Futures and depatriarchise design
Together they will give us a talk about the notion of design-research activism as their creative approach and present a recent collaborative project around diversity issues within Swiss Design education. This qualitative research is based on the interviews with 13 teachers and students from six universities of applied sciences, complemented by statistical data, and quantitative analysis of the different teaching bodies.
They are currently planning on conducting similar cross-national research projects, bringing together students and educators from various European design schools to reflect on diversity issues within their faculties.
About Futuress
Futuress is an online magazine and community space for design politics. We understand design as an expansive social and political practice, examining the objects, systems, and structures that shape our lived realities. A queer intersectional femininst platform, Futuress strives to be a home for the histories, people, and perspectives that have been—and still often remain—underrepresented, oppressed, and ignored.
Their model is two-fold: Futuress runs online workshops on design research, and publishes original reporting and writing. Their digital community space seeks to foster transnational networks of solidarity, and they publish the research of workshop participants in their magazine. Futuress features nuanced, rigorous, and accessible stories centered around an expanded notion of design—and in this, they’re committed to the power of storytelling to convey untold histories and underrepresented perspectives to a broad audience. Their mission is to hold power accountable, give space to those who are seldomly represented, and make more just futures imaginable.
Currently based in Switzerland, Futuress also casts a critical eye towards its own locality and design traditions. The project was dreamt up in the summer of 2020 by Swiss journalist and editor Corin Gisel, British-German writer and editor Madeleine Morley, and Brazilian curator and design researcher Nina Paim. During uncertain and unstable times, we came together to imagine a space for togetherness, generosity, resistance, growth, social purpose, and emotional support.
Find out more at futuress.org.
About depatriarchise design
Depatriarchise design is a non-profit design research platform established by Anja Neidhardt and Maya Ober in Basel, Switzerland. Their manifold investigative and activist practice is rooted in intersectional feminism. Founded in 2017, depatriarchise design was born out of frustration with a design discipline that is deeply interwoven with discriminating structures. The urgency for change of the design practice and its dominant paradigms is their driving force. Through texts, workshops, and exhibitions, Anja and Maya are examining the complicity of design in the reproduction of oppressive systems but also tell long-silenced stories. Constantly researching feminist pedagogies, depatriarchise design stirs alternative modes of teaching design, initiating workshops, bringing like-minded people together to learn from and with each other.
Find out more at depatriarchisedesign.com.
