Le design : politique par essence ?

Is design inherently political? The articles in this section offer interpretations of the Anglo-Saxon concept of ‘design politics’. This difficult-to-translate notion seeks to overcome the divide between design and politics that is evident in the proliferation of labels describing activities such as activist design, sustainable design and social design, among others. It is understood that design and conception do not simply consist of creating/generating an object, service or experience, but position and define all design activities as inherently political. The articles in this series, originally published in RADDAR magazine (issues 1, 2019, 3, 2021, and 4, 2022), as well as some articles from the Libraries, bring together a variety of cultural and intellectual approaches. They examine, from specific angles, subjects such as the colonial unconscious of an object and its designer, the possibility of anarchist design, the forensic use of modelling tools, inclusive typographic imaginaries and the attentive/critical observation of ‘co-design’ approaches.