Papanek in Yugoslavia

Victor Papanek’s book ‘Design for the Real World’ attracted a lot of attention in Yugoslavia. It was translated into Croatian in 1973, just two years after its original US publication in English.
During the 1970s and 80s, Papanek himself visited Yugoslavia several times and gave lectures in Zagreb, Ljubljana, Belgrade, and Split. Those guest appearances attracted the attention of the media and the public, with his ideas becoming an enduring point of reference within the country’s relatively sparse critical discussions and design theory debates at the time.
While Papanek’s discourse on the ethical priorities of the design profession found fertile ground among Yugoslav designers and theoreticians, he was also criticized for not taking into account the relations between capital, productive forces, exploitation, and power, essentially avoiding the questions of what lies behind the conditions of material misery and global injustice.