How will the shifts from ownership to access, but also from productive to reproductive work affect society at large and design in particular? How will these shifts redefine the notion of the individual, community and society, and their respective relations?

What is the role of the designer in drawing together matters of concerns, rather than mere matters of facts, and help articulating individual interests in such a way as to constitute common interests? What would it mean for designers to embrace differences, even conflict, as inherent to the political project that is design?

Environmentalist Michael Lockhart identifies four damaging forms of economic growth: “ jobless growth, where the economy grows, but employment doesn’t; ruthless growth, where economic growth benefits the rich; rootless growth, where economic growth starves people’s cultural roots; and futureless growth, where the present generation squanders... See more

Transition Design argues that it is necessary to develop visions of the future and interventions in the present that are grounded in integrated and contextualized knowledge. For this reason future visions are developed, and wicked problems addressed, in the context of everyday life, the level at which society reproduces itself from one day to the... See more

In what ways does design contribute to encourage or discourage practices of commoning?

How the Past can Inform the Future: Commoning & Mutual Aid

The term ‘the commons’ has been increasingly used to refer not just to “things” or “assets” (as Silke Helfrich puts its) but more broadly to the “social practices of commoning, acting together, based on principles of sharing, stewarding and producing in common” .