Afield — Design Research

Afield is a design research practice bringing diverse perspectives to contemporary global challenges.

What is Design Research?

Design research is used to understand ideas and materials as they come together in complex systems. Such research offers insights into how things function and how processes might be adjusted to achieve a desired outcome. For Afield, design research with design and social science at its core provides a means to see, assess, and conceive possibilities that might be considered or adopted to address contemporary global challenges.

about us

Though broad in scope, our work tends to be located within one or more of these four major (clickable) thematic emphases:

Imaginative possibilities are opened by Mah and Rivers....Their watercolour drawings--which we might think of as a method or epistemology of mobility insofar as paint always escapes its confines--illustrate new political possibilities [that] evoke the idea of politics without clear boundaries, or absolutes.

Miriam Ticktin and Rafi Youatt

Graduate Center of the City University of New York and New School for Social Research

When the downtown area was confronted with growing numbers of unhoused persons, the design consultation by Afield reminded us of our humanity, how we think of space in human terms, in terms of our relationships with each other, in terms of how we care for each other.

Monique Beaudoin

Vice-Présidente, Conseil d'administration, La Place des Arts

I had a positive experience working with Afield on an early childhood development centre prototype as the South African architect of record. They are easy to work with. More important, though, they have a grounded sense of the African context with all of its challenges and its promise.

Andy Horn

Principal, Eco Design Architects & Consultants

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January 2, 2023

Republication of Rivers Article

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December 28, 2022

'Diffractive Drawing' Chapter Published

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October 28, 2022

Ethiopia Lecture at the University of Washington

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