Beyond Materiality in Contemporary Product Design

The post-modern era engendered two revolutions that transformed the attitude to product design: the new economic values of late Capitalism which brought about a rise in the prominence of the symbolic value of the product on the expense of its functional value; and the digital revolution, which rendered the product a virtual object whose core essence is information (code or algorithm). These two trends drained the product of its material substance.

The paper will elaborate on the changes in product design from the modern to the post-modern era, emphasizing the economic and technological processes that paved the way to the change in our consciousness and created a new habitus in which the post-modern product design is developed.