Ontological Designing

Brings together Anne-Marie Willis’s pioneering writing on ontological design

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.