Abstract:
David Harvey's Space of Hope (2000) suggests that there is a desperate need in critical geography and critical theory to return to small, medium and large scale reconstructive visions so as to envisage alternative productions of social natures. Design - as a deeply materialist, agential and often utopian social practice, could play an important role in this discussion. Yet, Spaces of Hope tends to read the history of design primarily as the history of technocratic and 'design fix' modes of thinking. Progressive and working class traditions of social design (as championed by Colin Ward and others) tend to be sidelined. Little attention is given to traditions of 'liberatory design' as advocated by Bookchin or Illich or the increased interweaving between design activism and 'rights to the city' discussions. Indeed, design ultimately plays a minimal role in Harvey vision of an alternative future. In contrast to Harvey, Bruno Latour (2008) has recently argued in more open ended ways that in a 'made world', a social politics of design could potentially become central to the materialization of the parliament of things and the politics of social nature. Design, it is argued could play a central role in 'making things public'.In this session we would like to consider the genuine tensions as well as possibilities that design activism and the idea of social design politics generates for a politics of space and possibly a new politics of the environment.
