The central question of this grant is: How does design govern today? We ask what work design – as an interdisciplinary approach to solving social, political and environmental problems – has done throughout the second half of the twentieth century to transform governmentality, and how the values of design continue to define governmental strategies in the 21st century. Since the postwar period, “design” has been increasingly called upon to solve problems caused by economic restructuring, political instability, and environmental disaster. Against this background, we do not take design simply as a product-oriented discipline but suggest that through its becoming central to governmentality, it requires a wider definition today.
“Governing through Design” will be the first global and interdisciplinary study of how
design governs in the 21st century. Such a study requires expertise from design
studies, urban studies, architectural history, media studies, cultural anthropology,
political science, and science and technology studies. Our team brings these
disciplinary perspectives together in order to be able to examine the interdisciplinary
nature of design today. Our research consortium consists of the Institute for
Experimental Design and Media Cultures at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design
Basel, the faculty of Urban Studies at the University of Basel and the Milieux Institute
for Arts, Culture and Technology at Concordia University, Montréal.