project link: Unsustaining the Commodity-Machine: Commoning Practices in Postcapitalist Design

My thesis investigates contemporary product design projects that are emblematic of peer production, open source and maker movements. These everyday tools, building systems and industrial machines are designed, fabricated and operated by combining a variety of commoning practices, which produce shared value, as opposed to exchange value.

I identify three shared valorisation proceses: shared creation by Peer Designing, shared governance of Open Blueprints, and shared access to Maker Machines. All case studies manifest a productive tension between speculative discourses and prefigurative practices, synthesising creative work and political action. I discuss whether they constitute the counter-industrial means of production for a rapid postcapitalist transition, and by extension, a sustainable civilisation beyond the commodity-machine.