Andrew Blauvelt

What do our collective images of the future tell us about our priorities in the present? How do we design visions of the future intended to defuse other, more perilous futures? Published on the occasion of the exhibition Designs for Different Futures, this essay by designer, curator, and museum director Andrew Blauvelt examines the momentous game of catch-up that humanity must play in order to survive its own conceptions of the future.

“Abolish the Wage System, Abolish the State, All Power to the Workers!” Such was the printer seal of the Detroit Printing Co-op, a radical community publishing initiative that existed from 1969 to 1985. The co-op’s printing facilities and equipment were deemed “social property,” meant for use by individuals in the community for little to no charge, and notable publications included Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle and the journal Radical America.

“Utopia, like any tool, is conjured from a future but it is destined to remain just out of reach of the technological self.” In this illustrated essay, curator Andrew Blauvelt unpacks the term hippie modernism, discussing the hippies’ counterintuitive embrace of both the preindustrial and the modernist fascination with new media, materials, and technologies.

For nearly fifty years the Walker Art Center published Design Quarterly, a remarkable magazine dedicated to covering the fields of contemporary architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, and product and graphic design. Included here are 15 hand-selected issues available for download.