From emergency to emergence: Re-think design approach in a transition age

Abstract

This paper intends to reflect on the questions that, in relation to the current COVID-19 emergency, invest design and its new cultural, social and political role. The undoubted impacts that the pandemic has produced in many spheres of our lives should not only be intended as an "emergency" to be quickly responded to, the virus allows the "emergence" of the opportunity to dispel some contradictions of our time, with critical, problematic and lateral questions. In its meaning of "emerging phenomenon", the virus opens up conceptual and operational scenarios that deserve to be actively investigated, also by trying to force the project's capacity to intervene in everyday practices. In this sense, the paper highlights the "political" action of design as an "attitude" to generate a questioning urge that is actively inserted into the world, looking at and investigating the concepts that shape a vision of constantly changing design. Through four case studies, the paper carries out "practical theories" capable of broadening the field of intervention of design, incorporating multiple contextual relationships and outlining a geopolitical dimension within which to identify new forms of dialogue with the "real world".