Flight as method: A sick women exchange in material encounters, and the time it takes to care

Following Johanna Hedva’s ‘Sick Woman Theory’ (2016/2022), this co-authored, epistolary essay theorizes and practises the letter-like ‘flight’ as an affective, attentive writerly form and intimate historical encounter, which makes possible new readings – speculative, slow, suspended – of the careworn lives, works, and representations of two ‘sick women’ subjects: Liliana Amon (writer, actress, portrait sitter, 1892–1939) and Cookie Mueller (writer, actress, portrait sitter, 1949–1989). Through a series of flights exchanged – which evolve across non-linear, murmuring timelines; projections through the air, eye, mind; through time and space – we bring archival research on and with Amon and Mueller’s sickened lives, works, and materials into cross-historical correspondence, tracing scenes and relations across the medical and non-medical that are both care-less and full-of-care. This is proposed as a queer-feminist research method that draws its reparative effects from looking, waiting and writing. In correspondence with our subjects’ own living, making and writing of belatedness, our flights seek to register and revitalize the possibilities of temporally deviant care – beside mothering beside sickness beside writing. In our shared flights, we dare to look at them as the mother and not-quite mother; to wait with them and the pressure-points for thought that they pose; and to do so in the endurance, remembrance, belatedness and ongoing goodbyes of our writing-as-flight, which in turn revitalizes the complexities of our sick women subjects’ creativities and cares

The architectural casino: Conversations about colonial modernism in Haifa

After the First World War and under the British Mandate, Haifa grew from a small Ottoman port town into a regional metropolis and industrial centre around a deep seaport. The city was part of an open space that extended from Cairo to Damascus through Beirut, in a region where Syria, Palestine and Lebanon were part of the same fluid, interconnected space. During the Second World War, Haifa became a border town. Under French Vichy, the border between Lebanon and Syria ran sixty kilometres to the north and hardened only after the creation of Israel in 1948 and the wars with Lebanon. Haifa’s architectural modernism developed in relation to the city’s geopolitical environment. No building better manifests Haifa’s predicament than the modernist casino building, built in the city’s Bat Galim seafront district

Design for empowerment: Approaches and tools for strategic impact

Empowerment has long been regarded as a transformative force in design for social change. However, over time, it has been institutionalised, co-opted, and diluted by market-driven design approaches, reducing its impact and strategic potential. Design for Empowerment: Approaches and Tools for Strategic Impact revisits this concept in the context of the post-Anthropocene era, where escalating social and ecological injustices challenge conventional design practices. Edited by Laura Santamaria and Ksenija Kuzmina, this book critically examines how empowerment is understood, practiced, and evaluated in design today, making it more relevant to those who need it most. It provides a collection of essays and case studies that explore emerging theories, methodologies, and tools for Design for Empowerment, drawing on the experiences of design researchers, activists, and social practitioners working toward justice and systemic change. By foregrounding power analysis, participatory design, feminist and decolonial approaches, and climate justice, this book offers a range of strategic approaches for embedding empowerment into design-led social transformation. It aims to inspire a new generation of designers by providing both theoretical insights and practical methodologies, ensuring that empowerment becomes a deliberate and central objective rather than the incidental outcome of design practice

AI-powered consumer electronics repair towards a digital circular economy

Electronic waste is a growing global challenge, with projections indicating a significant increase from 58 million metric tons in 2021 to an alarming 112 million metric tons by 2050 (Forti et al., 2020; Parajuly et al., 2019). This surge underscores the urgent need for circularsolutions in managing the lifecycle of electronic products. Furthermore, the current economic and marketing dynamics often make replacement seem more appealing than repair (Sonego et al., 2022; Terzioğlu et al., 2015; VandenBerge et al., 2023). Addressing this challenge requires understanding the multifaceted barriers users face, which the Repair Motivation and Barriers Model categorizes into technical, emotional, and value-related aspects of repair (Terzioğlu, 2021). This research aims to tackle these barriers by introducing an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered tool called AI-Fixer that provides step-by-step repair instructions, building user confidence, and enabling self-repair practices.Within the field of Circular Economy, researchers are increasingly investigating the role of emerging digital technologies in enabling circular practices (Bressanelli et al., 2018; Sherpa & Sinha, 2021). Among these, AI holds significant promise offering capabilities such as diagnostics, predictive maintenance, and real-time repair support. This study explores the feasibility of AI-Fixer in assisting users with repairing consumer electronics. It specifically investigates whether AI can assist and empower users to repair devices

Counter-practice: Design and prefigurative politics in housing struggles beyond the imaginary of development

In this thesis, I propose a practice of spatial design and documentation which runs counter to the standard working methodologies of international development institutions. I propose this practice in response to the restrictions faced by design practitioners and social movements when it comes to evidencing claims, funding projects and sharing knowledge. I call this ‘counter- practice’. Counter-practice is proposed as a method with which to challenge the universal imaginary of development, which I argue marginalises non-scientific epistemologies, expelling the poor from direct negotiations over the production of their own futures. The thesis explores how political agency is restricted by the knowledge biases which structure development, and how spatialised approaches to the study of urban politics and struggles for a dignified life might inform alternatives to techno-centric, financialised paradigms of urban planning, which fail to recognise their own role in reproducing and reinforcing marginalities. Counter-practice is intended as a guide for design practitioners who wish to embed their work in social struggle, to expand the possibilities for equitable urban futures. It is a practice focused on forging non-extractive relationships between design and research professionals on the one hand, and social movements or people’s organisations on the other. As such, in this work I ask the following questions: What principles of architectural design should be mobilised in collaboration with the urban poor, to expand inclusive and reciprocal processes of urban production? How can the methods and aesthetics of design be mobilised in support of knowledge exchange between social movements, as a way of proliferating the knowledge practices being built around housing struggles in the Global South

Storytelling and material interferences: Practice-led research between puppetry and textiles

The thesis discusses how researching ‘weird materials’ to design puppetry performances may support textile designers in their creative journey and research process. On the one hand, textile designers are interested in emulating liveliness between the functional and the aesthetic qualities of their artefacts. Material-driven researchers investigate methods to translate the enactment of their materials’ fluid and ambiguous nature for a human audience. On the other, puppetry explores materials through their potential for ‘liveliness’ and their ability to translate the human and non-human nature of the puppet. During a performance, the puppet oscillates between being an object, a symbol, and a character. The audience resolves the uncertainty of the puppet’s ontological status by producing a narrative. The research examined the relationship between puppetry and textile design and their shared interest in the liveliness of materials. Through a series of action-research activities, the practice produced fertile ground for the development of puppet characters and engaged in a dialogue with textile designers and researchers about character design and storytelling in puppetry. The design of puppetry systems with thermochromic and bio-based materials through textile processes generated a series of stop-motion animations, short video recordings, still images, and textile artifacts that reflect the evolution of the practice. Ultimately, the research will provide textile designers with new tools for translating the ‘weird’ life of their materials into their creative practice and research

RECOMPOSE: An invitation to explore the pedagogical environment as a regenerative front-line

Fashion education urgently requires a radical overhaul to challenge the socially, economically and environmentally extractive paradigm of which Fashion is a constituent part. A regenerative Fashion ecosystem cannot be envisioned without challenging the existing cultural and economic narratives necessary to transform the discipline. A regenerative approach to developmental learning is therefore relevant in terms of the personal journey, professionalism of students and the evolution of their personal agency, their capacity to externally consider others (people and situations), from an ethics of empathy and care (Mountz et al. 2015). Challenging the dominant perspective of educator as knowledge provider and motivated to unearth how students might reimagine Fashion as a field of knowledge by creating spaces for student-led agency in the context of regeneration we developed Recompose: ‘from the city to the farm back to the city’, an experimental workshop series at the MA Fashion at the Royal College of Art. This shifted the focus from viewing the design education context merely as a site for 'designing things' to recognising the design learning environment as a critical factor when exploring ecologically centred educational practices. The workshops engaged students in a series of activities that aimed to ground the regeneration in sites of situated knowledge, through their own understanding of locality and through a visit to a regenerative hemp farm. A focus of the facilitation was in encouraging a learning environment that supported open discussion, reflection, and student-driven inquiry through experiential approaches. During Recompose we aimed to start a reformation of the cultural understanding of fashion with the students, as an entry point to reconstructing the system around it. This paper problematises prevailing fibre narratives in circular fashion design, asking, what happens when regenerative materials encounter unsustainable, non-regenerative systems? How does a direct engagement with an environment inform an understanding of the systemic conditions of fashion creation? As part of the learning experience, we travelled to Margent Farm in Cambridgeshire with seven Architecture students. Here we learned about the affordances of limitations and the approach taken by Paloma Gormley (Material Cultures) in designing the site using hemp grown at the farm. We posed questions to the students about the value of regeneration in their practice, the importance of local production, and the generosity of the land. How can these practices give more than what they take? The Recompose workshop was a valuable experiment in recontextualising regeneration for fashion education. What emerged was a reframing of the social environment of learning in a regenerative pedagogical context: what can that situated learning environment afford? What could it mean to be regenerative with each other and with the land

An uncommon thread

‘An Uncommon Thread’ features 10 contemporary artists living and working in the UK. The group exhibition highlights the transformative power of unconventional mediums in evoking personal and collective memories. Each artist demonstrates an unwavering commitment to the integral role materials and techniques play in their creative process; employing unexpected painting surfaces, adapting formal craft traditions and repurposing discarded products into compelling works. Through individual investigations of identity, tradition, nature, fantasy and the environment, the artists invite viewers to engage with the rich stories woven into each work. Tai Shani weaves a cosmic realm in a new installation that continues to reimagine female otherness as a perfect totality. Shani’s cacophony of color, pattern and organic form immerse the viewer in an act of world-building in which feminism, the sublime and mythology merge