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Medium Design: Knowing How to Work on the World
How to Design the Working Without Solutions
In Medium Design everyone is a designer. But design, in this case, inverts the typical focus on object over its settings to concentrate on the medium—the matrix space between objects, events, and ideological declarations. It disrupts habitual modern approaches to the world’s intractable dilemmas—from climate cataclysm to inequality to concentrations of authoritarian power. In a series of case studies dealing with everything from automation and migration to explosive urban growth and atmospheric changes, Medium Design offers spatial tools for innovation and global decision-making to challenge the authority of more familiar legal or economic approaches.
From this perspective, solutions are mistakes and ideologies are unreliable guides. Rather than the modern desire for the new, designers find more sophistication in relationships between emergent and incumbent technologies. Encouraging entanglement, medium design does not try to eliminate problems but rather to put them together in productive combinations. And in the process of reconceptualizing design, Easterling puzzles over bulletproof powers, Stanley Kubrick, ISIS recruits, literary characters, and iconic activists in the hope of outwitting political deadlocks and offering forms of activism for modulating power and temperament in organizations of all kinds.
In Medium Design everyone is a designer. But design, in this case, inverts the typical focus on object over its settings to concentrate on the medium—the matrix space between objects, events, and ideological declarations. It disrupts habitual modern approaches to the world’s intractable dilemmas—from climate cataclysm to inequality to concentrations of authoritarian power. In a series of case studies dealing with everything from automation and migration to explosive urban growth and atmospheric changes, Medium Design offers spatial tools for innovation and global decision-making to challenge the authority of more familiar legal or economic approaches.
From this perspective, solutions are mistakes and ideologies are unreliable guides. Rather than the modern desire for the new, designers find more sophistication in relationships between emergent and incumbent technologies. Encouraging entanglement, medium design does not try to eliminate problems but rather to put them together in productive combinations. And in the process of reconceptualizing design, Easterling puzzles over bulletproof powers, Stanley Kubrick, ISIS recruits, literary characters, and iconic activists in the hope of outwitting political deadlocks and offering forms of activism for modulating power and temperament in organizations of all kinds.
176 pages, Hardcover
Published January 19, 2021
37 people are currently reading
436 people want to read
About the author
Keller Easterling
28 books53 followersKeller Easterling is an architect, writer and professor at Yale University. Her most recent book, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (Verso, 2014), examines global infrastructure networks as a medium of polity. Another recent book, Subtraction (Sternberg Press, 2014), considers building removal or how to put the development machine into reverse. An ebook essay, The Action is the Form: Victor Hugo’s TED Talk (Strelka Press, 2012) previews some of the arguments in Extrastatecraft.
Other books include: Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and its Political Masquerades (MIT, 2005) which researched familiar spatial products in difficult or hyperbolic political situations around the world and Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways and Houses in America (MIT, 1999) which applied network theory to a discussion of American infrastructure.
Easterling is also the co-author (with Richard Prelinger) of Call it Home: The House that Private Enterprise Built, a laserdisc/DVD history of US suburbia from 1934–1960. She has published web installations including: Extrastatecraft, Wildcards: a Game of Orgman and Highline: Plotting NYC. Easterling’s research and writing was included in the 2014 Venice Biennale, and she has been exhibited at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, the Rotterdam Biennale, and the Architectural League in New York. Easterling has lectured and published widely in the United States and abroad. The journals to which she has contributed include Domus, Artforum, Grey Room, Cabinet, Volume, Assemblage, e-flux, Log, Praxis, Harvard Design Magazine, Perspecta, and ANY.
Other books include: Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and its Political Masquerades (MIT, 2005) which researched familiar spatial products in difficult or hyperbolic political situations around the world and Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways and Houses in America (MIT, 1999) which applied network theory to a discussion of American infrastructure.
Easterling is also the co-author (with Richard Prelinger) of Call it Home: The House that Private Enterprise Built, a laserdisc/DVD history of US suburbia from 1934–1960. She has published web installations including: Extrastatecraft, Wildcards: a Game of Orgman and Highline: Plotting NYC. Easterling’s research and writing was included in the 2014 Venice Biennale, and she has been exhibited at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, the Rotterdam Biennale, and the Architectural League in New York. Easterling has lectured and published widely in the United States and abroad. The journals to which she has contributed include Domus, Artforum, Grey Room, Cabinet, Volume, Assemblage, e-flux, Log, Praxis, Harvard Design Magazine, Perspecta, and ANY.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 31, 2021
This is an exciting and important book that expands our conception of possibility and agency. It helps us to formulate an unconventional answer to the question: what is to be done in a world that, in the face of mass extinction and catastrophic climate change, seems to be unable to steer away from the precipice? How to shortcircuit the rigid cultural habits and entrenched (capitalist and crypto-capitalist) institutions that keep the world, it seems, firmly on its collision course?
It starts with another way of seeing. A shift from a foreground of things to a background of relationships between these things, from a set of atomised objects to a medium or a field. Imagine watching a pool table. You can describe it by enumerating and locating the balls that are spread over the bed. But that itemised report doesn't say anything meaningful about the potential embedded in that constellation to offer a great game of pool. We might also say: the photographic representation is unable to reveal the propensity of the configuration and its affordance for a winning reconfiguration.
Whether this medium-oriented way of looking at the world is a reflection of a deeper ontological shift remains unclear. When Easterling invokes the metaphor of 'the trapdoor' that separates a 'modern' from a 'non-modern' mind, she seems to hint at a fundamentally different understanding of reality. But more often medium design - a logic of intervening in the world that takes its cue from this ecological perspective - is presented as a pragmatic approach to 'working on the world': "Medium design is not a thing. It has no content. It is only an ever-present approach to many things—an expanded means to generate change outside of some dominant cultural habits." Also, there is nothing particularly novel about it: "Thinking in this way is at once common, often unexpressed, and profoundly underexploited." In the first chapter in the book Easterling references a range of thinkers, including Michel Foucault, Jane Bennett and Michael Polanyi, who have foregrounded ideas about perception, agency and reality that pave the way to a dispositional, relational way of being in and acting on the world.
Buying into medium design as a viable strategy to work on the world gives way to other paradigmatic shifts.
* Our understanding of what constitutes effective activism moves beyond the trusted binary templates of 'us' against 'them'. We should not forfeit conventional political activism. However, direct resistance has the tendency to become monolithic, to strengthen the forces that it opposes and risks to become co-opted in bringing about its own defeat. It needs to complemented with the more stealthy and nebulous tactics of medium design.
* We should be wary of thinking in terms of solutions that fit particularised problems. This habitually results in the conceptualisation of master plans that want to stabilise a problematic situation once and for all. But this kind of thinking pushes us into weak positions that do not take advantage of the latent, unfolding potential that is there. Whatever we design is destined to go wrong at some point, in some way. There is no way we can get rid of problems. We should see them as fuel for an ongoing process of dispositional unfolding.
* Space is something else than undifferentiated Euclidean extension. To the contrary, space is the malleable chessboard upon which we square off against the well-entrenched tactics of the capitalist establishment. We need to approach space as plural, as spaces of interplay and entanglement, with exploitable affordances for positive change.
Clearly, medium design is not a matter of right or wrong, of clear ideological contours, of undisputable success. " Multiplying problems can be helpful. Messiness is smarter than newness. (...) Nothing is new, nothing is right, nothing is free, and there are no dramatic manifestos, ur-enemies, or universals." That is its strength, and also its weakness, particularly in a culture galvanised by personal status, visual evidence and quantifiable solutions. Easterling is aware that this 'knowing how' is difficult to transmit, that it may be hard for medium design to sway our collective psyche. The search is on for persuasive cultural narratives that reframe our ambitions away from growth and winning, to collaborative exploration and wayfinding. It will be a very hard sell.
Much of the book is devoted to testing these ideas on societal challenges of increasing scope: from creating viable housing conditions for a burgeoning population to envisioning alternative ways of meeting the world's mobility needs to adapting to the realities of climate change. Ultimately, the rationale behind medium design is to disarm, to subvert the structural violence and inequality that permeate our contemporary societies.
The discussion is suggestive rather than hands-on. The protocols of interplay, switching and hybridisation foregrounded in the book's cases mix spatial artifacts and variables with all sorts of interventions, metrics and incentives. But we're far from a systematic toolbox here. And while the author is sceptical about the pertinence of blockchain technologies to enable these protocols, she seems to underplay the vital importance of social capital. The insight that trustful human relationships are the ultimate breeding ground for medium designerly strategies is a startling oversight in Easterling's exposé. Another attractor that is only very fleetingly hinted at is the aesthetic pleasure that could accompany the practice of medium design. What better incentive to dump the constraints of soul-destroying bullshit jobs that reinforce the status quo than to seize on an opportunity to lead lives that are more just, meaningful and beautiful at the same time.
This book offers immense food for thought. As far as I'm concerned it's an instant classic.
It starts with another way of seeing. A shift from a foreground of things to a background of relationships between these things, from a set of atomised objects to a medium or a field. Imagine watching a pool table. You can describe it by enumerating and locating the balls that are spread over the bed. But that itemised report doesn't say anything meaningful about the potential embedded in that constellation to offer a great game of pool. We might also say: the photographic representation is unable to reveal the propensity of the configuration and its affordance for a winning reconfiguration.
Whether this medium-oriented way of looking at the world is a reflection of a deeper ontological shift remains unclear. When Easterling invokes the metaphor of 'the trapdoor' that separates a 'modern' from a 'non-modern' mind, she seems to hint at a fundamentally different understanding of reality. But more often medium design - a logic of intervening in the world that takes its cue from this ecological perspective - is presented as a pragmatic approach to 'working on the world': "Medium design is not a thing. It has no content. It is only an ever-present approach to many things—an expanded means to generate change outside of some dominant cultural habits." Also, there is nothing particularly novel about it: "Thinking in this way is at once common, often unexpressed, and profoundly underexploited." In the first chapter in the book Easterling references a range of thinkers, including Michel Foucault, Jane Bennett and Michael Polanyi, who have foregrounded ideas about perception, agency and reality that pave the way to a dispositional, relational way of being in and acting on the world.
Buying into medium design as a viable strategy to work on the world gives way to other paradigmatic shifts.
* Our understanding of what constitutes effective activism moves beyond the trusted binary templates of 'us' against 'them'. We should not forfeit conventional political activism. However, direct resistance has the tendency to become monolithic, to strengthen the forces that it opposes and risks to become co-opted in bringing about its own defeat. It needs to complemented with the more stealthy and nebulous tactics of medium design.
* We should be wary of thinking in terms of solutions that fit particularised problems. This habitually results in the conceptualisation of master plans that want to stabilise a problematic situation once and for all. But this kind of thinking pushes us into weak positions that do not take advantage of the latent, unfolding potential that is there. Whatever we design is destined to go wrong at some point, in some way. There is no way we can get rid of problems. We should see them as fuel for an ongoing process of dispositional unfolding.
* Space is something else than undifferentiated Euclidean extension. To the contrary, space is the malleable chessboard upon which we square off against the well-entrenched tactics of the capitalist establishment. We need to approach space as plural, as spaces of interplay and entanglement, with exploitable affordances for positive change.
Clearly, medium design is not a matter of right or wrong, of clear ideological contours, of undisputable success. " Multiplying problems can be helpful. Messiness is smarter than newness. (...) Nothing is new, nothing is right, nothing is free, and there are no dramatic manifestos, ur-enemies, or universals." That is its strength, and also its weakness, particularly in a culture galvanised by personal status, visual evidence and quantifiable solutions. Easterling is aware that this 'knowing how' is difficult to transmit, that it may be hard for medium design to sway our collective psyche. The search is on for persuasive cultural narratives that reframe our ambitions away from growth and winning, to collaborative exploration and wayfinding. It will be a very hard sell.
Much of the book is devoted to testing these ideas on societal challenges of increasing scope: from creating viable housing conditions for a burgeoning population to envisioning alternative ways of meeting the world's mobility needs to adapting to the realities of climate change. Ultimately, the rationale behind medium design is to disarm, to subvert the structural violence and inequality that permeate our contemporary societies.
The discussion is suggestive rather than hands-on. The protocols of interplay, switching and hybridisation foregrounded in the book's cases mix spatial artifacts and variables with all sorts of interventions, metrics and incentives. But we're far from a systematic toolbox here. And while the author is sceptical about the pertinence of blockchain technologies to enable these protocols, she seems to underplay the vital importance of social capital. The insight that trustful human relationships are the ultimate breeding ground for medium designerly strategies is a startling oversight in Easterling's exposé. Another attractor that is only very fleetingly hinted at is the aesthetic pleasure that could accompany the practice of medium design. What better incentive to dump the constraints of soul-destroying bullshit jobs that reinforce the status quo than to seize on an opportunity to lead lives that are more just, meaningful and beautiful at the same time.
This book offers immense food for thought. As far as I'm concerned it's an instant classic.
October 4, 2020
Decades ago, Douglas Adams proposed that if you simply pivoted and turned slightly, you could see and be in a whole new universe. In Medium Design, Keller Easterling proposes that you can look at everything differently, without leaving this universe or entering another. It can be a revelation in any number of circumstances.
The basic principle is that it doesn’t really matter what things are. What matters is the interplay they have. He gives the example of a real estate development or just a section of town. If asked what you make of it, the correct answer would be to wait to see how things play out there. How the light affects it at different times of day, how traffic flows, how dense pedestrian activity is, how the sun changes its atmosphere, how weather changes its performance, how it conserves or wastes energy, and so on.
Easterling explains these as protocols of interplay. An interplay is a form that keeps working even when things go wrong. And everything goes wrong. It is expected to, it should go wrong, and really, it must go wrong. There are too many variables to avoid nothing going wrong. And how it changes when something goes wrong is a protocol of interplay. He says there is no sense of victory or loss; there is only interplay among innumerable factors.
Easterling looks at several scenarios in his chapters. The internet of things, for example. He says it is a throwback, not a step into the future. It is reductionist, attempting to limit the number of variables and having decisions made on them alone. “Rather than declaring the digital to be a dominant technology of innovation, it is the space where technologies interact that may be the real medium of innovation. It is the interplay between technologies that generates information and it is the quality of their entanglements that signals more or less sophistication.”
Therefore, to be practical, medium design is Indeterminate.
Easterling has found examples from many sources, experts in all kinds of disciplines, from the famous to the totally unknown. It is a refreshing approach to life, the universe, and everything.
David Wineberg
The basic principle is that it doesn’t really matter what things are. What matters is the interplay they have. He gives the example of a real estate development or just a section of town. If asked what you make of it, the correct answer would be to wait to see how things play out there. How the light affects it at different times of day, how traffic flows, how dense pedestrian activity is, how the sun changes its atmosphere, how weather changes its performance, how it conserves or wastes energy, and so on.
Easterling explains these as protocols of interplay. An interplay is a form that keeps working even when things go wrong. And everything goes wrong. It is expected to, it should go wrong, and really, it must go wrong. There are too many variables to avoid nothing going wrong. And how it changes when something goes wrong is a protocol of interplay. He says there is no sense of victory or loss; there is only interplay among innumerable factors.
Easterling looks at several scenarios in his chapters. The internet of things, for example. He says it is a throwback, not a step into the future. It is reductionist, attempting to limit the number of variables and having decisions made on them alone. “Rather than declaring the digital to be a dominant technology of innovation, it is the space where technologies interact that may be the real medium of innovation. It is the interplay between technologies that generates information and it is the quality of their entanglements that signals more or less sophistication.”
Therefore, to be practical, medium design is Indeterminate.
Easterling has found examples from many sources, experts in all kinds of disciplines, from the famous to the totally unknown. It is a refreshing approach to life, the universe, and everything.
David Wineberg
February 11, 2021
Rambling, opaque, not entirely coherent. Weird to be a Verso print as it actually rejects a Left approach.
January 17, 2022
i think keller easterling presents some interesting ways of thinking about interaction in medium design, i dont know if i fully buy into all of her assertions, but i do think that i could create the perfect sim city utopia now
March 21, 2021
I really wanted to like this one for its premise — that the way to reshape the world is by working on its systems, and building solutions out of combinations of things that already exist, rather than constantly chasing new solutions to old problems.
An example from the book is autonomous cars, believed by many to be the Next Big Thing and the answer to all of our transportation problems. When in fact we'll still be left with the same problems: congestion, pollution, environmental impact, inequality. The future we really want is a combination of things we already have, but lack the will to enact: walkable cities, safer spaces for pedestrians and cyclists, robust mass transportation systems, denser housing, less cars. Autonomous cars may very well be a part of that future, but blindly believing they are the future is a dangerous way of thinking that ignores solutions we already have and kicks the same problems further down the road.
Ultimately I found the writing to be unnecessarily complicated and difficult to get through. Five stars for the premise, fewer for the delivery.
An example from the book is autonomous cars, believed by many to be the Next Big Thing and the answer to all of our transportation problems. When in fact we'll still be left with the same problems: congestion, pollution, environmental impact, inequality. The future we really want is a combination of things we already have, but lack the will to enact: walkable cities, safer spaces for pedestrians and cyclists, robust mass transportation systems, denser housing, less cars. Autonomous cars may very well be a part of that future, but blindly believing they are the future is a dangerous way of thinking that ignores solutions we already have and kicks the same problems further down the road.
Ultimately I found the writing to be unnecessarily complicated and difficult to get through. Five stars for the premise, fewer for the delivery.
December 24, 2021
Going to have to re read - or read her longer work of the same title - lots of interesting ideas, which I felt I was only grasping the surface of. It suggests a way of seeing/thinking/problem solving that appeals to me but that I cannot put into my own words yet. Next time I’m going to make a lot of notes!
November 25, 2023
Some insightful thoughts are touched upon but not delved into. For me too much of this book feels needlessly academic in its language, becoming hard to follow and losing the reader. It felt a struggle to read even with it being so short. A bit disappointed as there are gems within it.
February 26, 2023
To paraphrase a quip made by Vine Deloria, Jr., the highest achievement in academia is to be able to speak to a packed lecture hall and only have three people understand you. Sometimes I felt that was Easterling's goal with this book. It's possible that her ideas could be teachable, versatile, and impactful, but she weighs them down with a bunch of overwrought language that most readers will find dry, pretentious, or indecipherable. In fact, I'm not sure I fully understood her overall vision. But I'm also not sure I needed to. She finds some common threads among creative hacks that have moved social problem-solving forward amidst unfavorable odds and minimal resources, but I don't think there's enough there to build a new theory or sub-specialty around.
We've all heard of the meeting that could have been an email; this is the book that could have been an essay.
We've all heard of the meeting that could have been an email; this is the book that could have been an essay.
October 14, 2021
A good read as we come out of the pandemic. Equipped me with some form of agency and seeing a way out of the current moment that can feel frustratingly limited. It’s a template for expanding our way of thinking with problem-solving in a world pushing us to constant, individual-focused innovation. I personally love the way Easterling writes although her voice can take some work to get used to but the connections she draws are illuminating.
July 29, 2021
reading keller easterling is a mind f*k. there are quite a few takeaways from this book: INTERPLAY, nothing is new or innovative, dwelling in the unsaid (to name a few). read this as part of a book club - seden says her essay is essential reading (this is the expansion of the essay into a book).
March 28, 2023
A hyper-compelling argument against solutionism
April 22, 2025
(unfortunately) mostly word salad
February 7, 2025
so good. see my review of easterling’s extrastatecraft
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews