Don't panic

The article Don’t panic is divided in two parts: the first one takes us through the most significant projects by the design studio Dunne & Raby, formed by the English duo Tony Dunne and Fiona Raby and based in London. Works such as Placebo, Is This your Future? or Consuming monsters introduce us to the general story line, and seduce the reader with proposals, ideas and concepts related to critical design, a term coined for the first time by Anthony Dunne in his book Hertzian tales – Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experience and Critical Design (1999). The second part of the article concentrates on the definition of critical design and presents its instigators with dilemmas as simple as: what is the function of critical design?, what questions us?, why is the approach always a negative, obscure and psychological one?, what is its future?, and finally the most worrying of all, why does critical design never have a happy ending?