Inside, outside and in between – across design geographies and beyond disciplinary boundaries (2.2)

This panel explores diverse critical design practices that try to challenge the dominant, functionalist, problem-solving design paradigm (decolonising design, 2018). It aims to highlight practices and positions operating inside, outside and in between design educational institutions. These design geographies offer a small overview of possible interventions and approaches. 

This panel focuses on transdisciplinary methods of knowledge mediation in the design educational, research and practice-based projects. In particular, it discusses the role of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) as a critical lens in design production. It investigates how it enables the creation of what cultural anthropologist Arturo Escobar calls “a world where many worlds fit”. (2018, p.xvi)

The presented – critical design practice – case studies will draw on a panorama of diverse approaches and methods of knowledge co-sharing and co-creation rooted in feminist and decolonial pedagogies. They do not aim to generate a theory or a rigid tool-kit; instead, they investigate the situated nature of knowledge (Donna Haraway, 1988) drawing on the local environment, milieu and the social location of their practitioners. 

Panellists
Maya Ober, FHNW Academy of Art and Design (chair) 
Mayar El-Bakry, FHNW Academy of Art and Design
Griselda Flesler, FADU University of Buenos Aires
Laura Pregger, FHNW Academy of Art and Design

Paneldauer: 120 Minuten
Language: English
Thematic Field: Methods of knowledge sharing