Utopian, Molecular and Sociological Social Design
Ilpo Koskinen, Gordon Hush · RADAR (Glasgow School of Art) · 2016
Social design has a history that goes back several decades. Following Victor Margolin’s recent work, social design has been animated by utopic visions that inspire it and gives it its raison d'être. These utopic visions have had their roots variously in technology, architecture, or politics. In this paper, we argue that there are also new forms of social design that are not utopic, but build on other premises. We distinguish two new forms, molecular social design, and sociological social design. The former is happy to change society one step at the time without a larger vision. The latter builds on sociological theory and targets through it those social structures that reproduce social inequalities by maintaining practices that lead to those inequalities. Our example of molecular social design is Katja Soini’s IKE project in Helsinki, Finland; while our example of sociological social design examines the Design Innovation & Citizenship program in Glasgow, Scotland and its engagement with a remote island community.