Before We Begin Again: A Designers First Trace of Inheritance as Introduction.
Rethinking Design Inheritance in a Century of Complexity.
There’s a quiet weight to inheritance. Not only in what is passed down, but in what is assumed to be worth preserving. Sometimes, we inherit tools and ideas with reverence. Sometimes, we inherit problems disguised as solutions. And sometimes—perhaps most dangerously—we inherit without questioning.
In the 1960s, the Design Methods Movement asked a radical question: What if we were to make obsolete the industrial processes of the 19th century that were too limited for the 20th? With optimism buoyed by post-war reconstruction and systems theory, pioneers like Rittel, Archer, and Alexander sought to replace Victorian modes of production with scientific, systemic thinking. They weren’t just refining the technology of thought—they were trying to reinvent the very logic of its assembly. Their question wasn’t one of iteration, but of obsolescence.
Today, does that question echo louder than ever? —except this time, it's directed at the entrenched mechanisms of the 20th century: the ways we design, think, and structure creativity itself. Processes like design thinking—once a liberatory impulse—have become industrialised, commodified, and formatted for efficiency and scalability. What began as a method to democratise creativity and invite participation has, perhaps in many ways, calcified into corporate dogma. Diagrams are polished. Steps are clear. Promises are market-tested. Let's repeat.
| But has something vital been lost in the process?
In the attempt to package creativity for scale, we risk severing it from its deeper contexts—its messiness, its relationality, its constant ambiguity. Innovation has become a product, churned through predictable stages, optimised not for care or consequence, but for speed and return. It is as if design itself has been pre-fabricated.
But perhaps something isn’t quite working. And are we starting to really feel that?
A slow crisis of meaning simmers beneath the glossy surface of “solutions.” Designers are caught in a contradiction: solving problems for systems that often create them, advocating for change within institutions designed to resist it. Are we sketching blueprints for a house that has already burnt down? I wonder.
So what are we designing for? More importantly—what are we designing from?
From Industrial Linearity to Ecological Inheritance.
The 20th century was a century of confidence. We believed problems could be defined, ordered, and solved. That the future could be engineered. That control was not just possible, but preferable. This linear industrial logic gave birth to user-centred design, divergent and convergent thinking, and eventually, wave after wave of scalable toolkits.
But we now live in an entangled century—marked by crises of climate, inequality, mental health, algorithmic opacity, artificial intelligence, and cultural pluralism (not to mention the political landscape at the moment. Lets not go there just yet). These are not problems with endpoints; they are conditions to live with, adapt to, and at times, resist. Is it any wonder our old tools feel insufficient?
Design today must move beyond solutionism. Beyond human-centredness, even. What would it mean to centre ecosystems, ancestors, descendants—not just “users”? How might we design from a position of humility rather than economic dominance? How might we embrace ambiguity as a teacher, rather than treat it as a hurdle to efficiency?
A Cosmic Perspective.
Zooming out: the industrial era is a blip. Our tools, factories, and frameworks emerged barely two and a half centuries ago. Meanwhile, Earth has been "designing" for 4.5 billion years. Coral reefs, fungal networks, migratory flows—these are design systems refined across epochs, not quarters. Perhaps design’s future lies not in accelerating toward the next product or platform, but in slowing down to learn from the cosmic processes already at play.
This is not romanticism (maybe a little). It is systems thinking at planetary scale.
Design, if taken seriously, is a civilisational act. It encodes values, generates culture, and shapes how we relate to one another— even at the edges. As such, we might ask: What kind of futures are our methods making possible? And at what cost?
What weaves of life are we reinforcing? What timelines are we honouring—those of a fiscal year, or those across land, time and generations yet to come? What stories are we continuing, and which ones are we unknowingly—or more likely knowingly—silencing? Are we designing for human development through a cosmic lens, or merely tinkering at the surface? Are our tools scaled to the depth of change that this planetary experience now asks of us?
If design is a civilisational act, then it is also a cosmic one—an offering to the vast, unfolding story of life. What do we want that offering to be?
Rethinking Design Education.
If design is to evolve, education must evolve with it—perhaps even lead it.
Yet much of design education remains shaped by industrial logics: structured around deliverables, portfolios, and client briefs, rather than curiosity, experimentation, and reflection. It teaches method over mindset. Process over presence. Outcomes over understanding. We ask students to “innovate,” yet often assess them by how well they mimic.
| What would it mean to educate for emergence, not just employment? For uncertainty, not just outcomes?
Design schools must become laboratories of reflection—places where futures are not just prototyped but questioned. Where dominant Western design narratives meet indigenous, diasporic, and non-linear traditions. Where students aren’t trained to serve industry, but to challenge its assumptions. and then move to evolve the industry currently in play. True design literacy in the 21st century requires an awareness of context, power, and time. It must teach students to think with their hands—and feel through their experiences. This is not about replacing one canon with another. It is about inviting plurality. Cultivating discernment. Making space for the sacred and the speculative.
As designers and educators, we do not simply transmit knowledge. We pass on frames—ways of seeing, being, and doing. More than anything, we pass down tools—some outdated, some essential—for interpreting and intervening in the world. We are not just mentors or advisors; we are custodians of inheritance, a design inheritance. The question is not only what kind of designers—and humans—we’re shaping, but also what design legacies we’re preparing the next generation to become, but also what kind of design legacies we are equipping them to inherit, reshape, or retire
Toward an Inheritance Worth Having.
It’s easy to discard what’s old. But the real challenge lies in discerning what still serves and what must be left to rest. This article is a first trace—a stepping stone into what I hope becomes a longer inquiry. I also hope it invites you, dear reader, to pause, reflect, and engage.
If the 20th century gave us the means to mass-produce and scale, what does the 21st give us? An optimist might think that perhaps the 21st century might offer us the means to reconnect—with land, with time, with each other. A pessimist might think that its already all over, and AI has already taken that job from us. However, Design needs more than new tools; it needs new sensibilities. New myths. New ways of thinking that honour provenance without being bound by it. And not being fearful of the uncertainties that grip our present existence. If one thing has become clear in my experience, it is this: we are no longer just designers of things. We are designers of relationships. Of co-existences across a multitude of realities.
So—perhaps we have reached the moment to obsolete the industrial processes of the 20th century. Not because they failed, but because the questions and landscape have inherently changed.
Looking Forward.
For me this is a new starting point, and direction. I hope through further writings, musings, and projects to continue to examine Design’s evolving role but also turn toward the plurality of perspectives that co-exist across inheritance, cosmos, regeneration, and placemaking within Design. Rather than narrowing into method, these explorations will open into viewpoint: inviting voices that dwell in slowness, calling us to design not in service of clarity, but in pursuit of coherence with the living systems we are part of.
Some places I wish to venture:
Belonging, placemaking, and plurality of planetary experiences.
Design as cosmological consciousness, perspective, and imperative.
Mindset over method, embedding regenerative thought as response.
Who wants to come with? I welcome your reflections, contradictions, and provocations. Let this be an invitation. A slow beginning. A shared unfolding.
