
NORDES Design research conference June 2019
Towards the end of May this year, a promising event took me and my research colleague and friend up North to Finland – the 8th biannual Nordic Design Research Society (Nordes) conference, which took place at my former university Aalto University, now located in Otaniemi, on June 2nd-4th. In times of a world-wide crisis of care in its many dimensions (see previous post on the care conference I took part in Leipzig), the conference poses the timely, and also, self-critical question ‘who cares?’, well worth exploring in design research and beyond:
“What do, or should, we care about in design and design research today? Underpinning the question are issues of culture and agency – who cares, for whom, and how? Taking care, or being cared for, evokes the choice of roles, and processes of interaction, co-creation and even decision-making. Caring, as a verb, emphasizes care as intention, action and labor in relation to others. Care can be understood as concern for that beyond oneself, for others and, thus, human, societal and even material and ecological relations are at stake. The question of care is also a call for questioning relationships, participation and responsibility, democratic and sustainable ways of co-existing. From this expansive societal standpoint, we could even ask who cares about design? And what should we do about it?”
My colleague and I presented and discussed a co-written paper, ‘Caring for the common and caring in common. Towards an expanded architecture/design practice’ in the doctoral consortium, which you can find here to read. We received valuable feedback from our fellow researchers in the session, continued by an open space in the afternoon, where we discussed the ‘political’ in design (research). I have taken away many inspiring conversations and new perspectives, and some new book recommendations, of which I would like to share two here:
– Maria Puig de la Bellacasa: Matters of Care. Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. (2017)
– Angelika Fitz & Elke Krasny (editors): Critical Care. Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet. (2019)
More info on the conference:
https://nordes2019.aalto.fi
Leave a Comment