Diversities of Design

Diversities of Design: Celebrating Plurality in the Anthropocene published in ELISAVA’s Temes de Disseny #39 explores the capacity for the entangled fields of design, architecture and environmental planning to celebrate and empower oppressed Indigenous and First Nations peoples, and expertise. Within an Australian context, the realisation of decarbonised and de-colonial futures requires scrutiny of the socio-political industrial complex upon which the contemporary Australian settler-colonial project was founded. Central to this scrutiny is the need to investigate, contemplate and address a history of systemic racial violence, and its impact on Country.

The article seeks to highlight the contemporary value of indigenous expertise through the lens of current projects in environmental design, exploring how contemporaneous and historical traditions, technologies and voices can coalesce within the context of net zero transitions, and the emergent habitats of the Anthropocene.

Images: Savanah Burning as part of the Indigenous Desert Alliance’s ongoing work in the design of Australia’s 10 deserts by Kayshun Murray & A Himawari-8 satellite image showing smoke from January the unprecedented 2020 bushfires stretching over the South Pacific Ocean from the Japanese Meteorological Agency.

Collaborators

Michael McMahon - Beyond Heritage