Ramia Mazé

University of the Arts London · London College of Communication

Design and Futures is a major collection of essays, manifestos, interviews and peer-reviewed articles, edited by Stuart Candy (Carnegie Mellon University) and Cher Potter (Victoria and Albert Museum), documenting 'design futures' discourse and practice around the world. First published as back-to-back volumes in the open access Journal of Futures S...

Design is increasingly recognized as an instrument of power. We explore power in the context of the Swedish welfare state and care institutions, which are undergoing political and structural reconfiguration as new technologies are introduced. Our aim is to better understand the effects of designed technologies within care institution and over care...

Who cares ? This question is a provocation for design research. What do, or should, we care about in design and design research today? Underpinning the question are issues of culture and agency – who cares, for whom, and how? Taking care, or being cared for, evokes the choice of roles, and processes of interaction, co-creation and even decision-mak...

This paper explores how acts of use and participation can be better understood and articulated in relation to the socio-material and spatial conditions of “infrastructuring”. Infrastructuring is framed here as an object of design research, comprising the social activities and skills as well as the material tools and “stuff” that are integral to alt...

Scenarios for policy and the public are increasingly given form by designers. For design, this means ideas about the future - futurity - is at stake, particularly in genres of 'concept', 'critical' and 'persuasive' design. While critical approaches are present in futures studies and political philosophy, design assumptions and preferences are typic...

Editors' note: We are witnessing a notable increase in the publication of anthologies and collections of design writing and research. This is good news for the field, seemingly reflecting its maturity, and indicating a pool of established writings from which to draw. As a textbook, D. J. Huppatz's edited collection, Design: Critical and Primary Sou...

Recent discussions in Participatory Design around infrastructuring and particularly 'agonistic space' offer useful concepts relevant to other fields facing similar issues regarding public settings and related conflicts and contestation among stakeholders. In this paper, 'agonistic space' is used as a conceptual lens to discuss overlapping issues ac...

This Conversation aims to explore the relationships between design education, design practice, and social change. To achieve this aim, the Conversation will bring educators and researchers from a variety of disciplines together to foster new exchanges and collaborations, allowing us to better explore questions about what it is that we learn when we...

The Design Education as a catalyst for change Conversation aims to explore the relationships between design education, design practice, and social change. To achieve this aim, the Conversation will bring educators and researchers from a variety of disciplines together to foster new exchanges and collaborations, allowing us to better explore questio...

Design findet an einem ambivalenten Ort statt und pendelt zwischen den Anliegen der Kultur und des Kapitals. Als eine Art Kritik von innen erforscht kritisches Design, worum es im Design geht – wie es sich zum Markt verhält, was unter „gutem Design” verstanden wird und wie Gestaltung und die Entwicklung von Technologie funktionieren. Schwierige For...

In recent years, urban transformations have required new work approaches and roles for architects and designers. These expand beyond the design of physical objects, buildings or urban plans, to include the mediation of more complex and controversial processes and collaborations. Negotiation among various kinds of actors has become central, and this...

Schalk, M., Mazé, R., Kristiansson, T., and Fanni, M. (2017) ‘Introduction: Anticipating feminist futures of spatial practice,’ in Schalk, M. Kristiansson, T., and Mazé, R. (eds), Feminist Futures of Spatial Practice, 13-23. Baunach, DE: Spurbuchverlag. Architecture and the arts have long been on the forefront of socio-spatial struggles, in which...

Architecture and the arts have long been on the forefront of socio-spatial struggles, in which equality, access, representation and expression are at stake in our cities, communities and everyday lives. Feminist spatial practices contribute substantially to new forms of activism, expanding dialogues, engaging materialisms, transforming pedagogies,...

Consumption is increasingly in focus within approaches to sustainable development, with the notion of sustainable consumption raising new issues for design. In designing to reduce the consumption of energy, water and other resources, for example, we need to consider the socio-cultural complexity of consumers’ perceptions, actions and routines. Poin...

Through critically exploring intersections between futures studies and design, this essay seeks ways of approaching ‘the future’ in order to open for a variety of futures. We, the essay authors, first met at the Stockholm Futures Conference where we encountered normative paradigms that we want to question or change. One of us, Josefin, from a profe...

The organizational forms of design work, like that in many other industries, are being transformed through the possibilities and constraints of the adoption and use of digital technologies. Based on a two-year qualitative study of over 65 designers and design educators in four countries, this article describes the emergent digital materiality of de...

http://speculative.hr/en/ramia-maze/ What is speculative (critical) design to you? What is the role of the speculative (critical) design in the contemporary design practice, and, in the broadest sense, in the world we live in? What kind of (design) educational concept would be prudent as a response to the contemporary world challenges? 1 My perspe...

It’s difficult to know what the future holds. The future is by no means empty – it will be occupied by built environments, infrastructures and things that we have designed. It will bear the consequences of our histories, structures, policies and lifestyles, which we daily (re)produce by habit or with intent in design. The future is already loaded w...

CONVERSATION: Drawing on a recent book by Stengers and Despret (2014), this conversation seeks to consider design research practices around critical and speculative design (Dunne & Raby, 2009, 2013) and speculative fabulation (Haraway, 2011) from a feminist perspective and, in particular, core feminist arguments around corporeality, materiality, em...

Design roles are expanding in society, as reflected in a growth of interest and funding for design and design research in the area of 'social innovation'. By social innovation here, I refer to the provision of social services and resources, such as habitation, education, care, mobility and food, in which design is increasingly engaged in the comple...

The future is not empty. 1 The future is loaded with fantasies, aspirations and fears, with persuasive visions of the future that shape our cultural imaginaries. The future bears the consequences of historical patterns and current lifestyles, deeply rooted in our embodied skills and cultural habits. The future will be occupied by the built environm...

Addressing social issues and operating in the public realm, contemporary design engages with the problematics of relating to more diverse people, groups and ‘others’ than those traditionally served by design. Tracing some related concerns within the early Participatory Design movements, we query approaches based on ‘consensus’ and explore an altern...

This is a critical time in design. Concepts and practices of design are changing in response to historical developments in the modes of industrial design production and consumption. Indeed, the imperative of more sustainable development requires profound reconsideration of design today. Theoretical foundations and professional definitions are at st...

Design, formulated as a discipline concerned with form and problem-solving, may seem preoccupied with matters other than those of politics and the political. Traced through a history of the fine arts, for example, the concerns of design include aesthetic expression and material form. As a liberal art, design is arguably a discipline that synthesize...

(The article is written in French) Abstract in English: How may criticality take form in relation to design practices? How may critical practices articulate alternatives or futures for the design profession? In this article, I discuss some aspects of critical practices of design. I briefly trace how ideals and alternatives are explored within genre...

'Telltale' is a piece of furniture that collects traces of energy (mis)use. Connected remotely to a household’s electricity meter, it responds to increases or decreases in energy consumption. Increases cause its internal structure to become less robust and, when used in weakened states, its textile surface becomes prone to flaking, crackling and wr...

This is a critical time in design. Concepts and practices of design are changing in response to historical developments in the modes of industrial design production and consumption. Indeed, the imperative of more sustainable development requires profound reconsideration of design today. Theoretical foundations and professional definitions are at st...

This is a critical time in design. Concepts and practices of design are changing in response to historical developments in the modes of industrial design production and consumption. Indeed, the imperative of more sustainable development requires profound reconsideration of design today. Theoretical foundations and professional definitions are at st...

Introduction There is no silver bullet to solve ecological problems, nor any single answer to how people should live — and yet, we must seek new ways to think and act in light of environmental challenges. This is the issue at stake for design today. Design has historically been employed in service to expanding industrial production and consumer cul...

Introduction There is no silver bullet to solve ecological problems, nor any single answer to how people should live — and yet, we must seek new ways to think and act in light of environmental challenges. This is the issue at stake for design today. Design has historically been employed in service to expanding industrial production and consumer cul...

Introduction There is no silver bullet to solve ecological problems, nor any single answer to how people should live — and yet, we must seek new ways to think and act in light of environmental challenges. This is the issue at stake for design today. Design has historically been employed in service to expanding industrial production and consumer cul...

Introduction There is no silver bullet to solve ecological problems, nor any single answer to how people should live — and yet, we must seek new ways to think and act in light of environmental challenges. This is the issue at stake for design today. Design has historically been employed in service to expanding industrial production and consumer cul...

Introduction There is no silver bullet to solve ecological problems, nor any single answer to how people should live — and yet, we must seek new ways to think and act in light of environmental challenges. This is the issue at stake for design today. Design has historically been employed in service to expanding industrial production and consumer cul...

Introduction There is no silver bullet to solve ecological problems, nor any single answer to how people should live — and yet, we must seek new ways to think and act in light of environmental challenges. This is the issue at stake for design today. Design has historically been employed in service to expanding industrial production and consumer cul...

Introduction There is no silver bullet to solve ecological problems, nor any single answer to how people should live — and yet, we must seek new ways to think and act in light of environmental challenges. This is the issue at stake for design today. Design has historically been employed in service to expanding industrial production and consumer cul...

Policy and design are fundamentally about the future – about changing the course of individuals and communities, setting patterns for new actions and, in the case of sustainable development, steering toward preferred futures. This paper sets out to explore the theoretical and methodological basis for creating, understanding and representing sustain...

Looking ahead to the next 50 years – we need to be able to relate to others, alternatives and futures that may be radically different than us, here and now. Today, a multitude of socially and politically-engaged designers are taking on such issues, in which an unsustainable status quo or possible futures are queried in light of climate and resource...

While issues such as clean production and energy efficiency are still central in sustainable development discourse, attention is increasingly on patterns of consumption at multiple levels in society. This opens new opportunities and responsibilities for design research, as we shift from a focus on product lifecycles to people's lifestyles. It also...

DESIGN ACT Socially and politically engaged design today – critical roles and emerging tactics is a book that presents and discusses contemporary design practices that engage with political and societal issues. Since 2009, the Iaspis project DESIGN ACT has been highlighting and discussing practices in which designers have been engaging critically a...

DESIGN ACT Socially and politically engaged design today — critical roles and emerging tactics is a book that presents and discusses contemporary design practices that engage with political and societal issues. Since 2009, the Iaspis project DESIGN ACT has been highlighting and discussing practices in which designers have been engaging critically a...

DESIGN ACT Socially and politically engaged design today — critical roles and emerging tactics is a book that presents and discusses contemporary design practices that engage with political and societal issues. Since 2009, the Iaspis project DESIGN ACT has been highlighting and discussing practices in which designers have been engaging critically a...

Design is a powerful and persuasive force in shaping society, and has been part of driving and developing many of the values and practices in our contemporary consumer culture and daily lifestyles. As we try to better understand the effects of design – especially how it relates to effecting more sustainable ways of living – design research has inco...

In our research, we have been expanding our conceptual and methodological frames of reference as designers, in order to explore the complexity of factors involved in environmental sustainability and the consequent challenges posed for design research. In this paper, we discuss some of these issues in user-centered and sustainable design, drawing ou...

As a result of development toward 'smart' materials, materials now enable an expanding range of aesthetic expressions and user experiences. These materials are fundamentally temporal in their capacity to assume multiple, discrete states of expression that can be repeatedly and minutely controlled. These materials come to be, or become, only over ti...

3Ecologies makes visible factors affecting the sustainability of consumer products. Within engineering and economics, there are a variety of models for analyzing and 'predicting' the environmental factors such as energy, emissions and waste involved during production, consumption and disposal. We develop an expanded model, which emphasizes human im...

From the boost of the first cup of coffee in the morning to the glow of a nightlight that keeps a child company after dark, much of our contemporary lifestyles is powered by electricity. Today, however, the economic and environmental costs of energy require us to think again. While recognizing the complex social functions and cultural forms of elec...

In light of the imminent arrival of ambient intelligence and smart textiles, the design of computational and textile things are rapidly converging. Substantial attention is directed towards the new technical possibilities of these new materials, but less effort seems to be put into the challenging task of re-thinking the use of textiles and computa...

With the new challenges presented by climate and energy issues, design must reexamine its role in shaping and changing values – values within the sustainability discourse, implicit in the design practices that impact production and embedded in the products that shape practices of consumption. Recognizing that design has a profound power to influenc...

Symbiots set out to examine values such as ease-of-use, comfort, and rationality assumed within conventions of 'good design', in order to expose issues related to energy consumption and current human- (versus eco-) centered design paradigms. Exploring re-interpretations of graphical patterns, architectural configurations and electrical infrastructu...

Design is a powerful force in shaping material reality, human behavior, and cultural values. Inevitably ideological, there are tendencies in contemporary design toward 'criticism from within', in which design arguments, processes and products are a basis for engaging with disciplinary and societal problematics. In our practice-based research, we de...

As a kind of 'criticism from within', conceptual and critical design inquire into what design is about – how the market operates, what is considered 'good design', and how the design and development of technology typically works. Tracing relations of conceptual and critical design to (post-)critical architecture and anti-design, we discuss a series...

I think it’s only appropriate to end these discussions around ‘critical practice’ with questions. Critical practice is less concerned with problem-solving than with problem-finding (to borrow a phrase from Superstudio, one of the 1960’s anti-design groups that we just heard about) – with exposing issues and articulating questions. Further, we hope...

There is no single answer to the question of how people should live, nor any silver bullet for solving current ecological problems—and yet, contemporary design must seek ways to think and act in light of emerging environmental challenges. We present here an overview of the Switch! design research program, a continuation of our previous work on how...

Sustainability requires a wider awareness of the changing conditions for design today – rather than focused solely on preserving nature or conserving energy, per se, this opens up for challenging assumptions about relations between design and society and for constructing new forms of critical practice. Tracing tendencies in conceptual and (post)cri...

As a kind of 'criticism from within', conceptual and critical design inquire into what design is about – how the market operates, what is considered 'good design', and how the design and development of technology typically works. Tracing relations of conceptual and critical design to (post-)critical architecture and anti-design, we discuss a series...

As technology pervades our everyday life and material culture, new possibilities and problematics are raised for design. Attention in contemporary design discourse is shifting 'beyond the object', to the qualities of processes and experiences. The boxes and screens typically the 'object' of interaction and interface design are miniaturizing, even d...

Static! is a project investigating interaction and product design as a way of increasing our awareness of how energy is used in everyday life. Revisiting the design of everyday things with focus on issues related to energy use, we have developed a palette of design examples in the form of prototypes, conceptual design proposals and use scenarios, t...

Contemporary political, economic, social and technical developments have fundamentally altered the conditions for traditional industry and for design practice. While emerging technologies have brought problems and challenges, there are also new possibilities for renewal and innovation. In doing design research projects at the Interactive Institute,...

Energy is an invisible and increasingly valuable resource. However in the design of everyday environments and things, electricity and energy use is not often made explicit – wiring, electrical meters, outlets and batteries are hidden away in boxes, inside walls and in distant basements. We have been investigating design as both a means of enquiry i...

In this article we use actual instances of human conduct with animals to reflect on the debates about animal agency in human activities. Where much of psychology, philosophy, and sociology begin with a fundamental scepticism over animal mind as the grounds for its inquiries, we join with a growing body of work that examines the continuities between...

In Interaction Design, we are presented with an opportunity to return to the designed object as a subject of enquiry with a new perspective. We suggest a reconsideration of form as the starting point for developing a deep understanding of computational things and an approach to dealing with their inherent complexity. Understanding the object as com...

Design – in art – and in relation to the challenges to notions of ‘form’ and ‘function’ posed by technology requires a certain amount of risk, speculation, self-reflection and critique to evolve. In relation to traditions of critique in art and an established and emerging foundations in design practice, contemporary design provides a platform for i...

We have been developing methods that will support us, as designers, in approaching the complex and indeterminate factors that come into play in the design of new computational things for everyday life. In our investigation, we have involved students from diverse design educations in workshops inspired by participatory methods. Through hands-on and...

In Interaction Design, we are presented with an opportunity to return to the designed object as a subject of enquiry with a new perspective. We suggest a reconsideration of form as the starting point for developing a deep understanding of computational things and an approach to dealing with their inherent complexity. Understanding the object as com...

Implicit in pairing the words ‘public’ and ‘space’ is the possibility for other combinations, for other types of space. With the phrase ‘public space’, we acknowledge that spaces, as phrases, are constructed, and that public space is not born, it is intentionally and actively produced.

We are exploring methods for participatory and public involvement of new 'players' in the design space. Underdogs & Superheroes involves a game-based methodology -- a series of creative activities or games -- in order to engage people experientially, creatively, and personally throughout the design process. We have found that games help engage user...

Sonic City is a wearable system for creating electronic music in based on sensing bodily and environmental parameters. Context and user action are mapped to sound processing parameters and turn live concrete sounds into music. Thus, a personal soundscape is co-produced by a user's body, local activity and urban ambiance simply by walking through th...

Sonic City is a wearable system for creating electronic music in based on sensing bodily and environmental parameters. Context and user action are mapped to sound processing parameters and turn live concrete sounds into music. Thus, a personal soundscape is co-produced by a user's body, local activity and urban ambiance simply by walking through th...

Designers will increasingly be facing the challenge of creating context-aware or ì smartî productsóeveryda y objects that have embedded computation, sensing, and communication capabilities. Smart-Its is a prototyping platform for creating such objects, that is being developed in a European Union research project. A Smart-It is a very small computer...

We describe a first implementation of the technology used in Sonic City, an on-going project aiming to transform the experience of a user walking through an urban environment into a dynamic and real time music creation process.

nning. Smart-Its addresses this by presenting a standardized hardware solution, coupled with communication and sensing APIs. This allows for rapid prototyping of advanced interactive applications in a way that has never previously been possible. 2 Smart-Its Application Examples At SIGGRAPH 2003 Emerging Technologies, we will show how Smart-Its can...

In the project Sonic City, we have developed a system that enables users to create electronic music in real time by walking through and interacting with the urban environment. We explore the use of public space and everyday behaviours for creative purposes, in particular the city as an interface and mobility as an interaction model for electronic m...

Sonic City is a project exploring mobile interaction and wearable technology for everyday music creation. A wearable system has been developed that creates electronic music in real-time based on sensing bodily and environmental factors - thus, a personal soundscape is co-produced by physical movement, local activity, and urban ambiance simply by wa...

We describe a first implementation of the technology used in Sonic City, an on-going project aiming to transform the experience of a user walking through an urban environment into a dynamic and real time music creation process.

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In the project Sonic City, we have developed a system that enables users to create electronic music in real time by walking through and interacting with the urban environment. We explore the use of public space and everyday behaviours for creative purposes, in particular the city as an interface and mobility as an interaction model for electronic m...