ABSTRACT

This book makes a significant contribution to advancing post-geographic understandings of physical and virtual boundaries. It brings together the emergent theory of ‘border thinking’ with innovative thinking on design, and explores the recent discourse on decoloniality and globalism. From a variety of viewpoints, the topics engaged show how design was historically embedded in the structures of colonial imposition, and how it is implicated in more contemporary settings in the extension of ‘epistemological colonialism’.

The essays draw on perspectives from diverse geo-cultural and theoretical positions including architecture, design theory and history, sociology, critical theory and cultural studies. The authors are leading and emergent figures in their fields of study and practice, and the geographic scope of the chapters ranges across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South America, Asia, and the Pacific.

In recognition of the complexity of challenges that are now determining the future security of humanity, Design in the Borderlands aims to contribute to ‘thinking futures’ by adding to the increasingly significant debate between design, in the context of the history of Western modernity, and decolonial thought.

chapter |11 pages

Design in the Borderlands

An introduction

chapter 1|25 pages

China vs China

Conflict and translation

chapter 2|24 pages

Back to the Third World

The Greek experience

chapter 3|15 pages

Modernity and Design in the Arab World

Professional identity and social responsibility

chapter 4|15 pages

Timor-Leste

Unlearning in order to be

chapter 5|18 pages

Urban Design for the Global South

Ontological design in practice

chapter 6|23 pages

Africa

Designing as existence

chapter 8|5 pages

A Note from Brazil

Looking at the production of design knowledge in Brazil

chapter 9|17 pages

Looking from the Other Side of the Street

Youth, participation and the arts in the edgelands of urban Manchester

chapter 10|16 pages

An Exchange

Questions from Tony Fry and Eleni Kalantidou and answers from Walter Mignolo