What is design and what difference can it make in our lives? The traditional perspective of the Global North is that design shapes things to make them more attractive to consumers, easier to manufacture and use, and to generate market value. However, it is just as much a matter of creation linked to change – a way to protest against injustices, or to comment on the current social order. How design is understood, practised and consumed affects the possibility of challenging dominant power structures, which over time have themselves determined what design is, could be and should be.

Design Stories – New Perspectives on a Collection is published in connection with the Röhsska Museum’s new permanent exhibition. Through essays, conversations and visual essays, a range of designcritical issues are discussed, reflecting on the roles of both design and the museum in society.

Contributors include prominent curators, academics, designers and journalists, all of whom have been active figures in Sweden and the Nordic region, including: Anton Alvarez, Hanna Nova Beatrice, Michael S. Bekele, Thomas Cubbin, Selam Fessahaye, Marcia Harvey Isaksson, Dan Hill, Onkar Kular, Madelaine Levy and Christina Zetterlund.