Design’s ties to industrialization and progress has made possible increased material well-being for many humans while simultaneously contributing to waste, environmental degradation, and decreased biodiversity.
Design after Progress: Reimagining Design Histories and Futures is a research environment that seeks to carefully untie design’s entanglement with progress and to craft concrete imaginaries of a more socio-ecologically just design after progress. The research environment consists of researchers from four different Swedish design departments.
The aim of the research environment is to explore how to:
- learn to become better haunted in design by attending to the ecologies of damage left behind by progress and industrialisation.
- develop and articulate skills, competencies, capabilities, and concepts necessary for designing after progress.
The research environment works in a participatory and democratic way in three different experimental rehearsal studios with the purpose of influencing future designers:
- Present-ing Alternative Design Histories by historicising participation and design.
- Prefiguring Design Practices after Progress with design experiments.
- Unlearning Pedagogies for Design after Progress with opportunities for international designers and design researchers to learn to make the world differently.
Project team:
Åsa Ståhl, Project leader, Department of Design, Linnaeus University
Kristina Lindström, School of Arts and Communicaiton, Malmö University
Li Jönsson, School of Arts and Communicaiton, Malmö University
Thomas Laurien, HDK-Valand, Gothenburg University
Maria Göransdotter, Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University