Design for All – Inclusive Design today

The latest publciation by the Leipzig-based publisher SPECTOR Books “Design for all? Inclusive Design Today” accompinies the higly recommended exhibition “Design für Alle? Vielfalt als Norm” at Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich (ongoing untill 20th october 2024). The book gathers together a variety of recent projects, initiatives, and concepts drawn from different design disciplines, and sets up a dialogue with teachers and researchers who are active on the international scene to discuss them for the first time. Dealing with a range of different voices in inclusive design strategies can be seen as part of a paradigm shift that radically questions society’s normative values: Can design also make a society fairer?

Debates about inclusion and participation have been an important part of the design discourse since at least the 1980s. Contemporary design approaches expand on the concepts of Universal Design and Design for All, reinterpreting them in a community-based, participatory design practice, some of which are discussed in the book.

While Elizabeth Guffey asks, what Inclusive Design means today, Joel Sanders discusses challenges, opportunities and conflicts posed by Inclusive Design. Gabrielle Schaad enters the discourse on intersectional feminist spatial practices, while Tom Bieling focuses the matter of normative and ignorant Design as subjects for design research and teaching. Jos Boys sheds light on community-based, participatory practice, Florence Okoye on the liminality and design failure, whereas Hua Dong shares views on chinese perspectives.

The texts are supplemented by numerous illustrative project examples and enlightning interviews, with Aimi Hamraie (Critical Access Studies), Quemuel Arroyo (Public Transport), Rama Gheerawo (User’s Needs and New Markets), Grace Jun (Fashion as a form of self expression), Joe Manser and Markus Schafer (Politics and Inclusion) or Cecille Shellman (Museums Soul Searching).

As such, the book as a whole explores central questions that are relevant not only to inclusive design, but to design in general. Can design cater to a diverse society? How does it respond to the disparate demands of the people using it?