The first book to be published on the work of their partnership (in 2001), Design Noir is the essential primary source for understanding the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings for Dunne & Raby's work. Consisting of three elements - a 'manifesto' on the possibilities of designing with and for the 'secret life' of electronic objects; notes for an embryonic network of critical designers and, most famously, the presentation of the Placebo Project – a prototype for a critical design poetics enacted around electronic furniture-objects – Design Noir offers an in-depth exploration of one of the most seminal design projects of the last two decades, one that arguably initiated speculating through design in its contemporary forms. By detailing the logic and character of the objects that were constructed; the involvement of users with these objects over-time, and in the creation of a new kinds of spatially and temporally distributed moments of critique and engagement with things, Design Noir presents the case-study of the Placebo projectas a far more complex and subtler project than is often thought. As a bold and in many ways unprecedented experiment in design writing and book designing, Design Noir is itself an instance of the speculative propositional design it expounds.

本書は単なるデザイン記録ではなく、電子製品の「密やかな生」を暴く挑発的なマニフェストだ。著者らは機能性の呪縛からデザインを解放し、目に見えない電磁波の空間を詩的な叙事詩へと変貌させる。日常の闇を思索的美学へ昇華させた鋭い洞察は、読者の価値観を根底から揺さぶるだろう。 特に「プレセボ・プロジェクト」が提示する人間と物の交流は、前衛文学のような深みを湛えている。不安を映す鏡としての家具は、魂と技術の新たな対話を紡ぎ出す。本書は未来を予測するのではなく「問い」を突きつける、情熱的な思考の実験場であり、それ自体がひとつの鮮烈な表現なのだ。