Designers are carers, but they might not see themselves this way. Everything they design has the potential to enhance the wellbeing of others. The book, Care and Design: Bodies, Buildings, Cities takes this perspective.
Imrie and Kullman (editors) are interested in the intersection of design and care and the ways caring is expressed through design practice. They suggest that care should be considered from a societal perspective. It’s not something to be considered separately. Hence designers, among others, are potential carers in the broader sense.They discuss what makes good urban form and how easy it is to create “misfits that limit the caring potential of everyday environments”.
Their chapter, Designing with Care and Caring with Design is available on ResearchGate. The book is published by Wiley. Understanding the notion of care from this broader perspective is another way of understanding universal design. It shows how universal design is an attitudinal concept and more than just resolving inclusion issues in the design process.
Table of Contents
- Designing with care and caring with design. Rob Imrie and Kim Kullman
- Age-inclusive design: a challenge for kitchen living. Sheila Peace
- Curating space, choreographing care: the efficacy of the everyday. Daryl Martin
- ‘I don’t care about places’: the whereabouts of design in mental health care. Ola Söderström
- The sensory city: autism, design and care. Joyce Davidson and Victoria L. Henderson
- Configuring the caring city: ownership, healing, openness. Charlotte Bates, Rob Imrie, and Kim Kullman
- ‘Looking after things’: caring for sites of trauma in post-earthquake Christchurch, New Zealand. Jacky Bowring
- Empathy, design and care – intention, knowledge and intuition: the example of Alvar Aalto. Juhani Pallasmaa
- Architecture, place and the ‘care-full’ design of everyday life. Jos Boys
- Ageing, Care and the Practice of Urban Curating. Sophie Handler
- Caring through design: En torno a la silla and the ‘joint problem-making’ of technical aids. Tomás Sánchez Criado and Israel Rodriguez-Giralt
- Design and the art of care: engaging the more than human and less than inhuman. Michael Schillmeier
- Afterword: Caring urban futures. Charlotte Bates and Kim Kullman