CONFERENCE Papers
Design Cumulus Roma DESIGN CULTURE (OF) PROXIMITY- PLACES | PEOPLE | ECONOMIES
Keywords: Community, Place-making, Design Activism, Design Pedagogy
Abstract: Placemaking through Creative Practice: Enabling Change and Empowering Future Change-maker
Toronto, Canada experiences both the benefits and challenges that come with rapid urban growth. Challenges include increased racial and economic inequities; lack of affordable housing; loss of community space in redevelopment, and marginalization of citizen voices across planning processes. There is a zeitgeist of Toronto as an emerging world class city based on economic, cultural, and environmental qualities, yet it struggles to ensure inclusion, access, and social justice for all its citizens. Design Manifesto 2020 (DM2020) explores community-driven placemaking across the metropolitan area as it gathers stories of lived-experience in creating spaces and places. How can we learn from successful local initiatives to foster creative solutions elsewhere and further, how can we impart the process of community engagement as an ethical tenet of design praxis and pedagogy? This paper takes a mid-project look at the narrative inquiry process of storytelling and its potential for greater inclusive community-based placemaking.
Design as Common Good — Framing Design through Pluralism and Social Values
Swiss Design Network Online Conference
Keywords: Community, Place-making, Design Activism, Design Pedagogy
Abstract: Design for Common Good Needs Some Ground Rules — The Need for Ethical Design Pedagogy
A placemaking study in Toronto, Canada is highlighting the need for Ethical Design curricula that will serve the larger context of “Design for Social Good”. In reviewing diverse theories for socially informed design practice, it is apparent that Ethical Design, specifically socially-engaged design, as a core value is largely absent in pedagogy, training, and disciplinary practices of designers. As new health, social, economic, and environmental realities of contemporary life develop, communities are emerging as the driving force for social change, including dismantling colonial practices that sustain inequities in the making of our material world. Who a designer is and is not, as well as what role and position a designer may hold in that material world, is in need of reframing. An Ethical Design framework for both education and practice is needed to ensure that future designers respect communities as a collaborative partner and valued design team member.
Athens Institute for Education & Research (ATINER) 2020
Keywords: Design, Research, Ethics, Curriculum, Community
Abstract: Building “Working With, Not For” Into Design Studio Curriculum
Are ethics naturally intrinsic to the discipline of design or do we as instructors need to teach students how to enact it? David E. Gray notes that standards of conduct and values have profound impact on both the researcher and research subjects (2004 p.398), which raises the question as to whether, or not the same can be applied to pedagogical practices? The initial findings from a phased research project being conducted in communities throughout Toronto, Canada, have demonstrated that communities are still being left out of decision-making processes that directly affect their collective values and living conditions.