In professional design practice, design has been conceived a service performed in exchange for fees, but in its larger, longer history, design is a cultural practice enmeshed in custom, obligation and unwritten understandings. While widespread nuanced and complex systems of exchange have been articulated and theorised by scholars such as Marcel Mauss (“The Gift”), Georges Bataille (“general economy”) and Jean Baudrillard (“symbolic exchange”), design discourse has largely neglected to address their importance. With growing understanding of informal systems and their importance in crisis situations, the rise of new “wiki” models of internet-enabled exchange and the “sharing economy”, the call for broader understandings and richer models of design practice is more urgent than ever before.

This presentation of design projects and collaborations aims to shed light on the art of exchange in design practice, furthering discussion and understanding of how design projects can gain in strength and flexibility as they are passed around collaborators and exchanged across cultures.