1. Institute for Culture and Society Home
  2. Events
  3. ICS Seminar Series
  4. Past ICS Seminars
  5. Seminars in 2016
  6. ICS Seminar Series - Abby Mellick Lopes

ICS Seminar Series - Abby Mellick Lopes

Date: Thursday 4 August 2016
Time: 11.30am–1pm
Venue: EE.G.36, Western Sydney University, Parramatta South campus

Abby Mellick Lopes

(Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University)

Design as an Ecological Practice

Abstract

Meditating on the gift of electric light, design philosopher Clive Dilnot observes that design gives us a human world. The gift of design isn't of the sort that can be placed in front of one or handed over from one to another. Artefacts of design don't come into their own as 'objects'. Once they find a place in our life-worlds, and we no longer look at them but live with them – use them, wear them, depend on them, make worlds in their light – their presencing work begins. They form the horizon and limit of the actual.

An understanding of design-as-object conceals the ecological character of designed things. As an applied rather than a fine art, design finds success in the achievement of ubiquity, which marks a point of disappearance and cultural forgetting. We tend to forget the extent to which human being is shaped by human making in the practice of everyday life. We tend to forget the multiple social, cultural and environmental injuries generated by designed objects, systems and infrastructures. As a social and material practice that prefigures future possibilities, design needs to take responsibility for both what it has made and unmade. Design as an ecological practice marks this becoming-critical of design.

This seminar will explore this ground via the thought of ontological design. Ontological design is a theory and critical practice that characterises the nature and agency of design as a fundamental human activity shaping the condition or behaviour of 'what is.' I will look at the hidden ecologies of design and how research is facilitating a critical engagement with the environments we have designed for ourselves. At this historical juncture where anthropogenic climate change confronts human being with the challenge of cultural change, grasping the ontological character of design has perhaps never been more important, for it contributes to the story of who we are and points to who we need to become.

Biography

Abby Mellick Lopes is Senior Lecturer in the Design (Visual Communication) program in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University, and a new School-based member of ICS. Abby's research focuses on design's role in facilitating transitions to more sustainable ways of living, most recently in projects exploring repair cultures with Dr Alison Gill and the liveability of Western Sydney in a climate-changed future, 'Cooling the Commons' with the Mapping Urban Resilience in the Riverland, Sydney (MURRS) group at ICS. Abby has published widely on design and sustainability, most recently contributing several chapters to The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design (2016). She is on the editorial board of Design Philosophy Papers and an associate of The Studio at the Edge of the World (opens in a new window).