Abstract
At a time of intersecting planetary, social, and epistemic crises, design philosophy must confront a central question: whose investigative ideas and knowledge count? This theme track, Amplifying the unheard, challenges the consolidation of design philosophy into predominantly North Atlantic and Anglophone frameworks. Rather than stabilising the field, it seeks to reconfigure it as a plural, contested, and situated space shaped by diverse cosmologies, practices, and epistemologies. The contributions gathered here move beyond inclusion toward transformation, foregrounding Indigenous, decolonial, posthuman, and practice-based approaches that reconfigure design’s conceptual and ethical conditions. Together, they demonstrate that amplifying unheard voices is not merely additive, but constitutive of new ways of thinking, teaching, and practising design philosophy.
Keywords
design philosophy; decoloniality; epistemic justice; plurality
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.175
Citation
Secomandi, F., Portugal, D., Tassinari, V., and d'Anjou, P. (2026) Design philosophy: Amplifying the unheard, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.175
Creative Commons License
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Included in
Design philosophy: Amplifying the unheard
At a time of intersecting planetary, social, and epistemic crises, design philosophy must confront a central question: whose investigative ideas and knowledge count? This theme track, Amplifying the unheard, challenges the consolidation of design philosophy into predominantly North Atlantic and Anglophone frameworks. Rather than stabilising the field, it seeks to reconfigure it as a plural, contested, and situated space shaped by diverse cosmologies, practices, and epistemologies. The contributions gathered here move beyond inclusion toward transformation, foregrounding Indigenous, decolonial, posthuman, and practice-based approaches that reconfigure design’s conceptual and ethical conditions. Together, they demonstrate that amplifying unheard voices is not merely additive, but constitutive of new ways of thinking, teaching, and practising design philosophy.