Volume VI, 2019
Editor’s Letter
Behin Forghanifar

These essays reflect the interdisciplinary nature of design studies and represent how the practice of design can give rise to larger conversations.

The City Designed for Crime: An Analysis of Gameplay in Grand Theft Auto IV
Cindy Hernandez

Depictions of New York City in media often capture the nature of a city transformed by immigration, and with it comes a particular fascination...

The Vacant Store Initiative: A Model for Alternative Retail Space
Irem C. Yildiz

The Vacant Store Initiative is an investigation of a complicated urban problem. The project developed as a form of design activism...

Coping with Culture Shock through Handicrafts: The Persian Rug in the Ex-Patriate American Home
Behin Forghanifar

Iranians make up a significant part of the population among many other immigrants to the United States...

Populism, Design, and Ideology
Oliver Arellano and Ever Osorio

In the last two decades, studies around design as a practice have flourished, along with the re-launching of several museums and cultural spaces...

Eyes in Orbit: The Visual Rhetoric of For-Profit Domestic Spying
Jacqueline Wu

In a field where public good and private profit exist side-by-side—where national security and business interests have the potential to contribute...

On Chopsticks and the Personal Politics of Design
Qionglu Lei

On November 21, 2018, Italian fashion brand Dolce & Gabbana was forced to cancel their “Great Show”...

Exhibition Review: Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948-1980
Elizabeth Koehn

Today’s stories of the Cold War, invoked as they are by politicians or television writers, are so often tales of an epic dualities...