“DESIGN CANNOT

CHANGE ANYTHING
BEFORE IT CHANGES “
ITSELF.

“Beyond Change” | Swiss Design Network research summit, 2018


INTRODUCTION
DESIGN CANNOT CHANGE
ANYTHING BEFORE IT
CHANGES ITSELF
“We believe that design, in its historical
discourses, its pedagogies, and its practi-
ces, must come to terms with its troubling
past and reimagine itself for the twenty-
-first century.
Design is, in our view, intrinsically
linked to the (re-)invention and (re-)
production of material culture and the
creation of the corresponding concepts,
methods, media, and tools.
Despite a growing critical discourse,
design today still struggles to acknowledge
the complex interplay of mutually reinfor-
cing social determinants and conditions, the
dynamics of power and privilege that shape
its role in everyday life.
Intersectionality is a prism for unders-
tanding how various forms of inequality
often operate together and exacerbate
each other. This interlocking of analysis
and intervention provides access for
more inclusive, situated design histories,
pedagogies, and practices that confront
their own struggles.
9
Crafting the future
Despite the broader social visibility
of womxn and LGBTQIA+ people, the
field of design is still predominantly white
and suffers from deeply entrenched
heteropatriarchal institutional structures
of education and practice, failing even
modest targets for diversity among staff
and students.
Particularly in continental Europe,
most professorships and teaching posi-
tions are still held by white cisgender
men, leaving an absence of role models
and a strong sense of a “glass ceiling” for
historically marginalized genders in the
field.
For too long, design educators have
refused to understand modernist design
as situated and thus restricted, rather
than timeless and universal.
“IN SHORT, DESIGN TODAY
STRUGGLES TO CONFRONT THIS
MODERNIST AND POSTWAR
HERITAGE, WHICH RESTS ON
COLONIALIST AND IMPERIALIST
FOUNDATIONS.” (MAREIS &
PAIM)
As a practice deeply linked to the
rise of capitalism, industrial mass-culture,
and the exploitation of both natural
resources and human labor (what Jason
W. Moore calls “capitalism in the web of
life”), design contributes to the logic of
Western modernity as both enlightening
and oppressive, both productive and