New Design Craft. A new design paradigm blending local craft practices and emerging technologies for more just and sustainable futures

Abstract

The paper introduces New Design Craft as an emerging design sub-movement within the Distributed Design paradigm, positioning it as a hybrid framework that blends traditional craft practices with emerging technologies to promote socio-environmental justice, cultural diversity, and decentralised systems of production. Rooted in a critique of Western industrial design’s role in cultural homogenisation and centralisation of power, New Design Craft reframes contemporary design practice through the redistribution of making and knowledge, foregrounding local material cultures, participatory processes, and small-scale self-production. Drawing on a mixed-methods research design combining an extensive literature review with fieldwork involving the curation and analysis of 150 European case studies and 50 in-depth designer interviews, the study identifies six recurrent research areas that systematise the practices of New Design Craft practitioners: New Bio-Materials Design, Re-Use of Waste, Emerging Technologies for Crafts, New Applications for Traditional Crafts, Social Design, and Promotion of Ecological Culture. These categories reveal shared methodological patterns centred on material experimentation, localised knowledge production, technological hybridisation, and community-driven design processes. The findings position New Design Craft as a legitimate extension and a critical evolution of Distributed Design. Formally recognising artisans and hybrid practitioners within its framework and by embedding inclusivity, technological empowerment, and cultural conservation as core values, New Design Craft proposes a decentralised, regenerative, and pluralistic model of design practice. Ultimately, the paper argues that New Design Craft represents a transformative pathway for re-imagining design as a tool for ecological stewardship, social justice, and the preservation of local identities in the context of contemporary global challenges.