Eleni Kalantidou - Design in the Borderlands

DESIGN IN THE BORDERLANDS

This book makes a significant contribution to advancing post-geographic understandings of physical and virtual boundaries. It brings together the emergent theory of border thinking with innovative thinking on design, and explores the recent discourse on decoloniality and globalism. From a variety of viewpoints, the topics engaged show how design was historically embedded in the structures of colonial imposition, and how it is implicated in more contemporary settings in the extension of epistemological colonialism.

The chapters draw on perspectives from diverse geo-cultural and theoretical positions including architecture, design theory and history, sociology, critical theory and cultural studies. The authors are leading and emergent figures in their fields of study and practice, and the geographic scope of the chapters ranges across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South America, Asia and the Pacific.

In recognition of the complexity of challenges that are now determining the future security of humanity, Design in the Borderlands aims to contribute to thinking futures by adding to the increasingly significant debate between design, in the context of the history of Western modernity, and decolonial thought.

Eleni Kalantidou is a design psychologist, researcher and educator. She is a Lecturer in the Design Futures Master and Undergraduate Program at Griffith University, Australia. Eleni has a research background in psycho-sociology of space. She is the author of a number of articles and is currently working on a research publication on design psychology.

Tony Fry is a design theorist and an award-winning designer, writer and educator. He works in Australia and internationally. He established the Master of Design Futures Program and the undergraduate Design Futures Program at Griffith University, Australia. Tony is the author of ten books. His current writing project is on the future of the city.

In this trans-disciplinary, epistemically disobedient collection an international group of border thinkers reveals the coloniality of design as an overall perceptive mechanism grounded in Eurocentrism and hiding the global imperial claims. They radically decolonize design, opening up its creative dimensions as a tool of ontological transformation of the world and ourselves pointing toward transmodern multiple futures.

Madina Tlostanova, Full Professor, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration

Design in the Borderlands is a brave effort at enriching the geographies of design. Introducing border thinking to design studies, this collection of essays demonstrates the profound social and political significance of design along and across major issues like modernity, coloniality, sustainability, power and identity in and from a series of loci situated in the creases and at the edges of society, both locally and globally.

Kjetil Fallan, Professor, University of Oslo

DESIGN IN THE BORDERLANDS

Edited by Eleni Kalantidou and Tony Fry

First published 2014

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2014 selection and editorial material, Eleni Kalantidou and Tony Fry; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Eleni Kalantidou and Tony Fry to be identified as authors of the editorial material, and of the individual authors as authors of their contributions, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Design in the borderlands / edited by Eleni Kalantidou and Tony Fry.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Design--Social aspects. 2. Postcolonialism. I. Kalantidou, Eleni, editor of compilation. II. Fry, Tony, editor of compilation. III. Fry, Tony, author. Design in the borderlands.

NK1505.D4715 2014

720.103--dc23

2013043315

ISBN: 978-0-415-72518-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-72519-4 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-77889-1 (ebk)

Samer Akkach is the Director of the Centre of Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture, University of Adelaide (Australia), where he also teaches. He is an internationally acclaimed researcher and much-published writer on pre-modern and modern Middle Eastern architecture and philosophy.

Janet Batsleer works as Principal Lecturer in Youth and Community Work at Manchester Metropolitan University (UK). She has a particular interest in the city street as a space of democratic informal education and in what enables education otherwise than for neoliberal capitalism.

Tony Fry is the Head of Design Futures Program, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane (Australia). Tony is an educator and internationally established author. He has published ten books and has numerous essays in collections. Tony has worked on Design and Development projects globally and is currently directing a major Indigenous Creative Industry project in Timor-Leste.

Peter Alec Hall is a Design Writer, Senior Lecturer and Design Department Head at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane (Australia). Before moving to Brisbane, he was Senior Lecturer in design at the University of Texas at Austin. Peter is also the co-editor (with Jan Abrams) of the book Else/Where: Mapping New Cartographies of Networks and Territories.

Jenny Hughes is a Senior Lecturer in Drama at the University of Manchester (UK). Her research explores the relationship between theatre, performance and states of emergency and, at the time of writing, focuses on theatrical representations of and engagements with economic precarity.

Paul James is the Director of the UN Global Compact Cities Programme, and the Global Cities Institute, RMIT, Melbourne (Australia). He is author or editor of 25 books including, most importantly, Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism. His current work contributes to the sustainability of many cities around the world from Porto Alegre to Berlin.

Eleni Kalantidou is a Design Psychologist and Lecturer of Design Theory at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane (Australia). Her research on Design Psychology is strongly connected to re-directing design thinking and practice and her publications are all thematically relevant to new models of community and ways of living based on unsettlement and sustainment.

Maria Cecilia Loschiavo dos Santos is a Philosopher and Professor of Design at the School of Architecture and Urbanism, University of So Paulo (Brazil). She is also a scholar of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). She conducts research on design and society, looking at design and urban poverty.

Walter D. Mignolo is a Semiotician (cole des Hautes tudes) and Professor at Duke University, NC (USA), who has published extensively on semiotics and literary theory, and works on different aspects of the modern and colonial world by exploring concepts such as global coloniality, the geopolitics of knowledge, transmodernity, border thinking and pluriversality.