Conference Agenda
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PAPERS: Hope & Imagination Location: Appleton Tower, LT5 Zoom Link Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/the-university-of-edinburgh/central-area/access-guides/appleton-lecture-theatre-5-edinburgh Session Chair: Scott Schmidt, Georgetown University Session Chair: Sabine Junginger, Northumbria University | |
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Holding paradoxes together: Navigating institutional complexity in public design 1: School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University, United States; 2: Department of Public Administration and Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands This paper explores the evolving practice of design in the public sector. To do so, we initiated a reading group that brought together academics and practitioners from around the globe to discuss how public design is understood and practiced in different contexts. The common thread across the six reading groups held so far was that public design is inherently paradoxical. Three core paradoxes appear to characterize its practice: the identity paradox (blending in to stand out), the enablement paradox (constraining design by enabling it), and the political paradox (designing apolitically while designing politically). These paradoxes highlight the need for strategic agility in public design—the ability to hold contradictions in creative tension. Methodologically, the paper positions the reading group as a generative approach for transnational, dialogic research that bridges scholarship and practice. Taken together, the study contributes to ongoing debates on the pitfalls and possibilities of advancing public design. View Paper: https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1405
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