ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the re/emergence of ‘relationality’ as a way of understanding reality and as an onto-epistemic foundation for designing/ing. It introduces the problematic of onto-epistemic separation by focusing on a set of terms—repair, healing, caring, weaving, re-existing—that are becoming salient in social theory, social struggles, and design studies as tropes against destructive contemporary living. In challenging long-held notions of the real, relational approaches expand the field of the possible. The chapter outlines a framework of autonomous design as a place-based praxis of repairing and caring for the webs of interdependence that make up localities, communities, and regions.
