Victor Margolin

Victor Margolin (1941–2019) was an American design historian, researcher and educator. He was a Professor of design history at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where he taught from 1982 until 2006. Margolin published widely and was the founding editor and co-editor of the academic design journal, Design Issues. A major work was his comprehensive World History of Design.

Early life and career Victor Margolin was born in 1941 in New York City and at a young age the family moved to Washington, D.C., where he grew up. where he graduated in 1963. While a student, he contributed to Mad magazine and edited the university humor magazine, the Columbia Jester. In 1992 he initiated a debate on the interaction between design history and design research when he argued in the journal Design Studies for the incorporation of design history within design research. This led to a special issue of Design Issues in 1995, debating the role and nature of design history. He also explored and promoted socially responsible design, for example drawing on the literature of social work in an article written with his wife, Sylvia Margolin (a social worker), proposing a 'social model' of design practice, in contradistinction to the dominant 'market model'.

In the 2000s Margolin began work on a magnum opus, a comprehensive three-volume World History of Design with an international and multi-cultural perspective. The first two volumes were published in 2015, with the third volume remaining uncompleted. In 2002 he published a catalogue of the museum, Culture is Everywhere, in collaboration with the photographer Patty Carroll. The museum now resides in the permanent collection of the Wolfsonian in Miami Beach, Florida.

Margolin was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the organizers of the LearnXDesign conference in Chicago in 2015, for his 'exemplary contributions to design history, research, education and practice' and a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Design Research Society in 2016.

Victor Margolin died on November 27, 2019, in Washington, D.C., due to complications from a spinal cord injury and dementia.

Publications

As author

As editor