Henric Benesch

Institutioning: Participatory Design, Co-Design and the public realm

Abstract In this introductory article to the special issue ‘Co-Design and the public realm’, we discuss a common interest in how meso- and macro-political institutional contexts frame and are informed by Participatory Design (PD) and Co-Design processes. We argue that a unilateral focus within PD and Co-Design on the micro-political scale of fieldwork obscures interactivity with institutional framing processes, undermining their potential as sites of critique and political change. Our argument is drawn from a study of literature on the role of institutions in relation to PD and the public realm and our experience as participants in an EU-funded research project. The case study descriptions unpack how various institutional frames inform PD processes and how, conversely, PD processes inform various institutional frames: metacultural frames, institutional action frames and policy frames. To highlight the move to engaging with and creating new institutions, we introduce the notion of institutioning.

Co-Design and the public realm

Co-Design’s engagement with the public realm is rooted in an activist tradition aspiring to increase democratic participation of diverse societal groups in design activities related to public space, services, systems or policy. This is partly due to its historical relationship with the Scandinavian tradition of Participatory Design (PD) which developed in the 1970s and shared concerns and values with labour unions in emancipating workers at the workplace (Bannon and Ehn 2012, 39; Lenskjold, Olander, and Halse 2015). However, since the rise of the Post-Fordist era, Co-Design’s engagement has changed due to the influence of increasing globalisation, flexibility, rapid technological developments, increasingly specialised and competitive markets and the associated transformation of social conditions (Boudry et al. 2003, 43). Many traditional aspects of the public domain—such as mobility or communication infrastructure—shifted to the private domain, resulting in progressively more complex relations with governance and regulation (Christopherson 1994; Davis 1990; Graham and Marvin 1994; Harvey 1994). In short, in a Post-Fordist context, designing takes place across previously delineated and contrasting spheres (or economic sectors, city borders, socio-political collectives and discourses), such as public/private, work/leisure, local/global—the boundaries between which become increasingly blurred and eradicated. In Design for The Real World (1971), Papanek saw the pursuit of social change and engagement with the market as incompatible activities. Post-Fordism has erased prior distinctions to such a degree that Co-Design, as a method of bringing together a wide range of actors to identify and develop possible futures, is today being applied in disparate fields—to improve labour relations, to increase consumption and in political activism, for instance. In this mixed context it is not unusual that Co-Design can act as a conduit for market forces and other forms of private interest. This has again intensified the discourse within Co-Design on the political and the public realm—though in different ways than in the 1970s—and prompted us to raise the following questions, which are addressed in this special issue: