Design after progress: reimagining design histories and futures

Design’s ties to industrialisation and progress has made possible increased material well-being for many humans while simultaneously contributing to waste and environmental degradation.This research environment seeks to explore how to carefully untie designs’ entanglements with progress and to craft concrete imaginaries of a more socio-ecological just design after progress, guided by post-anthropocentric and post-capitalist perspectives.

By bridging universities and disciplines the aim is to explore how to (1) learn to become better haunted in design by attending to the ecologies of damage left behind by progress and industrialisation and to (2) develop and articulate skills, competences, capabilities, and concepts necessary for designing after progress.

This will be done in a participatory, and democratic way with the purpose to influence future designers. The research environment will operate through three experimental design rehearsal studios that build on each other: 1.

Present-ing Alternative Design Histories: historicising participation and design with a focus on Sweden but including international cases. 2.

Prefiguring Design Practices after Progress: three on-site experiments that engage with temporalities in different ways. 3.

Unlearning Pedagogies for Design after Progress: creating opportunities for international designers and design researchers to learn to make the made world differently. There will also be public outreach activities, for example exhibitions.