Architecture & Design versus Consumerism - How Design Activism Confronts Growth

Packed with examples and illustrations, this book sets an agenda for how architecture and design can help us transition from a system that prioritizes consumerism and economic growth to a system that addresses real wellbeing. The first chapters explore how economic growth and consumerism shape and are shaped by the professions of architecture, product, and landscape design and how we can understand the problem of consumerism as four main challenges that designers are already addressing. The book investigates the sorts of metrics designers can use to measure wellbeing, instead of simply measuring economic growth. The second half of the book explores how design activism works and its connection to growth and consumerist issues. These chapters examine how activist practices are financed, highlight five specific methods that designers use in working for social change, and investigate the power of these methods. The book closes with a speculative chapter about what design’s role might be in a "post-growth" society.