11.2 Relationality as Reconciliation – Designing for Equiponderance

Corresponding Chairs

Gwendolyn Kulick, German University in Cairo 

Luis Garcia, Carnegie Mellon University

Co-Chairs

Felix Kosok, German International University, Berlin

Michael Hohl, Anhalt University of Applied Sciences

Juan Montalván Lume, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

Abstract

Relationality, the interdependence of all things, challenges supremacist thinking and systemic inequities, making it highly relevant for design. Collaborative practices grounded in collective inquiry can unite those directly affected by injustices with those holding decision-making power.

This track builds on pluriversal and anti-colonial design discourses, practices, and pedagogies. It aims to foster constructive connections between universal worldviews and other ways of seeing and making worlds, especially those of communities whose knowledge systems and creative practices have long been marginalized. These inequities continue to shape contemporary cultural, political, and economic interactions.

Meanwhile, many people feel disconnected from politics, misrepresented by governments, and excluded from public participation. Military conflicts, environmental crises, and social divisions deepen anxiety, amplified by unreliable information flows. Positions harden through rigid ideologies or simplistic solutionism, reinforcing polarization, exclusion, and supremacy. This raises a central question: How can design support reconciliation? 

To equiponderate — the guiding word for this track — means to counterbalance. We invite contributions that:

• Explore how design strategies and methods can mediate binaries and unjust power relations.

• Share approaches that foster mutual learning, peaceful coexistence, and constructive collective worldmaking.

• Present real-world interventions that support living together on equal terms and challenge unfair power dynamics.

• Offer strategies and methods for navigating insecurities and ambivalence without fueling extremism, including speculative scenarios for more reconciled living conditions.

• Put forward practices, equialtervalentes to design, that fulfill similar roles from other worlds while retaining their distinct ways of making and knowing.

Keywords

Equiponderance; Design Ontologies; Design for Reconciliation; Equialtervalentes; Pluriversality

References

Noel, L. A., Ruiz, A., van Amstel, F. M., Udoewa, V., Verma, N., Botchway, N. K., ... & Agrawal, S. (2023). Pluriversal futures for design education. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 9(2), 179-196.

Gutiérrez Borreo, A. (2022). Equialtervalentes: el diseño es el otro. La Tadeo DeArte 8(10), 008-038. https://doi.org/10.21789/24223158.1995

Leitão, R. (2020). Pluriversal design and desire-based design: Desire as the impulse for human flourishing.

Escobar, A. (2018). Designs for the pluriverse: Radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds. Duke University Press.

Escobar, A., Osterweil, M., & Sharma, K. (2024). Relationality: An emergent politics of life beyond the human. Bloomsbury Publishing.