Mobility History from a Design Historian's Perspective: The T2M Conference, 2007

Review of T²M conference, held in Helmond, the Netherlands, in 2007. The author is a design historian who also attended Dutch Design Week, coincidently held in neighbouring Eindhoven, and here addresses the conference's main theme - "Heritage and Design" - from the perspective of design, rather than engineering, history. The manner in which the key questions were addressed was consistent with many of the ideas and assumptions of design history. "Designing Time and Space" and "Designing Identity" were particularly interesting design-focused sessions. It is clear that design history has much to learn from the high levels of multi- and interdisciplinarity that are being pursued within the more specialist and in-depth field of mobility history, and equally clear that mobility history could, in turn, benefit from the breadth and the comparative approach adopted by design historians. (Quotes from original text)