Abstract
Design emerged as a profession through industrialisation requiring the separation of design from manufacturing to enable mass-production. Design also became necessary for growing and diversifying markets by broadening tastes and fostering demands for ever-changing styles and features. Through this, design became instrumental to maximising market share and profit. In their totality, these growth goals cannot be pursued without exploiting people and other living beings, ruining ecosystems, destroying the livelihoods of future generations, and fueling destructive conflicts. For overcoming or at least mitigating the resulting multiple crises professional practices need to orientate towards a social-ecological transformation. Also, design practices have to operate with redefined goals and values, aiming at maintaining livelihoods and fostering a good life for all. Following Brand and Wissen “a great transformation towards sustainable societies will only be successful if … informed by a critical understanding of social relations of power and domination which, firstly, cause the social-ecological crisis, secondly, veil the causes of the crisis and, thirdly, are inherently contradictory so that they always provide cause for contestation.” How to deal with the frictions and conflicts when trying to orientate design practices towards this direction? How to make a living by such practices, even though within the dominant economic regime designers are still paid primarily as a competitive instrument for growth? I discuss (possible) economies enabling design practices fostering solidary and sustainable ways of living and producing. One focus is on unconventional partnerships and support structures that are enabling designers’ livelihoods while fully engaging in transformative work.
Presenters
Kris KroisAssociate Professor, Faculty of Design and Art, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
2021 Special Focus: Towards a (Design) New Deal
KEYWORDS
Social-ecological Transformation, Eco-Social Design, Transformation Design, Transformative Economies, Solidary Postgrowth
