The book

Is contemporary design failing us?

In an era defined by cascading crises, from ecological collapse to profound social inequality, prevailing design paradigms often feel inadequate, complicit in the very systems driving unsustainability. Dr. Gonzalo Raineri Bernain's Symbiotic Design Framework offers a radical, theoretically robust alternative for academics, researchers, and advanced practitioners seeking to fundamentally reorient the discipline.

This seminal work introduces a groundbreaking proposition: Design as an autopoietic (self-creating) social system. Drawing rigorously from systems biology (Maturana, Varela), cybernetics, and sociology (Luhmann), Raineri argues that design sustains and evolves itself through its own internal operations. Understanding this self-producing nature is crucial for intervening effectively.

The framework provides a powerful diagnostic and strategic lens built on the biological concept of symbiosis. It moves beyond analyzing isolated components to evaluating the relationships between them. Are they mutualistic, parasitic, commensal? This relational analysis is guided by the framework's non-negotiable ethical core: the "Four Mottos":

• Ethics: The foundational pursuit of collective flourishing (Eudaimonia) and justice for all beings, informed by pluriversal perspectives.
• Sustainability: An ethical obligation for intergenerational and inter-species equity, demanding regenerative practices.
• Social Responsibility: An active commitment to equity, dignity, challenging systemic injustice, and collective liberation.
• Economics: Reframed as an ethical pursuit of shared prosperity and fundamental needs fulfillment, rejecting purely extractive models.

Key conceptual tools include:

• Seven Interdependent Components: Humans (Who?), Commissions (Why?), Observations (Based on What?), Procedures (How?), Partners (With Whom?), Technology (With What?), Outcomes (What?).
• Three Operational Dimensions: Mapping activity across the self-producing Core, the interactive Frontier, and the contextual Environment.
• Tame vs. Wicked Problems Distinction: A critical diagnostic for navigating complexity.
• Engagement with Time: Understanding design's operation within past legacies, present flux, and future responsibilities.

The Symbiotic Design Framework challenges practitioners to move beyond designing mere objects or optimizing flawed systems. It demands a shift towards stewarding living relationships over time, consciously engaging with design as an inherently political act, and actively countering the extractive logics of the Capitalocene. It is a call to embrace complexity, pluriversality, and ethical courage.

Intended for design theorists, doctoral researchers, educators, and high-level practitioners, this book also offers invaluable insights for professionals in systems thinking, sustainability, social innovation, policy, and any field grappling with wicked problems and seeking transformative, ethically grounded approaches. It is not another methodology; it is a fundamental recalibration of the design discipline itself.

• 231 Terms and Concepts listed.
• 177 Authors and Thinkers mentioned.
• 161 examples listed, 35 of them with images.