The Tyranny of Norms: 1960s Radical Design & the Challenge to Scandinavian Modernism

Alison Clarke, Professor of Design Anthropology at the University of Applied Arts - Vienna, will give an open lecture on the subject of the radical design of the 60's and the challenge to Scandinavian modernism. 

Over the last decade the homogenising normativity of so called Scandinavian Modernism has provoked an ever-burgeoning critical discourse challenging the prevalence of the so-called “myth of Scandinavian Modernism”. 

Some historians have gone so far as to claim that Scandinavian design is little more than a carefully curated brand promulgating the notion of a normative aesthetic forged through the political idea of a ‘collective Scandinavia’. However, this ‘tyranny of norms’, as early radical 1960s pan-Scandinavian radical designers described the strictures of moderism, has a longer and more complex history that will be explored in this lecture.

Alison Clarke has been studying aspects of norms and challenges in design in different eras and will give this lecture in connection with the PhD-course Norms, Values and Biases in Design at the Royal Danish Academy.