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Read chapter 12 of The Culture of Design (3rd edition) 'Studying Design Culture'
Design Culture has emerged as a new academic discipline in recent years. This chapter proposes issues that the student should take into account when developing their work in this discipline. It argues that design cultures are varied in their scale, intensity and dynamics among other things. It also states that design cultures are never stable but subject to change in themselves and, always contributing to their own overall change. They are sometimes 'reflexive' in that they self-consciously communicate their own working.
1. Defining a design culture
If design culture is concerned with the interractions between production, consumption and the work of design then how can this be identified? Do you think it is possible, for example, to identify something as focused as a home as a design culture? What other scales can this happen in? Use examples to illustrate how this may be so.
2. Design and mediation
Should 'mediation' be identified as a separate process in design culture? Conversely, if it is embedded into processes of production, consumption and the work of design, where does this happen, specifically? Discuss some examples of how mediation takes place in design culture. | 
