These repurposed vests had been abandoned along with thousands of others by migrants who had successfully made the treacherous eight-mile (twelve-kilometer) voyage across the Aegean Sea from Turkey. Collected by island residents, they testify to the courage needed to leave one’s home—to flee conflict, persecution, and poverty—and embark on an uncertain journey in search of safety and a better future.

Beyond welcoming signage, I could see busy open-air workshops, people heading to medical and legal clinics, living quarters surrounded by gardens, gathering spaces with sheltering tree canopies, and buildings emblazoned with large murals. In 2012, when refugees began arriving—five thousand a day at the peak—local residents took over an empty former children’s summer camp called Pipka and established an open refugee camp in solidarity with the new arrivals.^[2] Over the following eight years, it provided a dignified reception for the most vulnerable and offered medical and legal assistance along with language and job training for refugees and locals alike.^[3]

The Pipka solidarity camp exemplifies the efforts of a growing global movement to counter mounting discord and uncertainty and envision and build a far more peaceful future. From neighborhoods to global networks, people are challenging institutions and structures forged through inequity, injustice, and dominance, and they are using the principles, strategies, and practices of design to do so.^[4] They are researching and modeling another world, one with inclusive, participatory societies that value equity, justice, creativity, and mutual cooperation, that respect our interdependent living and nonliving ecosystems, that are free from danger, exclusion, violence, and fear, and that are accepting of different voices, behaviors, views, and cultural and gender expressions.

My previous research has resulted in a set of exhibitions, programs, and publications that explore how design—at every scale, in all parts of the world—can address some of our most vexing issues. In an era of growing uncertainty and chaos and escalating environmental damage and socioeconomic inequity, amplified by increasing extremism and nationalism, I began this current exploration by asking what might be possible if society were to design for peace.

The work of designing peace is being undertaken all around the world, and it is extremely diverse, as exemplified by the work gathered in this compilation.^[5] Organized here by a series of questions about the potential of design to foster peace, the work ranges from theoretical explorations to practical solutions, reflecting the scale and scope of the practice across geographies and cultures. Separately, design and peacebuilding are dynamic processes that use engagement, trust building, communication, iteration, and an understanding of context to facilitate positive change. Combined, they offer matchless opportunities for the formulation and implementation of transformative responses to dire situations and unjust systems. As a whole, Designing Peace explores the ways in which we might collectively pool our creative forces to envision the future we want to live in—and to take action to create it.