Questioning how design can improve daily lives, more than thirty essays by practicing architects and designers, urban and community planners, historians, landscape architects and environmental designers illuminate an emerging geography of architectural activism and suggest the many ways that design can address issues of social justice.

This is a book about how the worlds of design and activism (could) inspire each other. As Design and its conceptual, functional, aesthetic, speculative and interventional concepts inevitably affect our lives, it often actively interferes in common defi nitions, understandings and opinion making, which offers opportunities for ideological engagement (in a good or in a bad sense). The book focuses on theories and practices related to the role of Design in terms of addressing, provoking and creating political discourse. Starting from traditional forms of protest, visual languages of resistance, to new forms of digital participation, this will help us to better understand the rituals, structures and meanings of design activism in history and the present, clarifying that design is intrinsically social and supremely political. And it shall help us to derive arguments and examples for the transformative potential of future design (and) activism.

Founded in Los Angeles in 1998, GRAFT is a global architectural practice which now maintains branches in Berlin and Beijing. The international practice, which is involved in architectural, urban, and product design – as well as branding – is known for its experimental and interdisciplinary designs as well as for its strong social commitment. The publication will document only projects characteristic of this social responsibility – it portrays architecture as an active tool for driving, in a global context, the development of places worth living in. One key project is the Solar Kiosk developed in 2012, a high-output, solar-based unit which is already used by many communities in Sub-Saharan Africa to secure their power supply.

Design academics and practitioners are facing a multiplicity of challenges in a dynamic, complex, world moving faster than the current design paradigm which is largely tied to the values and imperatives of commercial enterprise. Current education and practice need to evolve to ensure that the discipline of design meets sustainability drivers and equips students, teachers and professionals for the near-future. New approaches, methods and tools are urgently required as sustainability expands the context for design and what it means to be a 'designer'. Design activists, who comprise a diverse range of designers, teachers and other actors, are setting new ambitions for design. They seek to fundamentally challenge how, where and when design can catalyse positive impacts to address sustainability. They are also challenging who can utilise the power of the design process. To date, examination of contemporary and emergent design activism is poorly represented in the literature. This book will provide a rigorous exploration of design activism that will re-vitalise the design debate and provide a solid platform for students, teachers, design professionals and other disciplines interested in transformative (design) activism. Design Activism provides a comprehensive study of contemporary and emergent design activism. This activism has a dual aim - to make positive impacts towards more sustainable ways of living and working; and to challenge and reinvigorate design praxis,. It will collate, synthesise and analyse design activist approaches, processes, methods, tools and inspirational examples/outcomes from disparate sources and, in doing so, will create a specific canon of work to illuminate contemporary design discourse. Design Activism reveals the power of design for positive social and environmental change, design with a central activist role in the sustainability challenge. Inspired by past design activists and set against the context of global-local tensions, expressions of design activism are mapped. The nature of contemporary design activism is explored, from individual/collective action to the infrastructure that supports it generating powerful participatory design approaches, a diverse toolbox and inspirational outcomes. This is design as a political and social act, design to enable adaptive societal capacity for co-futuring.

This edited collection gathers contributions from a diverse range of renowned scholars and professionals to uncover the unique relationship between passive architectural systems and activism. Focusing on the pioneering work of the influential American chemist and inventor, Harold R. Hay (1909–2009), and the environmental awareness events that took hold in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s, the book assembles essays which closely examine Hay's contribution to architecture and the work of those who directly and tangentially were affected by it. The book also offers insights into the role of passive energy design today. Appealing to researchers, architects and students interested in architecture and design technology, Activism in Architecture explores the role of passive environmental inventions as an active agent in shaping socio-political debates.

Informed by recent research into the viability of a 'steady state' economy, this book sets an agenda for addressing the designer's paradox of sustainable consumption.

Activism at Home offers a unique study of architects' own dwellings; homes purposely designed to express social, political, economic, and cultural critiques. Through thirty case studies by architectural scholars, this book highlights different forms of activism at home from the early twentieth century to today. The architect- led experiments in activist living discussed in this book include the dwellings of Ralph Erskine, Paulo Mendes Da Rocha, Charles Moore, Flora Ruchat-Roncati, Kiyoshi Seike, and many others. Offering candid appraisals of alternative living solutions that formulate a response to rising real estate prices, economic inequality, social alienation, and mounting environmental and cultural challenges, Activism at Home is more than a historical study; it is an appeal to architects to use the discipline's tools to their full potential, and a plea to scholars to continue bringing architecture's activist practices into focus--whether at home or elsewhere.