We are, each one of us, all over the world, attempting to understand how we might instigate positive change in our distinct and unique local communities and design disciplines. We take what we know from our sense of place and our experiences, to share and solve problems. We see the essential connection of the personal, that affects the local community, that informs the discipline of design and, therefore, the global community. The eight original papers and two doctoral reports within this issue, are intrinsically connected to the personal, how to connect to ‘the other’; how to navigate the complex relationship of relationships that are pivotal to systemic change.
The first of our new papers examine how we might use the platform of design briefs to more completely understand the needs that must be met. ‘The Design Brief as a Pivotal Tool: A Study of Centro Brasil Design’s Practices to Promote Design’ by Renato Antonio Bertão, Ana Leocadia de Souza Brum, and Jaewoo Joo focuses on what constitutes a successful design brief and key considerations when embarking on a project to provide the best outcome. The Centro Brasil Design group has organized the Design Export system, created to provide a dynamic and holistic approach when considering essential aspects of business and thereby providing a nuanced design process. This research can be seen as a call for an essential update to design briefs, in general, to target the distinctive needs of a project.
Nynke Tromp and Stéphane Vial offer a developing yet comprehensive framework of the burgeoning design focus known as Social Design. The paper ‘Five Components of Social Design: A Unified Framework to Support Research and Practice’ provides an insightful tool to discuss what designers may be trying to accomplish when engaging in Social Design. Design disciplines and, therefore, an increasing number of design education institutions are moving towards creating products, services, and systems which aim to serve the greater good, given persistent inequalities that will only be made worse by the impending effects of climate change. The focus and delineation on and of Social Design, therefore, is prescient to continued progress.
The paper ‘Using Normative Inquiry and Co-Design to Embed Inclusive Design in Social Design Education’ by Abdusselam Selami Cifter, Hua Dong, Sharon Cook, and Aylin Ayna highlights several areas needed to bring robust outcomes in the multifaceted process of design education. Within the parameters of curriculum revision and testing, the authors share their observations of the importance of co-design, promoting a greater sense of interdisciplinarity rather than multidisciplinarity thought. Included in these observations is a pragmatic process that champions the sense of inclusivity and self-efficacy, which might be considered the bedrock of social design.
In this very personal and self-reflective narrative, Gizem Öz and Sebnem Timur ask us to consciously address how we interact and gather information when researching. ‘Issues of Power and Representation in/of the Local Context: The role of self-reflexivity and positionality in design research’ offers a discursive approach to actively understanding and recognizing how judgement can sway essential conclusions, as well as encouraging the withholding of judgement when observationally researching. The authors use the experience of an immersive study focused on cultural anthropology as a repository for design research. As the authors point out, field research is inherently multi-faceted with a level of influence that can happen when the researcher is present based on cultural norms or differences.
In a similar focus on cultural and community identity within designed outcomes, 'From Making-to Innovation-Based Crafts: A Comparative Study on the UK and China’ by Cees J.P.M. de Bont and Shiyao Ding examine innovative craft through the lens of two ancient cultures that have rich social traditions. Craft is inherently tied to a sense of place and the community that developed the culture of representation. Craft, as the antecedent to design, is grounded in a making or a hands-on tradition and often is relied upon to define heritage within communities. The authors seek to find the framework for longevity in an over-populated and homogenous global market. Why and how is craft still relevant in a world so overcome by product devoid of nationality or culture?
The creative-based research entitled 'Amplituhedron: A Bio-melanin Fibre Synthesized from Soil Bacteria for the Design of Innovative Sustainable Garments’ by Khajornsak Nakpan and Supavee Sirinkraporn suggests a pathway to emphasizing designed product as a tool to connect textile and clothing product, with the place and people, that it comes from and represents. Interestingly the project suggests a more abstracted sense of place in the use of skin tone and naturally derived fabrications rather than the typical cultural influence utilized in fashion inspiration. The study highlights the relationship of the designer, the maker, and the wearer as a shared experience of identity and representation which is often ignored in our fast-paced consumptive society.
The following two papers further identify the rich connections of place to social outcomes in design. In a pragmatic discussion of the importance of place in design is the thought-provoking paper 'Proximate Interiors: When Exhibition Design Activates Museum Architecture’ Ane Pilegaard suggests that the space or actual architecture might be used proactively to strengthen the subject or focus of an exhibition. Rather than eradicating the architecture of a space to conform to a non-invasive platform for objects, the specific sense of place, as utilized in these observations, can help to reinforce the intended narrative or feeling of an exhibition.
'The Relationship Between Chinese Characters and Artefacts: A Semantics Mapping Analysis’ XiaoChao Xi, Kenny KaNin Chow, and Nan Xia focuses on utilizing cognitive psychology to formulate a semantic model to better understand the formation of Chinese character formation and meaning. This directly connects to cultural belief systems that are embodied in designed objects.
Lastly, our two PhD reports Xiwei Shen reports on the initial process of understanding technologies place within practice in the paper 21st Century Conceptual Model for Technology in Landscape Architecture (TLA): Reframing the Core. In a practice based PhD, Kunning Ding examines the possibilities of the circularity of metals usually lost to waste and the consumer perceptions of those actions in the paper Creating New Jewellery with Precious Metals Recovered From Electronic Waste.
Deeply embedded in all of these papers within this issue is the connection of place to how we navigate and engage the wider world. We learn from the individual to support the group; we learn from the global to help the local. As the seemingly trite axiom suggests: we have more in common than we are different.