This book explores a generation of design students and professionals in Finland in the 1960s and 1970s as they became aware of the two contradictory faces of design: one that is complicit in overproduction, overconsumption and social inequality, and the other capable of examining, addressing and perhaps even solving these issues. This awareness prompted an ambition to develop design education and design practices shaped by environmental concerns, feelings of social responsibility and politically leftist motivations.

Based on extensive archival research, this dissertation fills a gap in the history of Finnish design, while providing a geographically, politically and culturally specific account of the wave of social and environmental responsibility that swept over the global design field during the 1960s and 1970s. It argues that, at present time, there is an equally urgent need to see design as a profession able to reconsider and realign its goals and values.

Kaisu Savola is a design historian and curator. She received her M.A. from the Royal College of Art in London, and her D.A. from Aalto University. She is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher at Aalto, at the Department of Design, exploring the values and practices of design as a discursive tool for envisioning technological futures. Her curatorial work includes the Finnish pavilion at the XXII Triennale di Milano in 2019 and the ‘Design for Every Body’ exhibition at the Helsinki Design Museum in 2022.