DESIGN IN THE AGE OF TERROR:
DEFINING A NEW RESEARCH AGENDA

Terrorism has been defined as “...premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents … to influence an audience” (Wulf et al, 2003). While there is evidence of this phenomenon from the earliest recorded history, the philosophy and methods of modern terrorism can be traced back to the 19th century and since the 1960s it has increased in prevalence. September 11th represents a turning point in terrorism, in terms of the scale and ambitions of its perpetrators, the globalisation of their campaigns, their effective use of media, the radical foreign and domestic policy responses of governments - notably the Bush-Blair ‘war on terror’ - and increasing public fear of terrorism. Artists, authors, journalists and governments recurrently use the term “The Age of Terror”, to describe life in the early twenty first century (eg Talbott and Chander, 2002).

The fundamental question this poses is: what becomes of design in the age of terror? To what extent do designers have a responsibility to respond to its challenges? What are the philosophical issues that this raises? Are there positive strategies that are appropriate in a period characterised by pessimism, cynicism and fear? What are the central research issues for design? The authors draw upon their experience of developing design policies and methods for government departments and the corporate sector, in particular their recent work on establishing the Design Against Crime initiative for the UK government, together with their role on national research bodies that are focussing on counter-terrorism, in addressing these questions.

The authors note the curious silence from academic researchers in respect of arguably the most significant threat to civilian security since the second world war. Aside from research of a ‘functionalist’ nature that focuses on security and crisis management, McCall (2005) observes that “There … seems to be a silence in the academic sources, with the exception of articles dealing with public authority responses (eg Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management) and the recent publication edited by Suder (2004)”. For example, while the 2005 EURAM track on design in the 21st century explicitly invited papers on design and terrorism, none were forthcoming.

The paper proposes a framework for research that adapts the authors’ cyclical model of design and crime (Davey, Cooper, Wootton and Press, 2005) to the specific conditions of terrorism. It is emphasised that this is not simply reducing terrorism to a ‘crime problem’, which is the favoured approach of most western governments, as this would signally fail to appreciate the complexities and distinctiveness of acts of ‘terror’. Rather we use a lifecycle framework to tease out design issues and associated research questions. The authors conclude by presenting concrete proposals to advance the research agenda that they propose.