Public agencies for public questions, and systemically working in the gaps: the ArkDes case
On the role of design-led agencies that can work as cement between bricks, allowing systemic responses to systemic challenges, and in particular the case of ArkDes within Sweden’s research and innovation landscape
In my recent book Designing Missions, I frequently return to the idea that our complex shared challenges cannot be easily addressed by our typical democratic structures. The systemic nature of these challenges means that the well-insulated silos in, for example, the Swedish governance frameworks, enshrined in constitutions and founding documents, and baked into organisational culture, do not—perhaps cannot—address problems, or opportunities, that now awkwardly sit in the cracks between these structures.
That this applies to the most pressing, and interesting, challenges—such as the climate and biodiversity crises, or those of social justice, public health, and diverse cultural identities—does not make it any more likely that our institutions can suture together their activities and ambits to address widening wounds in environmental and social fabric. These challenges arrive unheeded in mundane everyday incursions…
