Since the late 19th century and throughout much of the 20th, designers have celebrated the socially uplifting promise of industrial production, believing the true path to modernity lay in standardization. A designer’s job was to conceive a model that could be converted into a working prototype—a blueprint for a series of objects, each identical and manufactured according to exacting rules.

Objects are not still. And yet design is often considered in terms of static aesthetic and functional qualities, without much consideration of trajectory in time or relationships with people.