IDEAS FOR GOOD held event “Welcome to the Gateway to the Pluriverse. Design for Change with Dr. Daijiro Mizuno”

IDEAS FOR GOOD, a web media that collects ideas for making society better, held an online event “Welcome to the Gateway to the Pluriverse. Design for Change with Dr. Daijiro Mizuno” on May 10, 2024 to discuss the concept of design and its role as the key to the Pluriverse.

Increasingly complex social issues, accelerating climate change, and political problems with no solution in sight. Our world is full of complex and intertwined troublesome issues. The root of all these problems may lie in the very system that controls our society and economy – a worldview that is heavily Western and capitalist-oriented. In the midst of these questions, we arrived at the concept of a “Pluriverse.”

We believe that a “Pluriverse” is a worldview that goes beyond the one-dimensional worldview that starts from dichotomies such as “humans and non-humans,” “nature and culture,” and “the West and the non-West,” or that has existed long before such dichotomies were born, and that appreciates diversity in cultures, values, and the “lens” through which things are viewed.

What is the Pluriverse that we want to know about now?(in Japanese)

IDEAS FOR GOOD will newly feature “Pluriverse” this year! In the field of design, this term has been attracting attention for several years. In this issue, we would like to shed some light on the concept of pluriverse.

https://ideasforgood.jp/2023/06/01/discover-the-pluriverse/

IDEAS FOR GOOD has been running a special feature, “Discover the Pluriverse,” from June 2023 to March 2024, in order to explore the paths that lead to this pluriverse. In this special feature, we have interviewed experts and practitioners with perspectives that transcend dualism, such as experts in design anthropology and advocates of transition design, to explore new ways of looking at rethinking the relationships among all things that surround us. *List of featured articles (in Japanese)

An example of a featured article

In this issue, as a summary of the special feature, we invited design researcher and scientist Daijiro Mizuno to share his thoughts on the concept of design and its role as the key to the Pluriverse. Mizuno is a design researcher who is involved in future-oriented design practices such as speculative design and circular design practices in the fashion field. He supervised the translated version of the book “Design for the Pluriverse (by Arturo Escobar)” which made the term “Pluriverse” widely known in the design context.

Reference: Book “Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds (New Ecologies for the Twenty-first Century)”

At the beginning of the event, the editors introduced various concepts and examples leading to the pluriverse that they had encountered through the special feature. After that, through Mizuno’s talk, the audience was able to analyze contemporary society from the perspective of design. While touching on new design concepts that are needed today and examples that provide hints, the panelists delved deeper into the role of design in transforming society and how to formulate questions from the pluriverse perspective as a starting point.

Introduction of Speakers

Daijiro Mizuno (Design Researcher)

Born in Tokyo in 1979, Mizuno graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2008 with a doctorate in fashion design, and joined the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies at Keio University in 2012 and has been an Associate Professor there since 2015. He is involved in the planning and management of various projects that critically examine and bridge the relationship between design and society. He is co-editor of the fashion criticism magazine “vanitas” with Hiroshi Ashida, and co-author of many books including “x-DESIGN,” “What is possible with Fab?,” “Inclusive Design,” “Real Anonymous Design,” “fashion design for living,” “What is Critical Design?,” and “Circular Design.” From 2019, he has been a professor at Kyoto Institute of Technology’s KYOTO design lab, and from 2022, he has been a professor at Kyoto Institute of Technology’s Future Design and Engineering Organization and a specially invited professor at Keio University’s Graduate School of Media and Governance.

[Reference] “Welcome to the Gateway to the Pluriverse. Design for Change with Dr. Daijiro Mizuno” will be held on 5/10 | IDEAS FOR GOOD (in Japanese)
[Related Site] IDEAS FOR GOOD (in Japanese)