The concept of the Pluriverse refers to a world where many worlds fit. But what is pluriversal design? While it has been used as a synonym for initiatives around diversity, equity, and inclusion, this track argues that pluriversal frameworks represent a distinct paradigm — in contrast with the universal design paradigm. These two paradigms, while important in their own right, deal with diversity and plurality in fundamentally different ways. The term ‘universal’ is grounded in the belief that we all live in one single world, with one right (or “developed”) way to live, with a dominant narrative in which the main characters have been affluent white men from the Global North. The universal paradigm is about convergence, normalization – and sometimes assimilation, othering, exotification, or tokenism. Within this paradigm, designers strive to cater to multiple cultures and diverse users, reduce deficits, increase access, and include marginalized perspectives – e.g., making people of color play significant roles in the dominant world narrative without transforming the underlying plot. The term ‘pluriversal’ recognizes there are many possible ways of being and world-making — multiple worlds and alternative narratives exist, and people from diverse cultures and geographies are struggling to enable alternative plots to flourish. Therefore, a pluriversal design paradigm is grounded in divergence. Pluriversal designers focus on, for instance, societal transformation, self-determination of local communities, alternative ways of world-building, and the interdependence of all beings. This track welcomes papers that explore this conversation/argument or how pluriversal frameworks can be manifested/nourished/encouraged in design practice.

In 2020, Europe announced the New European Bauhaus (NEB). While the initiative intends to achieve EU sustainability goals, framing it under the name of the Bauhaus brings various challenges and issues to the fore. In this article, we analyze the critiques of the original Bauhaus and the NEB to understand the challenges that the NEB lighthouse project Bauhaus of the Seas Sails (BoSS) inherits by adhering to the Bauhaus vision and name. We unveil the problematic dynamics of Eurocentric modernity's myths of universalism and better living through technology and on the Bauhaus's and NEB's position in global power structures. Instead of assuming a tabula rasa approach and replicating problematic structures unknowingly, we bring these three aspects to BoSS to find questions as orientation points to help steer away from problematic aspects inherited by reanimating the Bauhaus name and its legacy. 

Contemporary Industrial Design, as professional and academic practice, exists intertwined with the global hegemonic power structures of coloniality (Buckley 1986; Escobar 2018a; Mareis and Paim 2020). Problematizing this situatedness, the effort of Decolonizing Design emerges as a twofold effort: first to unlink it from this structure, opening up for diverse understandings of Design and, second, to remove oppressive behaviors from Design. In this paper we present a decolonial intervention in an Industrial Design education in the Global North as an exploration of how to shift Design towards decolonial emancipation. From this project, we suggest the categories of listening, learning, and loving as guidelines for decolonizing Design. We conclude arguing that the work necessary to dismantle Design as we know it and explore decolonial directions demands that we continually work to break and counterbalance the allegiance to its Eurocentrism and oppressive ways of working.