http://designactivism.net reflections on the role of design as activism Wed, 13 Aug 2008 05:06:50 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I hope that, like me, you are on vacation during parts of this July and August, so you have not noticed the scarcity of my posts over the past few weeks. And now here is a post, and you may also be thinking, “oh no, ethics is too heavy for a ... http://designactivism.net/archives/93 I recently learned about two resources that seem pertinent to design activism. The first is an upcoming conference called "A Better World by Design" to be held November 7-9th at Brown University in Providence RI (USA). What they say "A Better World by Design asks the question today’s designers, engineers, ... http://designactivism.net/archives/91 A Recent post by John Thackara on Design Observer led me to consider the prospects of design activism gone wrong. Thackara suggests that recent efforts by Architecture for Humanity and AMD, to design and build community internet centers, have missed the boat, as have efforts to design $100 laptops. In ... http://designactivism.net/archives/86 This category contains my answers to questions that often come up regarding my book, The Designers Atlas of Sustainability. Recently I released an upgraded version of the book's teaching guide, prompting Island Press to ask me some questions about the future of sustainable design education. Q: What is the state of ... http://designactivism.net/archives/81 Under the double negative banner "we cannot not change the world" a group has launched a forum for social design. They say, " The SocialDesignSite aims to foster and facilitate a discourse on social design by establishing a unique interactive platform between everyone interested on the topic. We present innovative ... http://designactivism.net/archives/79 I read an interesting piece in the UC Berkeley Alumni magazine, California (yes I’m an alum) about how a single statistic can profoundly change our perspective on an issue—but only if we are presented with it in a certain way (“Numberstruck” by Pat Joseph). UC Berkeley's Michael Ranney conducted ... http://designactivism.net/archives/73 Previously I wrote about the notion of the economy as being made up of three sectors—public, private, and nonprofit. But recently I’ve seen a few references to “the fourth sector.” The term refers to enterprises, sometimes called social enterprises, that straddle the for-profit and nonprofit divide. social enterprises seem to ask, "how ... http://designactivism.net/archives/70 Time to look at some case studies of design activism. Let’s start with a couple of recent projects dealing with the issue of migration between the US and Mexico. Day Labor Station The first project is a day laborer station devised by a nonprofit architecture studio in San Francisco, Public Architecture. Covered ... http://designactivism.net/archives/56 link to it over on the right side there, under the "pages" heading... http://designactivism.net/archives/55 Some designers are activists, that is to say, they take action (typically within the context of a contentious issue) intended to bring about change on behalf of a wronged or excluded group. But once designers are out of the picture, have moved on to the next job, can artifacts in ... http://designactivism.net/archives/46