Books by Barbara Adams
Collaborative Social Design with Mexican Indigenous Communities: Critical Craft and Transformative Practices, 2023
Project Unsung, 2021
The UN Refugee Agency’s Project Unsung is a speculative storytelling project that brings together... more The UN Refugee Agency’s Project Unsung is a speculative storytelling project that brings together creative collaborators from around the world to help reimagine the humanitarian sector and promote narrative change and foresight in our work.
The worlds produced through mediums such as non-fiction essays, science fiction, poetry, art and illustration, create visions for how we might radically reimagine our work with communities, our organizations, and our relationships to each other and the planet.
The collection is framed across three overarching issues that we believe to be critical for building just futures:
Nature (restoring and repairing the world by confronting climate change and ecological loss);
Identity (fostering belonging, connection, and kinship);
Power (reimaging and reconfiguring power dynamics and social transformation through decolonizing, localizing, and building solidarity across difference).
The story of humanitarian innovation needs a new chapter. Join us in imagining better worlds.
Design as Future-Making brings together leading international designers, scholars, and critics to... more Design as Future-Making brings together leading international designers, scholars, and critics to address ways in which design is shaping the future. The contributors share an understanding of design as a practice that, with its focus on innovation and newness, is a natural ally of futurity. Ultimately, the choices made by designers are understood here as choices about the kind of world we want to live in. Design as Future-Making locates design in a space of creative and critical reflection, examining the expanding nature of practice in fields such as biomedicine, sustainability, digital crafting, fashion, architecture, urbanism, and design activism. The authors contextualize design and its affects within issues of social justice, environmental health, political agency, education, and the right to pleasure and play. Collectively, they make the case that, as an integrated mode of thought and action, design is intrinsically social and deeply political.
Book Chapters by Barbara Adams
Experience Design: Concepts and Case Studies, Dec 18, 2015
How can we design better experiences? Experience Design brings together leading international sch... more How can we design better experiences? Experience Design brings together leading international scholars to provide a cross-section of critical thinking and professional practice within this emerging field. Contributors writing from theoretical, empirical and applied design perspectives address the meaning of 'experience'; draw on case studies to explore ways in which specific 'experiences' can be designed; examine which methodologies and practices are employed in this process; and consider how experience design interrelates with other academic and professional disciplines.
In this essay we observe practices realized inside the museum in their efforts to include projects that are participatory, community-based, and socially engaged. Starting with the origins of the museum, this essay traces how the museum has evolved into a spectacular repository for today’s social consciousness and the potential for creative practitioners to use and design the space of the museum to generate meaningful experience on the levels of the corporeal and social body. This effort is haunted by the ever-increasing commodification of experience that contributes to the museum’s struggle for relevance and viability in terms of the pedagogical, the political and the ludic.
Papers by Barbara Adams
Design and Culture, May 4, 2019
Design and Culture, 2021
Abstract This conversation explores the use of rapid response oral history to collect the lived e... more Abstract This conversation explores the use of rapid response oral history to collect the lived experiences of New Yorkers during the pandemic. Through audio-visual interviews and written testimonials, this project archives accounts of the general public, including public health officials, frontline workers, policymakers, and essential workers. Documenting the pandemic in real time offers insight into moments that might be lost as the situation transforms. In this conversation, conducted in early June, Denise Milstein, the project’s co-director, speaks with Barbara Adams about the project’s inception and what has been learned in its first three months. A postscript, added in late October, reflects on the initial interview.
Nordes 2019: Who Cares?, 2019
Founded with principles of equity, freedom and access, public libraries have always served as a c... more Founded with principles of equity, freedom and access, public libraries have always served as a cornerstone of democratic values and civic participation. In the context of 21st century transformational forces of globalization and digitization, libraries are also evolving their role from repositories of information and learning, to critical contributors of a culture of care in their communities. In this paper, we present insights from an ongoing collaboration with the Brooklyn Public Library that focused on the library’s current re-entry services directed to formerly incarcerated patrons and their families. Drawing from participatory design and visual ethnographic approaches to inquiry, this study contributes to our understanding of the relational dimensions of design and its role as a reflexive and caring practice.
Experience Design, 2015
How can we design better experiences? Experience Design brings together leading international sch... more How can we design better experiences? Experience Design brings together leading international scholars to provide a cross-section of critical thinking and professional practice within this emerging field. Contributors writing from theoretical, empirical and applied design perspectives address the meaning of 'experience'; draw on case studies to explore ways in which specific 'experiences' can be designed; examine which methodologies and practices are employed in this process; and consider how experience design interrelates with other academic and professional disciplines. In this essay we observe practices realized inside the museum in their efforts to include projects that are participatory, community-based, and socially engaged. Starting with the origins of the museum, this essay traces how the museum has evolved into a spectacular repository for today’s social consciousness and the potential for creative practitioners to use and design the space of the museum to generate meaningful experience on the levels of the corporeal and social body. This effort is haunted by the ever-increasing commodification of experience that contributes to the museum’s struggle for relevance and viability in terms of the pedagogical, the political and the ludic.
Design as Future-Making, 2014
Acknowledgements Foreword, Arjun Appadurai, New York University, USA Introduction: Design as Futu... more Acknowledgements Foreword, Arjun Appadurai, New York University, USA Introduction: Design as Future-Making, Susan Yelavich, Parsons The New School for Design, USA Section I. Crafting Capacities Introduction, Barbara Adams, The New School for Social Research, USA Thinking Differently about Life: Design, Biomedicine and "Negative Capability", Elio Caccavale, Glasgow School of Art, UK and Tom Shakespeare, University of East Anglia Medical School, UK Unmapping, Sean Donahue, Research-Centered Design, USA Fashion Hacking, Otto von Busch, Parsons The New School for Design, USA Digital Crafting and the Challenge to Material Practices, Mette Ramsgard Thomsen, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Design and Conservation, Denmark Petrified Curtains, Animate Architextiles, Susan Yelavich, Parsons The New School for Design, USA Section II. Shifting Geographies Introduction, Susan Yelavich, Parsons The New School for Design, USA Urban Ecologies: Quatre systemes de conception pour la fabrication de "la Cite", William Morrish, Parsons The New School of Design, USA Architecture of Informality, Ivan Kucina, University of Belgrade, Serbia The Trans/Local Geography of Olympic Dissent: Activism, Design, Affect, Jilly Traganou, Parsons The New School for Design, USA and Grace Vetrocq Tuttle, communication design specialist, USA Garments as Agents of Change: Lucia Cuba, Hazel Clark, Parsons The New School for Design, USA Returning Duchamp's Urinal to the Bathroom? On the Reconnection of Artistic Experimentation, Social Responsibility and Institutional Transformation, Teddy Cruz, University of California, San Diego, USA Sze Tsung Leong and Susan Yelavich Interview, Sze Tsung Leong, artist, USA Section III. Up-ending Systems Introduction, Barbara Adams, The New School for Social Research, USA Designing Time, Anna Barbara, Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy Reasons to Be Cheerful, 1, 2, 3 ... (Or Why the Artificial May Yet Save Us), Clive Dilnot, Parsons The New School for Design, USA Design Away, Cameron Tonkinwise, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Pace Layers, Bruce Sterling, author, journalist, editor and critic, USA Forms of Space and Time, Anna Barbara, Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy "When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war": Systemic Complexity and the Irregularities of Scale, Jamer Hunt, Parsons The New School, USA Afterword: Tim Marshall, The New School, USA Endnotes Bibliography Contributor Biographies
Design and Culture, 2021
Editors’ Introduction to Special Issue (free access) This special issue of Design and Culture eme... more Editors’ Introduction to Special Issue (free access) This special issue of Design and Culture emerged from a call released in May 2020 while we were still in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Noting that the pandemic had radically altered our relations with things, spaces, and one another, we called for dispatches that would register and articulate its immediate and unfolding experience. In particular, we wanted to pay attention to the dramatically deepening systemic social and geopolitical inequities and new territorial divides it created, seen through design perspectives, approaches, and sensibilities. Our editorial brief was not specifically geared to collect examples of design “solutions” to identifiable (and obvious) design “problems” related to the pandemic. Rather, we aimed to convey a more nuanced and expanded notion of design as a social sensitivity, critical lens, and proposition of tangible values and aspirations. We were also interested in experiences from various subject positions, from those who spent the quarantine working or studying from home to essential workers and frontliners, aware that the virus was far from a “great equalizer” and that “risk is not equally distributed” (Jones 2020). In terms of format, we sought a variety of responses – from text to audio and visual work – that would capture the different affective and material dimensions of the pandemic experience.
Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, 2011
The Journal is interested in how the dynamics of #Occupy and the broader movement manifest a self... more The Journal is interested in how the dynamics of #Occupy and the broader movement manifest a self-learning process of a movement. Like many others, we see the strength of this movement not in its rhetoric but in its ability to bring many into coordinated action.
We see #Occupy as a juncture of protest and aesthetic- our research here aims to capture the ways in which people get swept up into a movements and what and how they confront each other's ideas in action. The forms in which the movement communicates to itself are its medias, its aesthetics. We are interested in how individuals respond to the occupation's contexts in order to create a political. We understand that self-knowledge is generative of more real solidarity. This project proposes the act of movement research to reveal the conflicts and
tendencies within movements.
The researchers have been conducting interviews to better understand the challenges, contradictions and knowledges learned from within this growing movement. We present it here as a snapshot in order for others to dwell in the specifics of this movement so that we as activists, artists and thinkers may better prepared ourselves for the coming years.
http://joaap.org/webspecials/dispatches.html
http://www.ecoledumagasin.com/session21/
Design and Culture, 2021
Sociologists, oral historians, and anthropologists at Columbia University’s Interdisciplinary Cen... more Sociologists, oral historians, and anthropologists at Columbia University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE) and the Oral History Archives at Columbia are documenting the experiences of New Yorkers during the COVID-19 pandemic. This work combines sociology and oral history to create a rich, composite picture of the struggle against COVID-19 and the adaptations it has required. The team of twenty-five oral history interviewers have built an archive based on their conversations with doctors, nurses, home health aides, funerary workers, doulas, parents, unhoused people, organizers, artists, immigrants, teachers, public officials, and other everyday New Yorkers. In the conversation below, Denise Milstein, sociologist and co-director of the NYC COVID-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Archive, discusses the project and how it might inform design practices.
Calls by Barbara Adams
Design and Culture, the official journal of the Design Studies Forum, is seeking scholars with an... more Design and Culture, the official journal of the Design Studies Forum, is seeking scholars with an established record in the scholarship of design to join its international editorial board. The editorial board, headed by the journal's three editors-in-chief, is responsible for the operation of the journal. The journal is currently published three times a year by Taylor and Francis (https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfdc20).
Conference Presentations by Barbara Adams
Nordes , 2019
Founded with principles of equity, freedom and access, public libraries have always served as a c... more Founded with principles of equity, freedom and access, public libraries have always served as a cornerstone of democratic values and civic participation. In the context of 21st century transformational forces of globalization and digitization, libraries are also evolving their role from repositories of information and learning, to critical contributors of a culture of care in their communities. In this paper, we present insights from an ongoing collaboration with the Brooklyn Public Library that focused on the library's current re-entry services directed to formerly incarcerated patrons and their families. Drawing from participatory design and visual ethnographic approaches to inquiry, this study contributes to our understanding of the relational dimensions of design and its role as a reflexive and caring practice.
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Books by Barbara Adams
The worlds produced through mediums such as non-fiction essays, science fiction, poetry, art and illustration, create visions for how we might radically reimagine our work with communities, our organizations, and our relationships to each other and the planet.
The collection is framed across three overarching issues that we believe to be critical for building just futures:
Nature (restoring and repairing the world by confronting climate change and ecological loss);
Identity (fostering belonging, connection, and kinship);
Power (reimaging and reconfiguring power dynamics and social transformation through decolonizing, localizing, and building solidarity across difference).
The story of humanitarian innovation needs a new chapter. Join us in imagining better worlds.
Book Chapters by Barbara Adams
In this essay we observe practices realized inside the museum in their efforts to include projects that are participatory, community-based, and socially engaged. Starting with the origins of the museum, this essay traces how the museum has evolved into a spectacular repository for today’s social consciousness and the potential for creative practitioners to use and design the space of the museum to generate meaningful experience on the levels of the corporeal and social body. This effort is haunted by the ever-increasing commodification of experience that contributes to the museum’s struggle for relevance and viability in terms of the pedagogical, the political and the ludic.
Papers by Barbara Adams
We see #Occupy as a juncture of protest and aesthetic- our research here aims to capture the ways in which people get swept up into a movements and what and how they confront each other's ideas in action. The forms in which the movement communicates to itself are its medias, its aesthetics. We are interested in how individuals respond to the occupation's contexts in order to create a political. We understand that self-knowledge is generative of more real solidarity. This project proposes the act of movement research to reveal the conflicts and
tendencies within movements.
The researchers have been conducting interviews to better understand the challenges, contradictions and knowledges learned from within this growing movement. We present it here as a snapshot in order for others to dwell in the specifics of this movement so that we as activists, artists and thinkers may better prepared ourselves for the coming years.
http://joaap.org/webspecials/dispatches.html
http://www.ecoledumagasin.com/session21/
Calls by Barbara Adams
Conference Presentations by Barbara Adams
The worlds produced through mediums such as non-fiction essays, science fiction, poetry, art and illustration, create visions for how we might radically reimagine our work with communities, our organizations, and our relationships to each other and the planet.
The collection is framed across three overarching issues that we believe to be critical for building just futures:
Nature (restoring and repairing the world by confronting climate change and ecological loss);
Identity (fostering belonging, connection, and kinship);
Power (reimaging and reconfiguring power dynamics and social transformation through decolonizing, localizing, and building solidarity across difference).
The story of humanitarian innovation needs a new chapter. Join us in imagining better worlds.
In this essay we observe practices realized inside the museum in their efforts to include projects that are participatory, community-based, and socially engaged. Starting with the origins of the museum, this essay traces how the museum has evolved into a spectacular repository for today’s social consciousness and the potential for creative practitioners to use and design the space of the museum to generate meaningful experience on the levels of the corporeal and social body. This effort is haunted by the ever-increasing commodification of experience that contributes to the museum’s struggle for relevance and viability in terms of the pedagogical, the political and the ludic.
We see #Occupy as a juncture of protest and aesthetic- our research here aims to capture the ways in which people get swept up into a movements and what and how they confront each other's ideas in action. The forms in which the movement communicates to itself are its medias, its aesthetics. We are interested in how individuals respond to the occupation's contexts in order to create a political. We understand that self-knowledge is generative of more real solidarity. This project proposes the act of movement research to reveal the conflicts and
tendencies within movements.
The researchers have been conducting interviews to better understand the challenges, contradictions and knowledges learned from within this growing movement. We present it here as a snapshot in order for others to dwell in the specifics of this movement so that we as activists, artists and thinkers may better prepared ourselves for the coming years.
http://joaap.org/webspecials/dispatches.html
http://www.ecoledumagasin.com/session21/