Norman Potter What is a designer
things, places, message
fourth edition
This book is addressed to students and practinioers of architecture and design. What is a designer does more than pose (or answer) a neat question. It sets forth the conditions under which designing is itself an open question, and under which design design – and artefacts – must show themselves to be socially answerable. Designers will find in this book a spirited account of their calling, and an exposition of central traditions in the modern movement. Students and teachers will find a wealth of discussion, drawn directly from the author’s experience. Now revised and republished in this fourth edition, What is a designer returns as a standard account of its subject.
Norman Potter (1932-95) was an English cabinetmaker, designer, poet, and teacher. In the Second World War, and immediately afterwards, he acquired the skills of cabinetmaking; his life long anarchist beliefs were also developed then. Through the 1950s he ran a workshop in Wiltshire, and began to work also as an ‘interior designer’ (a term he refused). In the 1960s he became a teacher, first at the Royal College of Art in London, then at the Construction School of the West of England College of Art, Bristol. After the first publication of What is a designer, he gave his energy increasingly to writing. His book Model & Construct (1990) documented and reflected on his life & work.
Hyphen Press, London
www.hyphenpress.co.uk