Design for All? Inclusive Design Today assembles recent projects, initiatives, and concepts from across design disciplines to ask whether design can be a genuinely democratising force — not merely accessible, but actively just.
About This Book
Since the 1980s, debates about inclusion and participation have shaped design discourse, yet the gap between universal aspiration and lived experience remains wide. This anthology, edited by the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, moves the conversation forward by presenting contemporary community-based and participatory design practice as a challenge to normative social values. Drawing together practitioners, teachers, and researchers working across the international inclusive design field, the book frames accessibility not as a compliance problem but as a paradigm shift. For designers, educators, and policy thinkers, it poses the harder question: can design also make society fairer?
Key Features
- 208 pages of project documentation, critical essays, and researcher dialogues spanning multiple design disciplines
- Edited by Petra Schmidt, Evelyn Steiner, and Sara Zeller for the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich
- Contributions by Karin Sander, Philip Ursprung, Anh-Linh Ngo, Beatriz Colomina, Mark Wigley, Melissa Makele, Harald Welzer, Eva Manesse, Bettina Steinbrügge, Michael Hagner, and Marc Angélil
- Published by Spector Books
What You'll Discover
- How contemporary design practice is expanding and reinterpreting the concepts of Universal Design and Design for All through community-based, participatory methods
- The political dimension of inclusive design — how strategies that accommodate diverse users can constitute a challenge to society's normative values
- A cross-disciplinary dialogue between practitioners and academics that brings together multiple, often conflicting, voices in the inclusive design field for the first time
- Whether design is capable of functioning as an instrument of social equity, not just functional accessibility
About the Author
Evelyn Steiner holds a diploma in architecture from ETH and an MA in Art History, and works as an independent curator, journalist, and moderator. Sara Zeller completed her doctorate in art history and is a curator at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich. The volume is co-edited with Petra Schmidt under the editorial direction of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich.
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 208
- Dimensions: 16 cm x 24 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783959057950
- Publisher: Spector Books
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Designers, architects, and urban researchers engaged with participatory and community-centred practice; educators in design theory and social design; policy makers and curators working at the intersection of design and equity.