In our current political climate, with its deepening contradictions and polarisation, this year's DDW theme, Building Bridges, asks us to look at what keeps a society from feeling whole: who gets included, and on what terms. Rather than trying to smooth over these tensions, this edition holds onto them, exhibiting design projects that expose the ‘othering’ built quietly into everyday lives and asking what it would take to design otherwise. Some of these projects turn the same question outward, toward the more-than-human voice and agency. Together, they make the case that building an Equal Society is not a matter of agreement, but of who is invited to the table in the first place.
These selected projects confront the othering of those deemed less-than-human on the basis of ability, race, gender, or sexuality.
- Hey Theys! invites the visitor to reflect on how their sexuality is situated;
- Micro Intervention Mart encourages reflection on unconscious forms of racism through the design of fictional intervention tools that can be used to counter racism in microaggressions;
- Rhoē redesigns the disposable menstrual pad around the lived experience of disabled users;
- BróGAA redesigns sports equipment around women's anatomy instead of the male default it's long been built on, exposing how everyday products quietly assume a narrow, able-bodied, male standard of who they're for.
Two other projects turn from redesigning the object to redesigning the experience around it:
- A Spatial-Acoustic Interface for Non-Visual Book Discovery that turns a book's cover and mood into sound, arguing that equity for visually impaired readers means equal enjoyment and not just equal access;
- Towards Inclusive Gastronomy, a speculative vision for allergen-safe dining, asks what it would take for food-allergic guests to feel not just safe, but delighted.
While these projects turn inward toward who’s been left out of the category of the fully human, another line of the selected projects turns the same question outward, toward the voice and agency of those who can be specified as more-than-human:
- Sea(t) at the Table nudges people to uncover hidden conflict between humans and non-humans in the North Sea through a role-play game.
Alongside these projects, three columnists, Virginia Tassinari, Cristina Zaga, and Clemens Driessen, offer their own reflections on what it means to design for an equal society, taking up its human, more-than-human, and political dimensions.
