Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/240046

Title

Creative living, ecological design and Russel Wright's Manitoga

Author(s)

Huppatz, D. J.

Abstract

With contemporary designers increasingly focusing on environmental considerations, design historians have begun the search for precedents that might reconstruct design history in sustainable terms. An essential step in this reconstruction will be further consideration of design as an extended ecological practice or process, rather than the previously narrow focus on the production, consumption and mediation of discrete, finished artefacts. This article examines design as an ecological practice through a close analysis of American designer Russel Wright's home, studio, and woodland garden, Manitoga. Integrating architecture, interior, and landscape design into an environmental gesamtkunstwerk, Manitoga is a largely forgotten proto-ecological design project of the 1950s. However, Manitoga is more than simply a historical site, and is reconsidered here as a project that combines Wright's 'creative living' ideals and design processes, one that remains provocative over fifty years later.

Publication type

Journal article

Research centre

Swinburne University of Technology. Faculty of Design

Source

Journal of Design History, Vol. 25, no. 4 (Nov 2012), pp. 363-378

Publication year

2012

FOR Code(s)

1203 Design Practice and Management

Keyword(s)

Ecological design;  Industrial design;  Interior design;  Landscape design;  Manitoga;  Wright, Russel

Publisher

Oxford University Press

ISSN

0952-4649

Publisher URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jdh/eps032

Copyright

Copyright © The Author 2012. The accepted manuscript will be available for download 12 months after publication (November 2013) in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher.

Additional information

The author acknowledges support from a Research Grant from the United States Study Centre at the University of Sydney

Peer reviewed