Bizotto dos Santos, W.B., Mazzarotto, M.,and Van Amstel, F.(2023) Learning design as a human right: the beginnings of a design lab founded on critical pedagogy, in Derek Jones, Naz Borekci, Violeta Clemente, James Corazzo, Nicole Lotz, Liv Merete Nielsen, Lesley-Ann Noel (eds.), The 7th International Conference for Design Education Researchers, 29 November – 1 December 2023, London, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drslxd.2023.104
Abstract: Understanding design as problem-solving leads to a seemingly neutral praxis, yet still very much linked to the interests of dominant social groups. This research introduces a dialectical-existential perspective over design education based on the works of Brazilian philosophers and educators Álvaro Vieira Pinto and Paulo Freire. This perspective puts problem-posing on a dialectical relationship with problem-solving, and the production of existence at the core of design. Not being able to handle this dialectics and produce existence autonomously is characteristic of oppression, a contradiction that design education should alleviate instead of intensify. Framing design as human right is the path found by the outreach praxis of a Brazilian university’s design lab to avoid oppressing while supporting liberation efforts. This paper describes the foundational years of the Laboratory of Design Against Oppression (LADO) and how it came up with this concept of design as human right.
