Temes de Disseny

Print ISSN: 2604-9155
Online ISSN: 2604-6032

A DESIGN RESEARCH JOURNAL by ELISAVA BARCELONA SCHOOL OF DESIGN AND ENGINEERING

Temes de Disseny was created in 1986 as a channel for communication and reflection among students, professionals and researchers involved in the culture of design. The 34th edition, published in 2018, represents a turning point in the publication, being transformed into an open-access scientific journal. This new format not only plans to remain as a point of reference in the field of design and a bridge between the local and international strategic framework, but also aims to be a reference within the scientific communities of other disciplines.

The publication also has the purpose to strengthen design as a research discipline that merits attaining the same value as any other discipline to become an area and a field of knowledge. A special emphasis has been placed in including research through design due to its great potential as an integrating agent amongst disciplines. Each annual edition focuses on a specific topic, chosen by the Editors-in-chief and the Editorial Board —formed by a selection of local and international experts with different approaches to design research— and directed by a Guest Editor.

Temes de Disseny addresses current social, environmental and economic challenges for design and engineering, with scientific rigor along with appealing graphics, which are both the core of ELISAVA’s publications.

Temes de Disseny #39 - Emerging Habitats: Design as a Worldmaking Agent.

2022-11-08

The 39th issue of Temes de Disseny calls on designers working at all scales to explore emerging habitats and the roles of design as a worldmaking agent. Human habitats are made up of ever-changing interactions between physical, material bodies, and social, relational events. Especially in times of uncertainty, design, with its potential for transdisciplinarity and multiscalarity, is ideally placed to identify, mediate and generate new relations between the hard and soft dimensions of human habitats in both urban and rural ecologies, fostering social innovation, political experimentation, and radical imagination.

This new issue will be published with open access, peer reviewed and indexed content, with the aim to gather knowledge regarding the following generic topics:

Worldmaking: Many worlds exist as the world we know right now / design’s symbolic and operative apparatuses allow to explore diverse versions of the world / worldmaking enriches our understanding of lived environments and enhances our capabilities to transform them / worldmaking’s task is to multiply plural worlds in the face of global homogenisation.
Transition Design: Contributions that explore, propose or exemplify pathways to transition from present states and conditions to long-term desirable futures / Wicked Problems and Problem Mapping / Visioning centred on Political and Governance Priorities/ Socio-Technical systems.
Indeterminacy and Openness: how contemporary design negotiates radical indeterminacy / embracing change / temporality / new modes of design authorship / collaboration and co-design / open-ended design processes / play and game-based practices / chance operations / hyperstition
Social Innovation, Equity and Empowerment: equity-centred design approaches/ social innovation design practices and non-extractive modes of participation / relational and power dynamics / design and community/the political dimension of agency / creative dissent
Material-relational dimensions of habitats: human habitats are simultaneously material and relational / the material dimension of design practices generates affects and these have relational effects on the agents involved in a specific habitat
The agency of non-human actors: Relevance of non-human agents in human habitats / Design practices as multispecies endeavours / Biodesign and new models of accountability / systems ecology / complex systems / xenodesign
Multi-Cross-Trans disciplinarity: Include all design areas and disciplines: space, product, interaction, service, graphic, material design / foster multi, cross and trans disciplinarity / include all relevant design approaches, from pragmatic to speculative, from reflexive to activist

This number's Guest Editors will be Mariana Amatullo, PhD; and Roger Paez, PhD.

It will be published on Summer 2023.

No 38 (2022): Caring Through Design: From Personal to Planetary Well-being

Temes de Disseny #38 - Caring Through Design

Temes de Disseny #38 addresses the complex issue of health and human well-being. It explores how design and engineering can help by providing more meaningful, healthy and caring spaces, personal devices and interactions that promote well-being and, in turn, can make the world a better place.

The issue looks at how design-related disciplines can promote care and well-being on different levels and encourages the establishment of connections between personal and planetary well-being while addressing technological, environmental, medical, ethical and behaviouralanthropological perspectives.

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Guest Editors:
Ricardo Guasch, Elisabet Silvestre, Danielle Wilde, Anna Del Corral.

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