Extractive Efficiency: Global Systems, Global Objects

Which strategies and methods for more efficient use of extractive materials did designers develop in response to the issue of resource scarcity raised by the environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s? This seminar will examine how design culture responded to the over-exploitation of resources by deploying the full arsenal of late-modernist preoccupations with rationalism, economy, and effectiveness. This “scientification” of design as an activity and profession is underpinned by an ideology of efficiency. In this optic, extractive materials are seen as finite resources which are increasingly scarce (or will become so), and which therefore must be utilized with care, prudence and the greatest possible economy. Presentations will offer a range of case studies, from arguably the most global product of all, the Monobloc plastic chair, via the material ramifications of intercontinental gold trade and the diplomatic functions of coal in Cold War Europe, to the neocolonial extractivism of Swedish iron ore mining in Liberia.