Metaphors, hybridity, failure and work: a sympathetic appraisal of Transitional Design

This paper attempts to provide a sympathetic and productive critique of the program of transition design as is. Notably, four issues are pressed. (1) To what extent can complex systems theory help designers understand the irreducibly political and historical features of our socio-ecological worlds? (2) How can designers follow the injunction to recover "authentic" communal relations in a world that is co-extensively hybrid in form and creation? (3) What can be learn from the history of radical design as a history of failure? (4) Where does work and production fit into a transition design imaginary that is primarily focused on civil society and everyday life?