Regels ter ontregeling: Lessen uit de geschiedenis van het tegendraads ontwerp

This project is about research into the history of unruly design, which aims at finding theoretical background for the design of everyday things in a postmodern society. At the end of the 20th century, the focus of product design has shifted from primarily offering functionality, towards experience and emotion driven product characteristics. Within this development, the usability, or utility factor of products becomes less important, in favour of their significance, or the meaning they represent. All together it has become clear that the central idea of the functionalists, the 'Form Follows Function' cannot play its central role in the development of aesthetics anymore. Therefore unruly design is defined in this research as: all objects that are designed with the intention to undermine the existing designparadigm of the functionalists. The research presents a frame of reference, a research approach, and findings in the form of the first five design practices that have been identified as a set of 'rules of unruly design'. The conclusion in this research has two sides; a cynical one and a positive one. The cynical conclusion can be that the postmodernist experiment in itself has failed; although the central idea was "anyting goes (as long as it is not modernist)" it showed that postmodern design largely followed shared paths. In the end, unruly design followed its' own rules. The positive conclusion however is that the identification of the five rules of unruly design can support designers to understand the implementation of meaning into demand driven design practice, and therefore extends the possibilities for making meaningful objects. These five rules of practice can be considered a toolkit for the contemporary designer to make meaningful objects.