Papanek, Victor

Victor J. Papanek (1923-1998) was an Austrian-born designer, teacher and author. In 1939, as a teenager, he emigrated to the United States after the annexation of his home country by Nazi Germany - Anschluss. Ten years later, he studied in Taliesin West, Arizona, in a vernacular architecture laboratory designed and directed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Victor Papanek then met Richard Buckminster Fuller, a major figure whom he considered his mentor for many years and to whom he entrusted the preface to the first edition of his eponymous book, Design for the Read World: Human Ecology and Social Change (1971). Shortly after Bucky Fuller's death, Victor Papanek reissued his book, carefully (insidiously?) deleting all references to his late mentor, because from then on, in his eyes, design for real needs could no longer be solved by the technocratic vision alone.