Artifact

Book review by Tau Ulv Lenskjold, postdoc at The University of Southern Denmark

Tau Ulv Lenskjold

Anthony Dunne &amp; Fiona Raby: Speculative Everything

安东尼·邓恩与菲奥娜·雷比：一切皆可设想

This article examines graphic design’s role within design activism. It outlines design activism in general and its relation to commercial design culture in a consumerist economy. Thereafter it discusses persuasive tendencies in graphic design and questions if its current contribution to design activism is limited to its predominant narrow role of persuading for “the good cause.” To illustrate the hypothesis that such a persuasive approach lacks activist potential and thus social impact, cases that represent traditional graphic-design activism are compared to alternative approaches with an informative rather than persuasive character. The latter cases exemplify how information design can challenge the status quo and range from conventional leaflets to interactive tools and data visualizations. The discussion explores how these cases work as a non-commercial service to its audience, rather than solely solving communicative problems for commissioning clients. It is argued that in this way visual communication can intervene into problems on a functional level, similarly to artifacts from design disciplines such as architecture and industrial or product design.

Katrin Elisabeth Bichler

Sofie Beier

Graphic Design for the Real World? Visual Communication’s Potential in Design Activism and Design for Social Change

现实世界的平面设计？视觉传达在设计行动主义和社会变革设计中的潜力

The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts - Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation held a one-day conference discussing the design concept on 26 August 2016. This is Jude Chua's presentation of his article, "Design Without Final Goals: Getting Around Our Bounded Rationality."

Jude Chua

Design, Knowledge, and Ignorance. Jude Chua's presentation for the Design Concept Conference

设计、知识和无知。朱迪·蔡亚在设计概念会议上的演讲

Photography created for the Design Concept issue by Ivar Tønsberg.

Ivar Tønsberg

Construction Site Sides

建筑工地边缘

Noopolitics is a neologism that designates how minds (nous) come to think collaboratively at the scale of populations, a phenomenon facilitated by increasingly sophisticated information societies and their capacity for instantaneous electronic communications. Noopolitics complements the already well-established term biopolitics, which designates how the lives and deaths, and general health and well-being of individuals are managed at the scale of populations through practices of governance. What happens when a noopolitics rigidifies, what kinds of effects does it produce? A dogmatic Image of Thought understood as an ossified status quo takes hold, over-determining how people think together and about themselves, and about their worlds, including their local environment-worlds. In relation to an expanded understanding of the spatialities of feeling that architecture contributes to, this essay will focus in particular on the noopolitics at work in the production of architectural imagery where it becomes indistinguishable from real-estate imagery. The compelling case this essay will address is the emergence of the styled real-estate image in the Stockholm context where a large proportion of rental properties have been quite abruptly released onto the real-estate market place over just the last ten years. What is remarkable about the flood of images that have been made available for consumption is their consistency, even their homogeneity, and while Stockholm, with a focus on the inner city island of Södermalm, may prove to be a special case, what is aptly demonstrated through a noourbanography that attempts to map these images is how a dogmatic Image of Thought has taken hold that drives what a local population comes to expect in terms of the curation of their homes and local neighbourhoods.

Hélène Frichot

Local Real(i)ties: A Contemporary Image of Thought

地方现实(i)：当代思想的形象

Today, co-designing for social innovation is explored in many western democracies to transform political agendas and develop sustainable societies. For social innovation to have a radical and wide-reaching impact on society, scaling is crucial. Scaling social innovation after ending a project requires a focus on making innovations sustainable in the long run and how they can foster organizational or institutional transformation. Despite increased interest in design for social innovation and scaling, little attention has been given to how the scaling of social innovation unfolds in practice over a longer period. A qualitative study was conducted following the continuation of a social innovation project called SeniorInteraction, which ended in 2012. Through interviews and field visits, we examined the attempts at scaling by different public and private partners and citizens after the project ended. The social innovation concept in question is an open exercise community in public parks for senior citizens supported by the local municipality. The research provides a deeper understanding of scaling in practice and identifies four important drivers for scaling social innovation: ownership, documentation, infrastructuring elements and rehearsing new practices. Additionally, we discuss challenges related to the way we understand and evaluate the scaling of social innovations.

Signe Louise Yndigegn

Eva Brandt

Maria Foverskov

Lone Malmborg

Scaling social innovation: Ownership, documentation, infrastructuring elements and rehearsing new practices

社会创新的规模化：所有权、文档化、基础设施要素与新实践的演练

This double issue of Artifact: Journal of Design Practice contains six revised and double-blind peer-reviewed articles linked to the ninth biannual conference of the Nordic Design Research Society (NORDES). The conference, titled Matters of Scale , was held in the Danish City of Kolding in August 2022. This NORDES issue is a result of a series of constructive dialogues between the journal’s editorial team and the NORDES community around the need for more publication venues explicitly invested in high quality practice-based, constructive design research. In addition to the research articles, the issue also includes a reflection paper on an art installation as a new type of format in the journal. This format is intended to support the journal’s aim to provide a platform for sharing and discussing artistic (design) project work without going through a traditional peer review process.

Sissel Olander

Nicky Nedergaard

Editorial

社论

The design of woven smart textiles presents a discrepancy of scale where the designer works at the level of structural textile design while facets of the material express at scales beyond one’s senses. Without appropriate methods to address these unknown (or hidden) material dimensions, certain expressional domains of the textile are closed off from textile design possibilities. The aim of the research has been to narrow the gap that presents when one designs simultaneously at the scale of textile structure and electron flow in yarns. It does this by detailing a method for sensing, visualizing, and discussing expressions of electromagnetism in woven smart textiles. Based on experimental research, a method of textile surface scanning is proposed to produce a visualization of the textile’s electromagnetic field. The woven textile samples observed through this method reveal an unknown textural quality that exists within the electron flow – an electromagnetic texture , which emerges at the intersection of woven design and electromagnetic domain variables. The research further contributes to the definition of specific design variables such as: field strength and diffusion expanding the practice of woven smart textile design to the electromagnetic domain.

Erin Lewis

Between yarns and electrons: A method for designing electromagnetic expressions in woven smart textiles

纱线与电子之间：一种用于设计智能纺织品中电磁表达的方法

Spatial densification is an ongoing process in most cities today, but has an uneasy relation with the liveability of our environments. In this article, we approach this uneasy relationship between densification and liveability as a ‘matter of scales’ and work consciously with the tensions which arise, such as a lack of communication and mistrust. We analyse a case of urban design and discuss how the participatory design approach of ‘experiential evaluation’ as a ‘scaling device’ was deployed to support the formation of a ‘scaling platform’ around this matter of scale. This scaling platform has the ambition to connect the multiple actors across multiple scales to make the tensions between scales constructive. In the discussion, we present the learnings of the design process and the challenges that we encountered.

Lieve Custers

Liesbeth Huybrechts

Oswald Devisch

A matter of scales: Experiential evaluation as a scaling device to support a scaling platform in a case of urban design

尺度问题：体验评估作为尺度化工具支持城市设计案例中的尺度化平台

This article considers the pedagogical importance of noticing nature at the hyperlocal scale, and the role that design can play in nurturing and supporting these processes. Biodiversity Logbooks are a set of educational resources that promote direct engagement with everyday environments through a variety of creative methods, including cyanotype photography, physical computing, collaborative mapping and journaling. These tools are intended to be used in combination to develop skills of noticing plants in their habitats and understanding how different environments support different life forms. This article argues that while complex environmental phenomena are often addressed at the global scale (with local impacts presented as scalable outcomes), focusing on small, often overlooked details can have beneficial pedagogical outcomes. These consist of increased attentiveness and care for the needs of other species, better retention of knowledge generated through embodied experience and stronger connection with place. In the article, the impacts of the project as described by the teachers who participated in the experience are discussed in connection to broader epistemological issues. These include plant blindness as a widespread phenomenon in urban populations, and the importance of observing messy entanglements and non-scalable dynamics when building knowledge about the environment.

Publication Information	Publisher: Intellect Ltd.，Publishing cycle: ，Journal Type: journal，Open Access Journals: Yes
Basic data	Year of publication: 2019，Proportion of original research papers: 0.00%，Self Citation Rate:N.A.， Gold OA Rate: 0.00%
Average review cycle	网友分享经验：20 Weeks

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Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby: Speculative Everything