The Relational Becoming of a Participatory Design Commoner
Sanna Marttila, Frederick M. C. van Amstel, Joanna Saad-Sulonen, Andrea Botero, Giacomo Poderi, Maurizio Teli, P.D. Commoner
Abstract
This research expands the understanding of the collective designer behind Scandinavian Participatory Design with the Latin American notion of relational ontology, which posits a worldview where everything and everyone are mutually constituted through evolving relationships. Drawing from three thematic workshops with design practitioners and scholars that explored intersections between commoning and designing, this research unveils the relational becoming of a participatory design commoner. This includes the production of a shared subjectivity—the collective designer—as integral to commoning design and designing commons. Specifically, we explore the role of participatory designers in commoning through their subjectivity in their infrastructuring actions and affective engagements with objective commons.