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Description
This book introduces the theory and concept of ontological design: a way of understanding and confronting the increasing power of design as it shapes our lives in complex ways that go well beyond the functionality and aesthetics of products and environments.
We as humans design our material worlds – our habits, notions of comfort and convenience, what we eat, what we wear, how we travel. In turn, relations within these worlds design us and, mostly, we are designed to be unsustainable. This is becoming a psychosocial as well as biophysical crisis as our 'normal' and 'desirable' ways of life are wreaking havoc on climate, land, sea, other species and their complex interdependence, with unknown disastrous consequences in the near-future.
These ground-breaking essays by Anne-Marie Willis, written over the last twenty years, bring together her pioneering writing on ontological design and provide a comprehensive introduction to the topic. As wider humanities fields are increasingly drawn to the concept of ontological design as a transformative force, this book provides an accessible guide that opens possibilities for deeper responses and different kinds of design interventions, and not just by designers. Essays explore design thinking within anthropology, sociology, politics, ecology, and design writing, including speculative and literary fiction about design.
The book demonstrates how design is fundamental to being human and to our future. It makes the agency of design more visible throughout the world and provides tools for tackling urgent contemporary social, economic and environmental challenges.
Accessibility Information
Additional accessibility information
- EPUB 3.0
- Conforms with the requirements of EPUB Accessibility Spec v1.1
- WCAG level AA
- WCAG v2.2 compliant
- accessibility@bloomsbury.com
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The publication contains no hazards
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- No accessibility features offered by the reading system, device or reading software are disabled or otherwise unusable with the product
- Has alternative text descriptions for images
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Rich content
Language tagging provided
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I: Registering the Past: Designed Things that Design
Chapter 1. Ontological Designing
Chapter 2. Concrete and Not So Concrete Impacts
Chapter 3. Monobloc Chair: Disposable Consumer Durable
Chapter 4. Technology as Environment
Chapter 5. The Ontological Design of Mapping
Part II: Confronting Enduring Issues in the Present
Chapter 6. Design, Politics, Change
Chapter 7. Against User-Centred Design
Chapter 8. Transition Design and the need to Refuse Discipline
Chapter 9. Sacred Design Now
Chapter 10. The Designing of Time
Part III: Facing the Future of Ontologically Designed Complexity
Chapter 11. Expanding Design Writing
Chapter 12. Design, Fictionality and Futures
Chapter 13. Ontological Design, Criticality and the Unsustainable
Chapter 14. Digital Ontologies and Artificial Intelligence
Index
Product details
| Published | Dec 10 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 256 |
| ISBN | 9781350444331 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Visual Arts |
| Series | Radical Thinkers in Design |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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