Bloomsbury
After Design examines the enduring entanglement of design with the disciplinary logics and industrial imperatives of modernity, and the urgent need to move beyond them. Born alongside capitalist industrialization, design disciplines have historically shaped and been shaped by modern systems of production, control, and fragmentation. Today, these conventional design paradigms are increasingly inadequate in the face of social, ecological, and planetary crises.
This volume brings together critical reflections, emerging concepts, and speculative propositions that explore design as a form of thought and action untethered from its modern foundations. Contributors engage with philosophical, political, and cultural dimensions of designing to imagine practices oriented toward coexistence, care, and transformation. Rather than discarding design, After Design seeks to reframe and expand it—offering new vocabularies, contexts, and commitments for designing otherwise.
Matthew DelSesto is a sociologist, educator, and author whose work bridges design, social theory, and community-based justice. He is Coordinator of the Initiative for Community Justice and Engaged Pedagogy and a Teaching Fellow in the Sociology Department at Boston College. His research focuses on social-ecological interventions and public engagement for equity and sustainability. He is also the author of Design and the Social Imagination (Bloomsbury, 2022).
