The Paradox

Contemporary design finds itself in a paradoxical situation: as it broadens its critical vocabulary and strengthens its academic role, the act of designing itself becomes less prominent. The discipline has focused on examining its own foundations and has turned this reflective ability into a mark of institutional development. The number of conferences, publications, and exhibitions grows, offering increasingly refined analyses. The richness of discourse now serves as a measure of significance.

Meanwhile, making has entered an unstable domain. Every object is seen as a concentration of energy flows, labor systems, and global financial networks. Systemic understanding has grown with historical context. Design is no longer just about aesthetic composition or technical solutions; it now embeds itself within a complicated political economy. Formal choices come before the form itself and are presented as a strategic stance.

In this scenario, critique provides a relatively stable zone because conducting analysis involves significantly less exposure than reorganizing material, negotiating infrastructures, or bearing the consequences of decisions embedded in concrete production chains. As a result, distance transforms into symbolic capital, and practical uselessness gradually gains moral significance. This logic becomes internalized by the discipline, which reproduces it effortlessly: the further away from production networks, the stronger the perceived ethical integrity.

Meanwhile, infrastructures keep being designed, digital platforms reshape behaviours, and technical devices continue to redistribute capacities for action in daily life. The material recomposition of the world has its own rhythm and does not require any theoretical approval to move forward; when design steps back from creation, the reorganization of material networks simply proceeds through other actors.

The paradox is clear: a field focused on material mediation now prioritizes distance from its ability to intervene. The problem isn’t critique itself, which remains essential, but that analysis has taken over the role that was once held by active creation.

The Institutional Displacement

The unification of design within the university signaled a significant shift. As design transitioned from being solely a professional practice to a field of research, it adopted an academic regime of legitimation—featuring departments, doctoral programs, conferences, indexed journals, and productivity metrics. Design started generating knowledge about itself using the same institutional framework that underpins other well-established disciplines.

This process aligned with the growth of the creative industries and the rise of global financialisation. As a result, designers began operating within three distinct spheres, each governed by different value regimes: the competitive market, academia, and the cultural system. Each sphere rewards different skills—efficiency and uniqueness in the market, theoretical problem-solving in universities, and critical engagement within cultural systems. The discipline rapidly adapted to navigate these various regimes.

Movements like critical design, speculative design, and design fiction reinforce this shift by moving the project from a specific commission to exploring potential futures. The artifact serves as a trigger for discussion in curatorial and academic settings, rather than being part of the production process.

A hybrid figure thus arises—the designer-researcher-curator—whose project moves beyond being just a practical solution, transforming into a case study, conceptual prototype, or speculative device. Material creation continues to be involved, often serving as part of an argument, so that the object’s value mainly stems from the thesis it endorses.

The growth of cognitive capitalism amplifies this trend by reallocating value to the creation of signs, narratives, and experiences, where design regains its importance. In this environment, critical discourse seamlessly fits into the symbolic economy: it circulates, gets indexed, secures funding, and turns condemnation into content.

The main issue is structural rather than moral: when the focus of the field shifts mainly to commentary, which ability for material reconfiguration starts to weaken?

Ontology of Making

Design involves more than just technical work; it acts as a form of material inscription that reorganizes relationships. In Reassembling the Social, Bruno Latour explains that the social arises from the connections between human and non-human actants, rejecting the idea of a preexisting structure that dictates actions. An object does not merely symbolize an intention; it temporarily stabilizes a network. A door with a hydraulic spring changes gestures and rhythms of passage; a digital form shifts authority and focus; a graphic system structures hierarchies and modes of recognition. Each form of mediation reshapes the range of possible interactions.

The project functions as an ontological act: it establishes connections, reinforces some relations, weakens others, and shapes temporalities and potential futures. The formal choice comes before moral judgment; it sets the conditions. Designing involves acknowledging that every material inscription generates effects beyond initial control, accumulating as part of the infrastructure.

This infrastructure does not have an inherent ethical stance. It can either broaden options for action or reinforce existing dependencies. The very tools that enable access might also centralize power. The nature of creation carries no moral salvation; instead, it entails a structural obligation.

In La Part Maudite, Georges Bataille presents a key insight: life tends to revolve around excess rather than mere scarcity. Societies constantly generate surplus energy that needs to be expelled. The real issue in history is not only how this surplus is produced but also where it ends up. Even when production halts temporarily, expenditure persists because existence inherently involves consuming, transforming, and dissipating energy. Additionally, disciplinary critique can be seen as a form of symbolic expenditure. Purity does not eliminate expenditure; it simply shifts how it is reconfigured.

In this context, designing isn’t simply about choosing to act or stay unchanged. Refusal itself plays a role in the excess. The real question is how this surplus manifests itself physically.

In L’irrealizzabile. Per una politica dell’ontologia, Giorgio Agamben introduces an additional dimension: each act that is realized contains a potential that ceases to actualize. Material inscription both stabilizes a specific configuration and closes off other possibilities. Making shapes and also boundaries. Politics arises in how this potential is managed—being involved in choosing between possible worlds that cannot all exist simultaneously.

The ontology of creation thus operates within a tension between inclusion and exclusion, between openness and closure. Designing involves acting within a complex network, reallocating available options and recognizing that each choice results in the loss of other possibilities. This irreversible process embodies its inherent political significance.

When the discipline stops creating, it abandons this fundamental realm of existence. Analysis still holds interpretative power, but material reorganization happens on its own. The focus then moves from the purity of positioning to the quality of the connections formed.

The vital growth of design occurs within the infrastructures that support its dissemination. Books, indexed journals, international conferences, research grants, and curated exhibitions serve as tangible economic instruments. Design theory functions as a specialized cultural asset, gaining prestige, funding, and career advancement. Critical discourse is fully embedded in the current system of value.

The Illusion of Exteriority

The critique of capitalism emerges within institutions supported by tuition fees, foundations, and corporate partnerships. Texts that challenge the market are published, distributed, and consumed using the same editorial practices that organize other cultural products. In doing so, critique becomes part of the very cognitive economy it seeks to analyze.

Critical design is not an outer part of the system; rather, it acts as a complex form of productive self-reflection within it. Today’s capitalism shows a strong ability to absorb questioning, transform criticism into symbolic worth. Problematization turns into content, refusal into differentiation, and purity into a brand.

A structural symmetry becomes evident: applied design is directly involved in creating commodities, whereas critical design focuses on generating meaning and cultural value. Both function within the same economic framework, though each uses different methods of legitimation. Applied design relies on stabilising rhetoric such as innovation, sustainability, and efficiency to establish its market position; in contrast, critical design employs a rhetoric of moral distance. In both scenarios, the core process involves crafting justification.

The concept of exteriority often functions as a convenient rhetorical device: while distance can symbolize completeness, the underlying structural significance continues to be in effect. All practices operate within the economic networks shaping late modernity, where the distinction between inside and outside is emphasized in a way that hides the main issue.

Attention then shifts to a different level, focusing on the material and symbolic redistributions caused by each practice, the dependencies they reinforce, and the opportunities for action they create. The previously held position becomes less central; more importance is given to the effects resulting from interventions.

When the discipline links distance with virtue, focus shifts from consequences to identity. Analysis slowly replaces composition, and although critique becomes more interpretively sophisticated, the real reorganization of infrastructures happens elsewhere.

Operative Commitment

Assuming that structural implications imply responsibility, each practice exists within the economic and technical networks that shape the present. This raises the key question of how to intervene within these networks. Design reestablishes coherence by accepting this condition as its starting point.

Operative commitment refers to a practice that recognizes the materiality of decisions, where production chains, logistical infrastructures, energy regimes, and legal frameworks are integral parts of the project’s architecture. Each intervention acts as a micro-reconfiguration of existing relations, bringing about incremental changes that add up over time.

Transition design functions within the space between structure and potential. Instead of aiming for complete disruption, it focuses on gradually recomposing tangible actors such as local suppliers, regenerative materials, decentralized production systems, shared ownership models, and visual tools that reinforce local economies. This transformation occurs through ongoing adjustments, mainly impacting infrastructure rather than creating spectacles.

This practice entails an ongoing tension, as every decision involves balancing different interests, technical limitations, and economic constraints. In this tangible realm lies the political aspect of design, where values shift from mere declaration to being embedded in the physical matter.

The key criterion now moves beyond positioning purity to focus on the level of effective reorganization resulting from the intervention. Critique serves a guiding role, whereas making is where decisions lead to irreversible outcomes. Designing reallocates action capacities, understanding that each setup creates specific opportunities and limits others.

Design becomes more substantial by embracing the risks involved in material inscription, as transformation seldom has an aura and mainly shows itself through ongoing changes to infrastructures, contracts, circuits, and devices. Commitment is demonstrated through active engagement within this network of forces, emphasizing implication over the illusion of exteriority.