Abstract

This two-part lecture will explore the growing influence of what is variously known as design activism, social impact design, or public interest design. The current approaches differ from their historical counterparts, which emerged during the countercultural movements of the 1960s. While the earlier modes of design activism challenged the authority of the expert and questioned the role of the professional in society, more recent approaches promote the importance of expertise, and define “design democracy” as an expansion of professional services to poor and marginalized communities.

Drawing primarily on the US context, the first of the two lectures will provide a historical framework to understand the changing goals and political status of socially engaged design. The first lecture will discuss the interconnection between architecture and political economy, state power and everyday life since 1945. I will argue that more recent forms of design activism are intertwined with the dramatic withdrawal in state funding for experiments in community-based design. As such, more recent approaches promoting market-based solutions to social problems, are intertwined with the emergence of neoliberalism, a condition that has intensified since the credit crisis of 2008. Drawing on a range of examples, the second part of the lecture will show how the pragmatic embrace of market forces results in paradoxes of scale, expertise and exchange. The lecture will conclude by considering debates on alternative economic processes, currency and exchange, as starting points to rethink design activism in the global present.
 

Bio

Greig Crysler (see  http://ced.berkeley.edu/ced/faculty-staff/c-greig-crysler)

NOTE: visiting professor event under the program "15 days at CES." Inaugural lecture of the doctoral program in architecture. Within the Cities, Cultures, and Architecture Research Group (CCArq) in collaboration with the Department of Architecture of the University of Coimbra (DARQ).

THIS CONFERENCE HAS A 2nd  PART THAT SHALL TAKE PLACE OCTOBER 16, AT 17:00 IN ROOM1, CES-COIMBRA