Extending temporalities in design: Designing Pluriversal Futures

TY - JOUR

T1 - Extending temporalities in design

T2 - Designing Pluriversal Futures

AU - Kambunga, Asnath Paula

AU - Smith, Rachel Charlotte

AU - Winschiers-Theophilus, Heike

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

PY - 2024

Y1 - 2024

N2 - This article addresses the challenges of designing pluriversal futures in complex and contested sociopolitical contexts by extending the temporal scope of design to address future imaginaries. Opening up spaces in which difficult colonial ‘pasts’ can be addressed alongside everyday narratives and memories of marginal voices also opens up possibilities for imagining and designing otherwise. We conducted a series of codesign interventions with a group of young Namibians who were struggling to find their voice in ongoing decolonial dialogues. The interventions experimented with multiple temporalities in which young people were able to use everyday narratives of Namibia’s colonial pasts alongside their own future imaginaries to design pluriversal futures. The article presents our three participatory and interventional pathways to extend the temporal scope of design. We highlight the importance of collaboratively identifying interrelations between presents, pasts, and futures, and of creating collaborative sites in which to imagine pluriversal futures supported by participatory and design anthropology.

AB - This article addresses the challenges of designing pluriversal futures in complex and contested sociopolitical contexts by extending the temporal scope of design to address future imaginaries. Opening up spaces in which difficult colonial ‘pasts’ can be addressed alongside everyday narratives and memories of marginal voices also opens up possibilities for imagining and designing otherwise. We conducted a series of codesign interventions with a group of young Namibians who were struggling to find their voice in ongoing decolonial dialogues. The interventions experimented with multiple temporalities in which young people were able to use everyday narratives of Namibia’s colonial pasts alongside their own future imaginaries to design pluriversal futures. The article presents our three participatory and interventional pathways to extend the temporal scope of design. We highlight the importance of collaboratively identifying interrelations between presents, pasts, and futures, and of creating collaborative sites in which to imagine pluriversal futures supported by participatory and design anthropology.

KW - decoloniality

KW - design anthropology

KW - participatory design

KW - Pluriversal design

KW - temporalities

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85199966144&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/15710882.2024.2363914

DO - 10.1080/15710882.2024.2363914

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85199966144

SN - 1571-0882

VL - 20

SP - 36

EP - 54

JO - CoDesign

JF - CoDesign

IS - 1

ER -