Community (&) Design — Reframing Design Through Relations and Political Agency

With the fourth volume of the Design Meanings series, Mimesis International publishes the book “Community (&) Design – Material, Spatial, and Social Encounters”. With the edited volume, compiled by Tom Bieling, Wolfgang Jonas and Maria Cecilia Loschiavo dos Santos, the discourse on social design receives a timely and ambitious contribution that moves decisively beyond the rhetoric of participation and toward a more differentiated, structurally aware understanding of communal life. Rather than treating “community” as a convenient synonym for users, stakeholders, or audiences, the book insists on restoring the term’s social, political, and relational depth. In doing so, it positions design not as a generator of communities per se, but as a discipline that shapes the infrastructures, representations, and rituals through which communal relations become possible.

By revisiting Ferdinand Tönnies’ distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (p. 23), it foregrounds the semantic ambiguity of “community,” a term that circulates widely in digital culture, branding discourse, and civic rhetoric. The compiled positions and portrayed projects respond to this ambiguity with a working definition that emphasizes belonging, participation, and sustained relationality—conditions that exceed algorithmic segmentation and resist reduction to market logic. This conceptual groundwork sets the stage for a triadic framework that runs throughout the volume: design for communities, design in communities, and design by communities (pp. 23–24). These positions do not describe discrete methods but overlapping orientations, marking different degrees of proximity and responsibility within collective processes.

The volume is structured into five thematically organized sections, each advancing the argument that design and community are mutually constitutive rather than hierarchically ordered. Across these sections, the book assembles a notably diverse set of methodological, theoretical, and practice-based contributions that span geographic, disciplinary, and political contexts.

Mapping Relations: Methods and Relational Practices

The first section, Tracing and Relational Practices, establishes methodological ground by addressing how communities become perceptible to design. Dietmar Offenhuber introduces the concept of “sensing communities,” drawing attention to collective data practices as both epistemic and social processes. His analysis contrasts digitally mediated activism—such as crisis mapping—with embodied practices like community gardening, arguing that meaningful change depends less on informational transparency than on shared material engagement and collective interpretation.

Complementing this perspective, Paul Wilson proposes “reparative diagrammatics,” a participatory mapping approach that privileges lived experience and affective knowledge over cartographic accuracy. By foregrounding fragmentation, contradiction, and narrative multiplicity, this method challenges dominant spatial representations and offers a framework for community cultural citizenship rooted in plural knowledge systems.

Seçil Uğur Yavuz extends the relational lens by conceptualizing communities as meshworks of human and non-human actors. Her focus on the mediating agency of artifacts reframes design objects as catalysts for relational repair and transformation. Rather than controlling social outcomes, design operates here as a subtle intervention within complex ecologies of care and interaction.

Territory, Mobility, and the Politics of Belonging

The second section, Territories and Belonging, interrogates spatial identity through lenses of migration, housing, and territorial imagination. Drawing on personal narrative and postcolonial theory, Torben Körschkes reflects on community formation through the notion of nationhood while invoking Édouard Glissant’s idea of the Tout-Monde to imagine fluid, post-territorial affiliations.

Mobility emerges as a central theme in Ruth Duma Coman’s study of Romanian migrants in Germany, where patterns of temporary residence destabilize conventional notions of settlement. Her work reframes community as a network of practices rather than a fixed location, urging designers to engage with translocal rhythms rather than static spatial models.

Saskia Hebert addresses housing as a foundational infrastructure of belonging. By examining cooperative models, land trusts, and collective ownership schemes, she highlights how alternative housing systems can counteract market-driven exclusion and cultivate solidarity. The chapter positions housing design as both a social and political practice that shapes access, agency, and communal continuity.

Care, Activism, and Collective Empowerment

In the third section, Care and Empowerment, design is explicitly framed as a vehicle for addressing inequality. Mariana Fonseca Braga draws on Paulo Freire’s pedagogical principles to examine collaborative design practices in Brazilian informal settlements during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her analysis foregrounds mutual learning and critiques superficial participatory frameworks that overlook structural power imbalances.

Similarly engaged with urban injustice, Bruna Ferreira Montuori documents collaborative work with the community organization Redes da Maré in Rio de Janeiro. Through the production of an annual public security bulletin, visual design becomes a strategic instrument for counter-narrative construction and policy advocacy, demonstrating how graphics can function as tools of political resistance.

Sajith Gopinath introduces play as an epistemic device in participatory research with older adults, using both analog and digital tools to facilitate dialogue around ageing. His findings position playfulness not as entertainment but as a mechanism for fostering trust and co-creation within intergenerational communities.

A related emphasis on grassroots empowerment is evident in the work of Ana Correia, Bernardo Providência, Cristina Parente, Rita Madeira, and Teresa Alves Martins, whose collaboration with the ATPD association in rural Portugal demonstrates the transformative potential of interdisciplinary engagement. Their Human Rights Academy initiative exemplifies how design methodologies can intersect with social sciences and education to address systemic marginalization.

Rituals, Governance, and Cultural Transformation

The fourth section, Rituals and Politics, shifts attention to cultural practices and institutional dynamics. Ranjit Menon offers a critical account of Kochi’s unsuccessful attempt to gain UNESCO City of Design status, revealing how bureaucratic complexity and political misalignment can undermine ambitious civic initiatives. His contribution underscores the necessity of political literacy within design practice.

Exploring ritualized responses to death, Marja Kuronen, Mari Suoheimo, Anna-Maija Ohlsson, and Jonna Häkkilä analyze contemporary Finnish funeral practices. Their systems-oriented perspective reveals how institutional traditions can both support and constrain communal mourning, suggesting opportunities for service design to reimagine collective rituals.

Nilton Gonçalves Gamba Junior concludes the section with an investigation into the evolving symbolism of masks in Rio de Janeiro. Tracing their transformation from festive artifacts to politically charged objects, he demonstrates how design artifacts mediate tensions between collective identity and state authority.

Practices, Spaces, and Experimental Communities

The final section assembles eleven projects that bridge research and practice, demonstrating how community design unfolds across diverse contexts. Jan Rosskothen examines cruising as a spatial practice that reconfigures public space and challenges heteronormative urban structures. Franziska Wissel maps the infrastructural networks supporting Frankfurt’s Japanese diaspora, illustrating how businesses and cultural institutions sustain diasporic cohesion. Olga Touloumi revisits the spatial politics of the United Nations, revealing how architectural and communicative design shaped postcolonial negotiations and alternative worldmaking.

Mert Eyit documents queer club culture as fragile yet vital infrastructures of belonging. Susanne Wieland turns attention to non-human communities, examining ecological life emerging within
urban cracks. While Jonas Berger uncovers improvised design practices among incarcerated individuals, highlighting resilience within constrained environments.

Janka Csernák’s FRUSKA initiative empowers young girls through participatory maker education. Daniel Rese and Anton Viehl present radraum, a collaborative bicycle workshop that fosters
sustainable urban mobility and civic engagement. Sallar Shayegan introduces Soundhänger, a mobile sound-based infrastructure that activates public interaction. Whereas the UZUMUMBA Kiosk demonstrates participatory spatial governance through resident-led decision-making. Finally, David Martin Maurer-Laube, Zachary Mentzos, and Tom Bieling discuss their project SPEAK UP, a mobile Speakers’ Corner that revitalizes public discourse through open-source design.

Toward a Relational Design Paradigm

What might distinguish Community (&) Design from earlier compilations on participatory or social design is its insistence on relational depth rather than procedural novelty. The book repeatedly demonstrates that community engagement cannot be reduced to workshop formats or co-design toolkits. Instead, it requires sustained attention to infrastructures of trust, conflict, and negotiation.

Equally significant is the volume’s geographic breadth, spanning Europe, Latin America, and beyond. This diversity underscores the impossibility of universal design solutions while simultaneously revealing recurring patterns—particularly the centrality of care, dialogue, and shared authorship in resilient communities.

Tom Bieling, Wolfgang Jonas & Maria Cecilia Loschiavo dos Santos (2026):
Community (&) Design: Material, spatial, and Social Encounters. Mimesis International.
Design Meanings / Mimesis International, Milano / Sesto San Giovanni,
244 Pages,
ISBN (Print): 978-88-6977-513-0
ISBN (E-Book): 978-88-6977-546-8
Serie: Design Meanings, Band 4

Praise for the Book

“The book serves as a global handbook for designing with communities. This is the first reading
when your focal points are design and communities.”
Satu Miettinen, Professor of Service Design, University of Lapland

“Strong collections like this make clear that Social Design is now well beyond the ‘good intentions’
Ivan Illich criticised. Each chapter demonstrates that you need a creative critical framework to
evaluate your designing in relation to communities.”
Cameron Tonkinwise, Professor of Design Studies, University of Technology Sydney

“This book demonstrates just how important the lived experiences of designing, enabling and sustaining communities are. Through a rich array of perspectives the authors illustrate how design has the potential to help communities thrive. It is a manual for transformation.”
Craig Martin, Personal Chair of Interdisciplinary Design Studies, The University of Edinburgh