I prefer not to: Anti-progressive designing

© 2019 selection and editorial matter, Gretchen Coombs, Andrew McNamara, Gavin Sade; individual chapters, the contributors. Though designing is cast as a creative practice, materializing preferable ways of being, it does so only by destroying current products, habits and values. I argue that designers must learn to acknowledge and take responsibility for this destructive side to their practice. Designers can cultivate their destructive capacities and deploy those against all that is unsustainable about current societies. However, to do so also entails challenging prevalent notions that what is preferable is progress, advancement beyond how things were done before. Instead, I argue that the most creatively destructive thing designers can do is work to restore previous, more sustainable ways of living and workin

Art vs Design: Saving Power vs Enframing, or A Thing of the Past vs World-Making

a debate with the co-author Cameron Tonkinwise of Carnegie Mellon University, USA, as to the ontological acumen of art versus design

People-Oriented Perspectives on Designing The Future Energy Market

A report on workshops conducted to explore how Human-Centred Design approaches could help plan the transition to more sustainable Distributed Energy System

The potential of painting: unlocking Disenfranchised Grief for people living with dementia

As part of the “Creative Well” programme at Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHN) North Wales, artist/researchers Megan Wyatt and Susan Liggett qualitatively investigated how painting can access a means of communication for people living with Dementia. In a workshop setting within a gallery environment at Ruthin Crafts Centre, participants living with dementia were facilitated on a one to one basis the opportunity to paint alongside the artist/researchers. The participants were from a wellestablished art group called “Lost in Art” that is managed by Denbighshire Arts Service. During the workshops, a number of experiences were articulated. These included experiences of illness, crisis and loss. They were captured through observations, interviews, visual art and video to contribute to new understandings and models of engagement through art for people living with dementia and their carers. Focusing on theory and practice in arts based research and the social sciences, this paper investigates the potential of painting to unlock experiences such as disenfranchised grief for people living with dementia. The conclusions do not measure how and if participants felt disenfranchised grief but rather provide an alternative to augment the body of knowledge surrounding how people living with dementia can communicate feelings of disenfranchised grief through painting. Objective: In this presentation I aim to outline the main findings from the above paper that is to be published in an academic journal later in the year on Illness Crisis and Loss published by Sage

Cooling Common Spaces in Densifying Urban Environments

The research promotes a new approach to thinking about urban liveability in warming cities by identifying cooling patterns for outdoor common spaces

Pursuing resilience in architectural design through international experimental projects: exploring new boundaries in the design studio pedagogy.

In response to the current global crisis, there is a growing demand for responsible behaviour in designing and building that can accommodate user needs through the design process. This chapter describes an innovative approach to the design process aiming to generate a model adopted by an international collaboration who are reconsidering the traditional design process and addressing a new paradigm of the thinking process. The project is experimental in nature and discusses the educational frameworks in architecture. It optimises a model, which demonstrates breakthroughs and trend-setting educational approaches and is potentially transferable to a range of other professions. The chapter argues that the educational ethos of ‘ethic of resilience’ should be pursued by pushing the boundaries of the conventional Design Studio towards the formation of adaptive system settings. All the participants at the various stages of the innovative educational framework, named Build Our Nation (BON) and its first application Taifa Letu Tujenge (TLT), have already demonstrated, on one hand to be able to learn from the experience achieved from various stages undertaken in the past, and, on the contrary, to be flexible enough to proceed with changes reflecting on the external conditions. The vision is that the Higher Educational Institutions and, especially, universities must become more co-productive actors in society. It can be useful to think of a university as a manufacturer; and subsequently, a manufacturing company as an advanced workshop; a workshop as a real-world project; therefore, a real-world project connoted back to the meaning of university. This vicious cycle of pedagogy embedded in learning and teaching should be central to any higher education focusing on design and research aiming to inform each other through the values of social capital

The IoT and Unpacking the Heffalump’s Trunk

In this paper we highlight design challenges that the Internet of Things (IoT) poses in relation to two of the guiding design paradigms of our time; Privacy by Design (PbD) and Human Centered Design (HCD). The terms IoT, PbD, and HCD are both suitcase terms, meaning that they have a variety of meanings packed within them. Depending on how the practices behind the terms are applied, notwithstanding their well-considered foundations, intentions, and theory, we explore how PbD and HCD can, if not considered carefully, become Heffalump traps and hence act in opposition to the very challenges they seek to address. In response to this assertion we introduce Object Oriented Ontology (OOO) and experiment with its theoretical framing order to articulate possible strategies for mitigating these challenges when designing for the Internet of Things

Environment: Contributions of Design and Education to the Sustainment of Planet Earth

Any book that aims to deal with issues of sustainable futures will necessarily have a significant focus on environmental sustainability. Historically, concerns over sustainable futures were predominantly focused on the environment, with references going back as far as, for example, the 7th century when legislation was introduced to protect birds in the Farne Islands off the north east coast of England. More recently there has been recognition that sustainable futures depend on complex sets of relationships