In the East End of London the 2005 annual Design History Society Conference asks, if we locate design, as both object and as process, in material and imagined place, we might find it productive to consider, not so much what is design? as where is design?locating design is thus concerned with a consideration of design in/and place. It is also seeks to maintain an interdisciplinary approach to thinking about design and its place in cultural history. For, design and place are both material and imagined and both design and place are co-constitutive.

The East End of London is instructive of these ideas, demonstrating the immense investment of design /material culture in the construction of place. Here in the East End , the vestigial material culture of 17th century immigrant Huguenots and 19th century East European Jews, and a forgotten furniture and rag industry continue to haunt East London through the sites and sounds of current day Bengali ‘Banglatown’, fused uneasily with recently relocated design studios and the vogueish strut of Hoxton/Shoreditch style.

This East End site suggests that the confluence of ‘design’ and ‘place’ across local and global networks is as historically resonant as it is significant today.

The conference will address design as contingent upon place and will examine the networks and linkages between design in/and place as a complex that is affiliative and layered. This lends further meaning to the ‘social life of things’ as formulated by Arjun Appadurai. By design locating design shall consider both object and process. In this context, place does not only mean ‘landscape’: it suggests that place in (post-colonial) global societies – or rather a global sense of place - is a complex interaction of the body, language/discourse, history and environment.