The natural and the collective in the practical turn in the philosophy of technology: Revisiting Utopian Design

The practical turn in the philosophy of technology advocates the use of philosophical tools for a more reflexive design practice. Both mediation theory and the Product Impact Tool played an important role in building the connection between philosophy of technology and design in practice. However, these also favoured a focus on the individual. In the context of the call for papers we asked ourselves; which philosophical tool could be appropriate for stimulating a collective perspective?

Our preliminary answer is revisiting the concept of Utopian Design by Dorrestijn & Verbeek (2013). The historical design movements for radically improving society offer four different lenses to look at contemporary design problems. Postmodernism and Gute Form represent the individual focus. However, the Arts & Crafts movement (making a Restorative Utopia) focusses on the connection of people with their natural origins, and Modernism (making a Socially-functionalistic Utopia) on equality and collectivity.

We explored Utopian Design as a lens for stimulating more ‘natural’ and ‘collective’ perspectives in a workshop with bachelor students industrial design at the University of Antwerp. The students worked on the articulation of social issues in society through design installations. Before designing their final installation we asked them to envision their experience from two of the four Utopian Design perspectives and represent them in a maquette. The results show that the perspectives enhance the designs substantially, however not naturally lead to more collective experiences.