Design in the Middle: A New Approach to Collaborative Socio-political Design in Conflict Areas

Abstract

Design in the Middle gathered together, for the first time, a group of designers and architects from around the Middle East/Euro-Med region in an extraterritorial place where they could engage in dialogue and perform collaborative processes over the course of one week. Working in five transdisciplinary groups, they generated alternative near-future scripts and design proposals to address challenges relevant to the Middle East, such as borders, religious diversity, migration, water and food sources. To enable large-scale collaborative teamwork, the project's design curators, two educators from the Middle East, applied an experimental methodological approach they coined "Problem Probing," a composite toolbox carefully incorporating diverse design practices and mentalities. The paper will present the composition of the first workshop, elaborate on the project's methodological and theoretical framework, and discuss its contribution to our future thinking about the socio-political role that design can claim as an instigator of public discussion outside the design realm.