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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.