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

project timeline

A rough outline of how and where the research evolves over time.

August 2010: research proposal

January 2011: start of research at Goldsmiths College, London, UK

March to July 2011: residency at AIR Laboratorium, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, PL

June 2011 to November 2011: Designing Economic Cultures seminar series at Goldsmiths College, London, UK

September to October 2011: residency at FDV and Careof DOCVA, Milan, IT

April to June 2012: launching the Designers’ Inquiry together with the Construction site for non-affirmative practice, IT

June to November 2012: collective evaluation of the data collected through the Designers’ Inquiry

September to November 2012: research based at Campus in Camps in Palestine

January to March 2013: collective design of the report Designers’ Inquiry

February 2013: collective start of the practice-led research group New Cross Commoners

March 2013: transfer exam with Liz Moor (Media and Communication) and John Bowers (Design)

April 2013: the Construction site for non-affirmative practice launches the report of Designers’ Inquiry

May to November 2013: writing up and continuing the activities with the Construction site and the New Cross Commoners

06 December 2013: thesis bound and handed-in for the viva

03 February 2014: Viva passed with Doina Petrescu (Architecture, Sheffield) and Matthew Fuller (Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths)

March 2014: the thesis is now accessible in the library of Goldsmiths College, University of London – soon also online

March 2014: together with Caterina Giuliani we start to work on Precarity Pilot a follow up project to Designers’ Inquiry in which many of the aspects around precarious work and de-precarisation developed through this research are disseminated

Visual timelines up to December 2012

Seminars, workshops, public presentations, exhibitions
DEC_timeline_seminars

Conversations
DEC_timeline_conversations

DEC in Warsaw
DEC_timeline_warsaw

Construction site for non-affirmative practice
DEC_timeline_cantiere