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Where do we – design practitioners, design researchers, human beings – look for ways of dealing with today’s many crises? Where do we go to consult histories, envision futures and nurture hope? Design museums can be spaces for gathering around design and urgencies, for critical investigations, but also for redesigning design towards more justice. However, this potential seems currently limited. This paper thinks with onto-cartography combined with a feminist approach and explores design museums as assemblages. Depending on how design museums are assembled, they produce not only certain design exhibitions and representations of design histories, but also design definitions and criteria – as well as possibilities to imagine alternative futures. This paper is based on an analysis of material gathered through visits of design and other museums, inventories, workshops, and consulting secondary literature about community spaces. This analysis finds that currently design museums tend to hardly thematize their Western perspective and relation to power dynamics. Instead, they tend to highlight and celebrate positive historical aspects of their own past and of the designs they present. How could design museums be assembled so that they become able to reflect more diverse and also more critical design historical perspectives, and with and beyond that play an active role in re-shaping design? This paper argues that much can be learnt from museums that are assembled differently or that are currently in the process of transforming themselves, like the Wereldmuseum in Amsterdam and other examples. It zooms in on two aspects to explore what exactly can be learnt: (1) How does the museum position itself? (2) And how does the museum deal with problematic aspects? It then builds on the findings to envision metabolic design museums (inspired by Clémentine Deliss’ concept of the process-driven, constantly changing and evolving metabolic museum). Metabolic design museums are (1) situated; they know about their origins and involvement with power structures, and are aware of their strengths and weaknesses, possibilities, but also responsibilities and where they need to be careful to not (unconsciously) reproduce oppressive systems. They are also (2) safe and brave spaces – for marginalised groups to take up space for resting, regaining energy, exchange, and mutual support, and for more privileged groups to learn about their privileges and the responsibilities that come with them. Metabolic design museums with these characteristics could make accessible alternative design histories, and with that enable alternative ways of dealing with the present and of envisioning alternative, more just futures.

Design and feminism share the understanding that the world can be changed for the better. And even though design has great potential for dealing with challenges, major parts of it are rather involved in creating today’s challenges through reproducing systems of oppression. There is a need in design of spaces where design practitioners, students, educators and researchers can go to share our concerns as well as our hopes and visions, and where we can unpack highly complex issues, not at least issues such as design’s involvement with white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, and very concrete and acute crises. At the moment, design museums seem to come closest to such spaces in the design field, yet they seem not capable to realize their full potential. They seem limited by a focus on success stories of individual designers, iconic designs, formal aspects and technological developments, mostly with a Western, male perspective and human-centered approach.

This paper argues that community archives can offer inspiration for transforming design museums. Community archives – or, more specifically, activist spaces and protest archives – are spaces where people and material come together at the heart of social justice movements. By making accessible alternative histories, they enable alternative ways of dealing with the present and of envisioning alternative, more just futures. Community archives are often aware of the fact that they can (and even need to) actively design and redesign their own (relational) space as well as their inner workings. They know that they take part in imagining and bringing into being more just futures through offering access to their collections and through organising events etc. At the same time, they understand that the ways in which they do this are already bringing parts of their future vision into the present. It is in the community archive that the community can experience how a different, more just future might look and feel like.

This paper thinks with concepts from feminist research, design research, Clémentine Deliss’ concept of a metabolic museum, and onto-cartography. To understand the work, values and characteristics of community spaces, three close readings of literature about community archives and activist spaces were done. Specific other methods include museum visits, workshops, illustrations, and visual analysis. The paper explores how community archives are assembled to then envision which characteristics design museums would need to encompass to become able to support efforts of redesigning design towards more just futures. 

We all encounter hierarchies daily but only notice them when they hinder or push us into marginalised positions. This three-part workshop will create a physical space for reflection, inviting participants from different creative fields to support the interest in art and design research in turning to feminist, autoethnographic approaches. Inspired by Karen Barad’s concept of re-turning and drawing on the PhD research project “Feminist Design Strategies for Transforming Design Museums Towards More Just Futures”, the session will present results of students in the Kristiania University course “Graphic Design Criticism” in the form of printed publication. The workshop will begin by situating the workshop participants and re-turning (to) lived experiences of encountering hierarchies, exploring these experiences with empathy and care, building on the students’ contributions. The last part will invite participants to creatively transform hierarchies and norms, materialising the workshop results using a risograph printer, enabling them to re-turn (to) the created knowledge.

Modern design has played a role in creating the current world, including injustices and the climate crisis. And the design discipline still contributes to the reproduction of what bell hooks calls white supremacist imperialist capitalist (hetero)patriarchy that distributes privilege and oppression. At best, design supports us; at worst, it hinders or even harms us. Our experience depends on our gender and sexuality, whether we are able-bodied or not, our skin colour, our class, and many more aspects. There is an urgency to transform mainstream design, so that it can become able to not only stay with past and present trouble, but also to contribute to developing more just futures.

Spaces that can facilitate and support such work are needed. Presently, design museums come closest to serving this kind of role. They are mainly public spaces that hold much power and infrastructural resources. They not only represent design to design students, designers, and the wider public. Design museums also have the potential to support discussions on complex issues without the pressure to immediately come up with solutions. However, they are not yet capable of contributing to redesigning design, since they often tend to preserve the problematic status quo rather than enable change. Therefore, these established design museums must be transformed to become able to realise their potential to serve the required role. This thesis investigates potential and limitations of currently existing design museums, envisions alternative spaces, and develops feminist design strategies for initiating transformational processes in design museums towards more just futures.

The approach taken includes looking to the example of community archives as well as combining concepts and methods from feminist research, design research and onto-cartography in ways that leverage their synergies to enable a sense-making of design museums’ involvement with systems of oppression, as well as a development of alternative visions and strategies for intervening and transforming. Community archives make accessible alternative histories, and therefore enable alternative ways of dealing with the present and of envisioning alternative, more just futures. They not only hold deep understandings of oppressive systems and how they are reproduced in daily life and the material world, but also continuously develop creative ways of resisting and, most importantly, initiating transformational processes.

Through this framing, the more specific research question developed is: Which feminist design strategies could support initiating transformational processes in design museums aiming towards more just futures? This research question was addressed through a feminist design methodology that combines feminist and design research. Specific methods used include inventories, museum visits, workshops, consulting secondary literature, illustrations, and visual analysis.

The research project resulted in an investigation of established design museums, the formulation of characteristics of alternative design museums which are envisioned as metabolic design museums, and the development of feminist design strategies for initiating transformational processes in design museums. Based on the results, this thesis contributes to design research ways in which the role of design and its established institutions in reproducing white supremacist capitalist patriarchy can be understood and analysed. Furthermore, it makes a methodological contribution to both feminist research and design research by combining these two fields, in parts with the help of onto-cartography, to leverage their synergies. Finally, this thesis – as well as the research process that led to it – contribute to activism in the field of design by scaffolding ways in which design could be transformed so that it becomes more able to unfold its potential to contribute towards the development of more just futures.

There is a need for spaces that can support reflecting on and reimagining design, and redirecting it toward sustainment and justice. Such spaces would necessarily operate with the understanding that design is ontological and has political consequences. We might think of such spaces as metabolic design museums. In this paper, we imagine how metabolic museums might help to redesign design through keeping process at their heart and critically unpacking design’s involvement in urgencies as well as possibilities to envision and move towards more just futures. To do this, we build on intersectional feminist analysis of existing design museums through museum visits and participatory workshops, as well as inspiration from activist spaces; and we speculate about how feminist tactics applied by para-museums could catalyze transformational processes. If those processes were successful, a design museum would then enter into a state of continuous metabolization and become able to contribute to transforming design.

From a feminist perspective, the chapter by Anja Neidhardt-Mokoena explores ethics in participatory design workshops. She articulates how ethical questions are generally approached in design research, and then looks at a concrete example to reflect on what doing the right thing(s) might entail.

The design discipline is implicated in thetrajectories that have led us to an unsustainable present. There is an urgency to re-direct the design discipline, so that it can become able to not onlystay with past and present trouble, but also to develop other futures. To see how design museums might support change rather than preservation, welook to the example of protest archives. Based onan analysis of relational space, we suggest that therelative crowdedness of protest archives emerges out of matters of care, and allows for the development of alternative ways of being and creating. We thus identify a set of qualities that might be used to inform development of alternative spaces for care in design that aim to become able to respond to urgencies and to open up more just futures.

How can design museums be disentangled from systems like patriarchy, so that they become able to support change towards more justice? To explore this question, we use our standpoint as design researchers in combination with a feminist perspective. Historically, most design museums supported a path of progress which supposedly leads straight from the past into the future. Even though today attempts to change design museums can be observed, criteria for good design and methods for collecting and exhibiting mainly stay unchanged. However, when questioning them, it becomes clear that they were shaped by a white, male, imperialist perspective. Through shifting focus and leaving the well-trodden path, we identify three possible paths toward envisioning what we call alternative design museums that might contribute to the bigger struggle for changing the design discipline, and shaping a more just world.