Welcome!

Designing Economic Cultures is a research project that sets out to investigate the relationship between socio-economic precarity and the production of socially and politically engaged design projects.

The fundamental question the project poses is:
how can designers, who through their work want to question and challenge the prevalent economic system, gain a satisfying degree of social and economic security without having to submit themselves to the commercial pressures of the market?  Read more ›

Construction site for non-affirmative practice

Constructive Dismantling

My Castle Is Your Castle

Designers’ Inquiry

09.04.2013 launch of publication

designers-inquiry_web1

On the 9th April, in combination with the opening of the Milan Design Week, together with the Construction site for non-affirmative practice we launched the publication of the results that emerged from the Designers’ Inquiry questionnaire.

Go to the publication’s dedicated web site in order to buy it or download it as pdf

10.02.2013 update
To follow all the recent developments of the Designers’ Inquiry please visit pratichenonaffermative.net

22.06.2012 update
The first phase of the Designers’ Inquiry has come to a close.
We collected 1070 questionnaires – of which 767 have been compiled by designers living in Italy.
We would like to thank everyone who participated and helped spread the initiative.

From June 28 to July 1, we will be gathering in Milan at Careof for a collective elaboration of the data collected. If you would like to join this working group, read more here.

Designers’ Inquiry investigates the social profile of designers today.
In the form of an on-line questionnaire, it wants to capture and reflect on the complex and often precarious condition that characterises the experience of working in the field of design.

It is an open inquiry and there are no right or wrong answers. The information you are sending us (anonymously) will be included in the analysis as well as in the presentation of the results.

For our research it is important to also gather personal voices, so please feel free to comment questions throughout the questionnaire.

The inquiry will remain open until the 20th June 2012 and takes about 20 minutes to compile.

Please help us spread this survey as much as possible by sending it on to your contacts. Thank you.