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Since launching Support/Structure, the design column at Tussle, in January of this year, we have fielded a range of topics in the design world, but have left many untouched. Spring Design Week came and went, and, because of everything going on, we could not cover the many phenomenal shows that merited attention. It takes time to build the foundation for good criticism to emerge, developing a team of trusted writers willing to take on a critical approach to reviews, designs, and other topics that are relevant to the design community at large.

 

Originally, my goal was to find those writers, topics, and stories, and to publish at least one article per month. Simon Johns wrote about Kate Swanson’s curatorial project, The Thinning Veil, at Nurture by Nature in Burlington (link); Kun Sok reviewed Chris Rucker at LOT-EK (link); Lauren Goodman explored the prevalence of lighting during Design Week (link), while I took on the SOM x Rarify collaboration (link); Susan Bowman reviewed art historian Nozomi Naoi's illustrated study of Japanese department stores, The Land of Happiness (link). As a designer running my own practice, even with life’s many twists and turns, Support/Structure came close to achieving my nascent goals as a new editor. To continue to grow the platform, however, not only in scope, but to support its community, goals and purpose, it makes sense to invite someone else in to help me as co-editor.

 

I am very excited to introduce Ian Cofre, who brings decades of experience in the arts as a curator, writer, and critic, to serve as my co-editor and to help support our submissions process. We have had the pleasure of working together for the past ten years at Critical Practices Inc, a nonprofit think tank for critical ventures where we have produced events, publications, virtual exhibitions, and roundtable discussions on a wide range of topics. Along with Ian, we will broaden our abilities and scope of coverage at Support/Structure by sourcing, among many other topics, more writing about architecture, interdisciplinary practices, and the cultural impact of design practices.

 

There has been much conversation recently about the need for real and honest criticism in the design world, and there are a number of great writers producing it. We are aware that in the realm of cultural production, design is a commercial industry and that many of its practitioners depend on their continued viability in the market. Many small designers supplement their studio practices with part-time jobs, either working for larger companies or in a different industry altogether. Is there a conflict of interest here: can one write critically about the state of an industry and sustain their livelihood within it? We believe they can, and that there is a positive impact to their credibility by sharing their expertise with our audience and the broader design world.

 

With that, we would like to restate our core mission with a new call for pitches and submissions:

 

The most compelling design work is often shaped by decisions that remain invisible, or at least appear seamless. Just as we encounter a painting as its final image rather than the underpainting, revisions, and accumulation of marks beneath the surface, design carries within it a history of choices. Material considerations, structural logic, labor, constraint, engineering, risk, ethics, and intention all shape what we ultimately experience. A chair is never only a chair. A surface is never only a surface. The objects we live with communicate values long before we articulate them.

 

Tussle magazine’s design column Support/Structure engages design through a wide lens: formally, politically, technologically, historically, culturally, and philosophically. It inquires how design intersects with systems of power, including housing, access, labor, climate, the politics of taste, production versus craft, and the role aesthetics play within the increasingly porous boundary between design and art. Design is not separate from society and culture. It is a structure within them, and an extension of them. Design shapes our environments, our bodies, and our expectations of what life should, or could, look and feel like. Because of this, design deserves criticism that is as layered, rigorous, and as expansive as the field itself.

 

If you are a designer, architect, artist, maker, curator, or thinker working in and around design: Send what you are making. Send work you want seen. Send work that takes risks, that resists neat categorization. Send work that deserves to be engaged with seriously, that asks questions of itself and of us, and that rewards critical attention.

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Email: hello@hbigeleisen.com

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Editor’s note

When Support/Structure first started, I asked many of my design peers if they would be comfortable writing critically about our industry. I offered to accept anonymous submissions to help ease the tension between writing and their businesses. Although no one requested it at the time, I recently received a submission where I felt, editorially, it was important to provide this. My goal with this op-ed is to be able to provide a platform to the conversations many of us are having privately, but have not seen anywhere in the press. To critique the larger systems of power and capital that we exist within and depend on for business is as vital to our community as finding our way within it. Anonymity is a powerful tool, and I hope that by using it here, it will clear a path to ignite a necessary conversation.