ABSTRACT
The birth of the design profession has its origin in the Industrial Revolution, the development that initiated the given era's problems of sustainability in all their dimensions. The work of promoting a sustainable development that explicitly concerns not only physical but also cultural matters is a relatively new occupation. Thus, there are many blank spots related to this endeavour on the map of knowledge and understanding. Most of the first generation of designers were idealists, and many were 'utopianists'. Some members of the design community realised that, in many cases, the profession contributed to this by designing objects that stimulated increased and affluent consumption. Female designers' significant role in design innovation has gradually been revealed by female design historians since around 1980. There is a need for methodologies that exceed the traditional paradigm of academic research, and this has paved the way for incisive contributions from the creative and artistic fields with holistic views and complex paradigms of knowledge production.
