The architectural historian and critic Kenneth Frampton 'never recovered' from the force of Hannah Arendt's teaching at The New School in New York. The philosopher Richard J. Bernstein considers her the most perceptive political theorist and observer of 'dark times' (a concept which, drawing from Brecht, she made her own). Building on the revival of interest in Hannah Arendt, and on the increasing turn in design towards the expanded field of the social, this unique book uses insights and quotations drawn from Arendt's major writings (The Human Condition; The Origins of Totalitarianism, Men in Dark Times) to assemble a new kind of lexicon for politics, designing and acting today. Taking 56 terms – from Action, Beginnings and Creativity through Mortality, Natality, and Play to Superfluity, Technology and Violence – and inviting designers and scholars of design world-wide to contribute, Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon, offers up an extraordinary range of short essays that use moments and quotations from Arendt's thought as the starting points for reflection on how these terms can be conceived for contemporary design and political praxis. Neither simply dictionary nor glossary, the lexicon brings together designing and political philosophy to begin to create a new language for acting and designing against dark times.

Each of us develops and enacts strategies for living our everyday lives. These may confirm the general tendency towards new forms of connected solitude, in which we work, travel and live alone, yet feel sociable mainly by means of technology. Alternatively, they may help to create flexible communities that are open and inclusive, and therefore resilient and socially sustainable. In Politics of the Everyday, Ezio Manzini discusses examples of social innovation that show how, even in these difficult times, a better kind of society is possible. By bringing autonomy and collaboration together, it is possible to develop new forms of design intelligence, for our own good, for the good of the communities we are part of, and for society as a whole.

"Matthew DelSesto provides a compelling blueprint for a design practice that enables us to address the social, political and environmental challenges of today. By combining the creative, action-oriented sensibility of design with the reflective, analytical capacities of the social sciences, DelSesto offers models, ideas and strategies for shaping the future. Drawing on the work of C. Wright Mills, Patrick Geddes, Jane Addams and W. E. B. Du Bois, and exploring professional practices and discourses in a wide range of design fields, this book shows us how design and the social sciences can interact in a more productive way"--

The architectural historian and critic Kenneth Frampton 'never recovered' from the force of Hannah Arendt's teaching at The New School in New York. The philosopher Richard J. Bernstein considers her the most perceptive political theorist and observer of 'dark times' (a concept which, drawing from Brecht, she made her own). Building on the revival of interest in Hannah Arendt, and on the increasing turn in design towards the expanded field of the social, this unique book uses insights and quotations drawn from Arendt's major writings (The Human Condition; The Origins of Totalitarianism, Men in Dark Times) to assemble a new kind of lexicon for politics, designing and acting today. Taking 56 terms – from Action, Beginnings and Creativity through Mortality, Natality, and Play to Superfluity, Technology and Violence – and inviting designers and scholars of design world-wide to contribute, Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon, offers up an extraordinary range of short essays that use moments and quotations from Arendt's thought as the starting points for reflection on how these terms can be conceived for contemporary design and political praxis. Neither simply dictionary nor glossary, the lexicon brings together designing and political philosophy to begin to create a new language for acting and designing against dark times.

From 2016-2018, teachers and students at the State University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil found themselves at the center of a crisis. A new right-wing government suspended payment of staff salaries and student scholarships and stopped funding basic maintenance. Everyday Acts of Design tells the story of how the university's design school reacted to the crisis: not with despondency or despair, but by promoting a series of radical teaching experiments. Working together, students, alumni, teachers, and staff embraced hope as a method, demonstrating that it is possible to find positive answers even in a situation of imminent collapse. The case histories narrated in the book provide alternatives to conventional forms of design teaching, but also prove that education can be a site for democracy and the practice of freedom. Deprived of the activity of creating for an imagined future, design can still assert a way forward through practices of making and experimenting. Drawing on their personal experience of designing and teaching design at a time of crisis, the authors assert the value of a design attitude which, in refusing to be delimited by the forethought of designing, insists on a radical, experimental practice as a means of survival. Although a multitude of voices, both assenting and dissenting, are present in the text, the authors do not hide their own position, making it clear that their stories are not a balanced mosaic of polyphonic positions. The contemporary attack on free public education, fueled by the growth of far-right regimes all over the globe, relies on a totalizing univocal conception of 'truth' as a means to shut down a plurality of thinking. Against this, this book adopts the partiality of historical and cultural truths as an urgent and explicit counter-attack. Adopting a consciously international approach,the authors connect and compare their own story with those of similar design teaching movements in the Global South, such as the Barefoot School in India, and ZIVA, founded by Saki Mafunkikwa in Zimbabwe.

Challenging the dominant design paradigm that centres humanity in its practice, Designing for Interdependence puts forward an ecocentric mode of designing that privileges a harmonious relationship between all life forms that share our planet. This book is about the practice of designing and design's capacity to relate (or not) to beings of all kinds, human and others, in ways that are life-affirming. Sensitive to power differentials and the responsibility that this entails, Martín Ávila develops the notion of alter-natives, a concept that exposes the alterity of artificial things and the potential of these things to participate in the sustainment of natural environments. He proposes a design practice that encompasses humans, artificial things and other-than-human species in a 'poetics of relating', and provides methods that support the rewilding necessary for maintaining cultural and biological diversity and the stabilization of planetary dynamics. The book features real-life project case studies that illustrate some of the political-ecological implications of an ecocentric paradigm, which can help us to imagine alternative modes of relating to local environments and alternative modes of inter-species cohabitation. Avoiding dualistic thinking and the dichotomies harmful-benefit, construction-destruction, natural-artificial and life-death, Ávila pursues the work of caring for how our mattering through design can become constructive in creating more-than-human ecologies.

How can social theory help us all design solutions to address the social, political and ecological challenges that confront us, and build more sustainable communities? Design professions have typically been associated with intervention and action, while social science has long been associated with thought and reflection. Design and social thought are too frequently considered distinct in terms of how theories can be applied in practice. Design and the Social Imagination brings together the creative, action-oriented sensibility of design with the reflective, analytical capacities of the social sciences to offer models, ideas and strategies for shaping the future of the world we live in. In a world of global economic inequality, racism, and environmental degradation, designing with an understanding of our social reality is increasingly crucial to our survival. Matthew DelSesto explores current practices and discourses in areas of urban design, design for social innovation, environmental design, co-design, service design, and more, illustrating how thoughtful design can contribute in a more productive way. Drawing on a range of theory and practice from radical social thinkers C. Wright Mills, Patrick Geddes, Jane Addams and W. E. B. Du Bois, his book shows us how design and the social sciences can interact in order to intervene in the crises we face today.