Sheida Amiri Rigi

This research looks at how Design as a field of practice maintains coherence over time, examining its continuities and discontinuities. The objective is to investigate how particular distributions of difference and power are reproduced through Design; how assumptions underlying practitioners’ understanding of Design and the legitimate boundaries of its objects and subjects play a role in maintaining those distributions; and how we might transform this dynamic toward greater justice and responsibility in the field. While drawing on an extended definition of Design, the project pays particular attention to Industrial Design, and by engaging insights from Crip, Queer, and Feminist theories, it examines the nonlinear nature of access to and through the built environment.