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In our consumerist world, where the aesthetic and utilitarian are conflated and everything, from architecture and art to jeans and genes, is regarded as so much design, the designer rules. Rather than resist the effects of industry, the new designer delights in post-industrial technologies and is happy to sacrifice the semi-autonomy of architecture and art to the manipulations of design. In this evening's debate, Hal Foster challenges the narcissistic omnipotence of the design world, and argues for an aesthetic that breaks the consumerist logic of today's cultural practice. Foster is professor of art and archaeology at Princeton University, co-editor of October. Tonight he is in conversation with art critic and curator, Andrew Renton and Guardian columnist Jonathan Glancey.