Summary
Autonomous design is design done by a community for itself, on its own terms, in support of its own way of living. The term is the Colombian anthropologist Arturo Escobar’s, from ‘Designs for the Pluriverse’ (2018). He starts from the observation that most design, from consumer goods to buildings, now serves capitalist ends, and argues for an alternative that is collaborative, rooted in place and grounded in the interdependence of all beings.
The idea isn’t his alone. Escobar ties its principles to the decolonial struggles of Indigenous and Afro-descended peoples in Latin America, whose practice of autonomy holds far more than a design method.
Rationale
A check on our own ambitions. If contexts form dispositions, it matters who designs the contexts. Escobar’s answer is the people who live in them, the opposite of work that “imposes itself top-down”.