There are no neat solutions to the intertwined climatic, economic and political crises of our time. Introducing 'ancillary design'.
Anab Jain is the co-founder and director of Superflux, a design futures company and art studio, and a professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Image Copyright: © Mark Cocksedge
Anab Jain rightly summarizes that design as practiced in capitalist economies has "a rich history of solutionism; it is a field overrun by proponents of ceaseless growth and endless products." So, she and a growing network of colleagues, is detouring away from solution-oriented thinking, "seeking out alternatives that can adequately address the crisis we currently face."
"Such interventions might at first seem out of step with traditional notions of 'design,' but they are gaining momentum, reframing (as the artist Sara Hendren is doing) the work of designers as impresarios, translators, radical generalists and believers. Given the scale and knottiness of the challenges we face, we see design playing a fundamental role as an intermediary, a joiner, working between the problem-solution dichotomy to uncover practices and tools and approaches that might offer entirely new possibilities.
"The practice I’m teasing out, or drawing together, is what I would like to call 'ancillary design.'" - Anab Jain
Article: Radical Design For A World In Crisis
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