In this anthology edited by architect Rafi Segal and artist Marisa Morán Jahn, Design and Solidarity: Conversations on Collective Futures features diverse perspectives from leading thinkers, designers, entrepreneurs, and activists who each evoke a powerful vision of society led by mutualism. As a pushback against notions of private gain, this mutualism—or collectivism—shifts focus towards new ways of shaping communal self-determination, wealth, and wellbeing. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, collectives were gaining momentum as a counterforce to the crisis of late capitalism, the exploitative gig economy, and stark economic precarity. With the onset of the global pandemic and social unrest, What is Ours examines the power of design in fortifying this new, emergent space carved between the private and public—a space constructed on trust, interdependence, and economic sovereignty. Offering timely and valuable critical, historical, and cultural analyses, Design and Solidarity translates these ideas into practical guidelines for action and design across disciplines and industries, urging its readers to recognize the resources we can offer each other.

Of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Morán Jahn is an artist whose work redistributes power, “exemplifying the possibilities of art as social practice” (Artforum). With the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Jahn created CareForce, a project that amplifies the voices of America’s fastest growing workforce, caregivers. CareForce includes two mobile studios (NannyVan, CareForce One), an app that CNN named as “one of five apps to change the world,” and a PBS/Sundance-supported film produced with Oscar and Emmy-winning filmmaker Yael Melamede. A Creative Capital awardee, Jahn’s work reaches wide audiences at Obama’s White House, the United Nations, New Museum, Creative Time, Tribeca Film Festival, New York Times, BBC, Univision, etc. Jahn is the founder of Studio REV—which codesigns public art and creative media with low-wage workers, immigrants, youth, and women. She has taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), The New School, and Columbia University.

Rafi Segal is an architect and associate professor of architecture and urbanism at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His work involves design and research on the architectural, urban and regional scale, currently focused on how emerging notions of collectivity can impact the design of buildings and cities. His current ongoing work includes designs for new communal neighborhoods in Israel, Boston, Rwanda, and the Philippines. Segal directs Future Urban Collectives, a new design-research lab at MIT that explores the relation between digital platforms and physical communities asking how architecture and urbanism can support and scale cohabitation, coproduction, and coexistence. Segal has exhibited his work at venues including the Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York; KunstWerk, Berlin; Witte de With, Rotterdam; Venice Biennale of Architecture; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Hong Kong/Shenzhen Urbanism Biennale. He holds a doctorate from Princeton University and a master’s of science and bachelor’s of architecture degree from Technion, Israel Institute of Technology.