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.