Designing Peace: Building a Better Future Now

Designing Peace asks, how might we collectively put our creative forces together to envision a future we want to live in and take action to create it now? This book is an intersectional snapshot of the actions—culturally diverse and wide-ranging in scale—that are currently in play around the world. Offering perspectives on peace through essays, interviews, critical maps, project profiles, data visualizations, and art, this book conveys the momentum that design can gain in effecting a peace-filled future. From activists, scholars, and architects to policymakers, graphic, game, and landcape designers, Desiging Peace flips the conversation: peace is not simply a passive state signifying the absence of war, it is a dynamic concept that requires effort, expertise, and multi-dimensional solutions to address its complexity. Designers engage with individuals, communities, and organizations to create a more sustainable peace—from creative confrontations that challenge existing structures, to designs that demand embracing justice and truth in a search for reconciliation. This publication aims to expand the discourse on what is possible if society were to design for peace.