The eminent US sociologist Richard Sennett talked about what designers could learn from musicians in the 2011 Premsela Lecture, "Out of Touch", on 26 June at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ in Amsterdam. A PDF of the lecture is available for download.
Premsela Lecture: Richard Sennett
Richard Sennett delivers the 2011 Premsela Lecture. Photo: Lizzy Kalisvaart.
In Out of Touch, Sennett argues for feeling and emotion. He observes that in our "user-friendly", increasingly digitised world we no longer feel products – we are literally out of touch. And he explains the surprising lessons we can learn from wild cellists.
Richard Sennett
In his 2008 book The Craftsman, Sennett examines the issue of making things well and argues that the craft tradition offers alternative, still-viable ways of thinking about tools, materials and work. His other books relevant to thinking about design and objects include The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities, on how the need for shelter and the fear of the strange have shaped urban architecture, technology and art; Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization; and The Fall of Public Man.
Sennett received the 2010 Spinozalens prize in The Hague. The jury praised his “ability to translate contemporary themes like individualisation, lack of orientation and lack of power of modern man into accessible, guiding books,” which “bridge the gap between scholarly thinking and actual applicability.”
Sennett teaches at New York University and at the London School of Economics. More information is available on his website.
The Premsela Lectures
Each year, Premsela invites a speaker to address current developments in the design field. With the Premsela Lectures, we seek to make an outstanding and valuable contribution to the design discourse. Past speakers were Michael Rock, Werner Sewing, Ann Meskens, Józeph Mrozek, Henk Oosterling and Nancy Etcoff.