Reorienting Design Towards a Decolonial Ethos: Exploring Directions for Decolonial Design

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Contemporary Industrial Design, as professional and academic practice, exists intertwined with the global hegemonic power structures of coloniality (Buckley 1986; Escobar 2018a; Mareis and Paim 2020). Problematizing this situatedness, the effort of Decolonizing Design emerges as a twofold effort: first to unlink it from this structure, opening up for diverse understandings of Design and, second, to remove oppressive behaviors from Design. In this paper we present a decolonial intervention in an Industrial Design education in the Global North as an exploration of how to shift Design towards decolonial emancipation. From this project, we suggest the categories of listening, learning, and loving as guidelines for decolonizing Design. We conclude arguing that the work necessary to dismantle Design as we know it and explore decolonial directions demands that we continually work to break and counterbalance the allegiance to its Eurocentrism and oppressive ways of working.

Keywords:

• decolonization
• emancipation
• critical pedagogy
• relationality
• Indigenous methodologies
• industrial design

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 see https://etikprovningsmyndigheten.se/for-forskare/vad-sager-lagen/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nicholas B. Torretta

Nicholas B. Torretta is a Brazilian design researcher and artist based in Malmö, Sweden. Drawing on resistance practices such as Capoeira, Graffiti and improvisational music, Nicholas works on the intersections of arts and decolonisation with focus on nurturing pluriversal sustainabilities. Nicholas is one of the founders of the Pluriversal SIG at DRS and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Malmö University (Sweden).

[email protected]

Brendon Clark

Brendon Clark is an associate professor in design anthropology at Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University, and is currently the PhD studies director. Drawing on participatory design, performance theory & practice, and participant observation, his teaching and research explores improvisational and emerging sociomaterial practices in the design encounter.

Johan Redström

Johan Redström is Professor in Design at Umeå Institute of Design. He works at the intersections and interactions between research through design and design philosophy. His books include “Making Design Theory” (MIT Press 2017), and “Changing Things: The Future of Objects in a Digital World” together with Heather Wiltse (Bloomsbury 2019). He is part of DCODE (https://dcode-network.eu), and a member of the Committee for Artistic Research at the Swedish Research Council, and the International Advisory board of the Design Research Society.