Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Design academics and practitioners are facing a multiplicity of challenges in a dynamic, complex, world moving faster than the current design paradigm which is largely tied to the values and imperatives of commercial enterprise. Current education and practice need to evolve to ensure that the discipline of design meets sustainability drivers and equips students, teachers and professionals for the near-future. New approaches, methods and tools are urgently required as sustainability expands the context for design and what it means to be a 'designer'. Design activists, who comprise a diverse range of designers, teachers and other actors, are setting new ambitions for design. They seek to fundamentally challenge how, where and when design can catalyse positive impacts to address sustainability. They are also challenging who can utilise the power of the design process. To date, examination of contemporary and emergent design activism is poorly represented in the literature. This book will provide a rigorous exploration of design activism that will re-vitalise the design debate and provide a solid platform for students, teachers, design professionals and other disciplines interested in transformative (design) activism.Design Activism provides a comprehensive study of contemporary and emergent design activism. This activism has a dual aim - to make positive impacts towards more sustainable ways of living and working; and to challenge and reinvigorate design praxis,. It will collate, synthesise and analyse design activist approaches, processes, methods, tools and inspirational examples/outcomes from disparate sources and, in doing so, will create a specific canon of work to illuminate contemporary design discourse.Design Activism reveals the power of design for positive social and environmental change, design with a central activist role in the sustainability challenge. Inspired by past design activists and set against the context of global-local tensions, expressions of design activism are mapped. The nature of contemporary design activism is explored, from individual/collective action to the infrastructure that supports it generating powerful participatory design approaches, a diverse toolbox and inspirational outcomes. This is design as a political and social act, design to enable adaptive societal capacity for co-futuring.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Past Inspiration: a Short History of Design in Activist Mode
• Global-Local Tensions: Drivers for Design Activism in an Unsustainable World
• Contemporary Expressions: Design Activism Goes Beyond Form and Function
• Ego and Equity: Balancing Individual and Collective Design Activism
• Activist Frameworks and Infrastructure: Nodes, Networks and Technology
• Designing Together: Co-Creation, Co-Design, Participatory Design, Transformation Design, Experiential Design, Metadesign, Design as Seeding, Dialogic Design and More
• Political and Social Dimensions: Democratisation of Design, Stakeholders and Social Actors, Value Shifting
• Adaptive Capacity: Design as a Societal Strategy for Co-Futuring
• Resources: Toolbox
• Bibliography
• Other Resources
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Fuad-Luke, author of books on the ecological aspects of design practice and travel, here joins the ranks of missionary enthusiasts such as Augustus Pugin, Alvin Toffler, William McDonough, and more directly, Bruce Mau. To reconfigure Suzi Gablik's argument for renewing the aesthetic principle in art, Fuad-Luke seeks the societal reengagement of design. His text ranges over matters of later modern (Enlightenment--technocratic) design history and purpose to theories of design with particular respect to the ethics of sustainability. Historians and practitioners of design will find much of interest in this book, which is well served with concise endnotes, appendixes, and index. But the analysis is less consistent because of a tendency to gather in too much data and accommodate too many tables and diagrams; this can confuse more than clarify the significance of the book's argument. The book also reflects some imprecision, e.g., as in the assertion that the Crystal Palace was built of steel. Nonetheless the cross-disciplinary approach, and in particular the reiteration of the potential for beneficial social change through design practice, represents an important addition to the discourse of design and sustainability. Summing Up: Recommended. Researchers/faculty and professionals/practitioners. R. W. Liscombe University of British Columbia