Toolkit for other worldings

Abstract

We design what designs us: individually, collectively and planetary. How can we reorient our design practice at times of great change and challenge like the ones we live in?

Divided into three parts, this research exploration first departs and revisits Victor Papanek’s definition of design and the evolution of his thought reflected in the changes he published in the second edition of his book “Design for the Real World”. It explores how this evolution of thought is connected to the awareness of our own subjectivity as a fundamental factor to our design making, thus to our world making.

Second, it engages decolonial theory in relation to design practice as a framework to illuminate our subconscious subjectivities and how we reproduce them in our practice, proposing border-thinking as a field for potential new openings and other practice orientations.

In the third part, it links the development and integration of this subjectivity awareness to the body-knowing and erotic knowledge epistemologies, staging somatic practices as fertile tools to approach design making otherwise.

This research project culminates in a speculative space inspired in health practices from worlds outside the modern/colonial world. Envisioned as a rehearsal of a possible future, where health services embrace the needs of the physical body as much as the needs of the psychic body and soul. A holistic approach in which our inner worlds are welcome as much as it is a practice of communing and collective health.