessity of user participation, the elegance of the undressed object, and the possibility of design acting as a catalyst to create social change. This volume will survey the work Ramakers has done since 1980 as the author of countless articles and books on design, as the promotor of Droog, as project director and curator, and as thinker.