Autor(es): Dias, Nuno ; Chatterjee, Abhishek ; Branco, Vasco
Data: 2025
Identificador Persistente: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/44889
Origem: RIA - Repositório Institucional da Universidade de Aveiro
Assunto(s): Being-Centred Design; Existentialist approach; Providência’s Triangular Model; Design-centric methodologies; Speculative design.
This paper introduces Being-Centred Design (BCD) as a speculative approach that moves beyond prevalent user- and human-centred models towards a focus on human existence and profound experiences. Rooted in Providência’s triangular framework of authorship, programme, and technology, BCD advocates for an approach that balances practicality and existential meaning in creative production. At the core of BCD’s underlying theory lies the Spinozian concept of desire seen not as a deficiency but a generative force for shaping creation. It advocates a tripartite foundation of drawing, poetics/poiesis, and desire as drivers of design involving human, non-human and more-than-human dimensions. BCD is also informed by the existentialist notion of “Dasein” (being-there), which it articulates with desire and design as cornerstones, seeking to broaden design ontology, epistemology, practice, and pedagogy. Its existential outlook aids in interpreting and enacting theoretical principles in practical initiatives within a space of ‘poiesis’ which can be cognitive and/or physical, and where the poetics of making holds precedence. Design, within such framework, becomes a collaborative journey of self-exploration for practitioners, that is driven by affect, effect and continuum in sustainable creative cycles. The paper also outlines BCD’s positioning within transdisciplinary action research to test the real-world applicability of the emergent concepts.
