Yael Eylat Van-Essen PhD – Curator / Researcher

Designing for Resilience – A Critical View

The beginning of the 21^st century is characterised by a high degree of uncertainty resulting from the unpredictable and destructive forces of both natural disasters and human activities. To a large extent, it is an outcome of a new reality based on networked mediated systems that transform the paradigm of pre-structures organisations with complex systems comprised of artificial edifices and living organisms whose performance cannot always be predicted. As a result, the concept of resilience has been increasingly used to address a renewed sense of agency in states of crisis, conflicts and uncertainty. As referring to ‘the ability of a system to cope with shock or trauma without collapsing, while efficiently adapting itself to new situations through complex processes of learning,’ resilience is considered an ideal to aspire to and as a manifestation of personal and communal strength. 

New technologies and scientific developments have transformed resilience into an operational strategy in the last decades. Contemporary tools used for this purpose are based on intelligent systems that can monitor and process information from various sources, identify action patterns through deep learning, and link between different ontological fields. The resilience indices developed in the framework of these systems connect body and mind, ecology and urban infrastructures, public and private, security and military apparatus, and civic organizations. Yet, these means are grounded on parametric systems that maintain the principles of efficiency and optimization, and in many contexts, reflect the values of neoliberal economics and governance.

Design plays a significant role in this context. On the one hand, it can take part in normalizing states of uncertainty and instability by applying solutions based on flexibility and adaptability while maintaining neoliberal existing power structures. On the other hand, design can function as a liberating force while offering new operative solutions. The proposed paper critically analyses the implications and potentialities of using different design methodologies to confront the current reality.