The Emancipatory Design Manifesto: Let's Suppose that Disability Does Not Exist

In this paper we present and propose the concept of Emancipatory Design (ED), which is an alternative way of thinking about the human being and the ever intricate relations between people, design, architecture and the built environment. The paper is given the form of a manifesto and has the overall aim to reflect critically on the possibility of design as a practice that potentially carry emancipatory effects in the everyday lives of particular human beings. Defining ED, we draw on notions from philosophy and the history of ideas to challenge the concept of human disability often at play in writings concerned with design and architecture. This approach allows for a provocative, disruptive and experimental attempt to relativize and cancel the notion of disability – and, subsequently, to explore the possibilities inherent to this maneuver in the realm of design thinking. With ED we propose a concept that works as a contribution to the community engaged in Universal Design (UD), as well as a gentle objection and critique of the abstract and intangible element of universality at play within this tradition.