Parsons Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability Lab (DESIS Lab) is an action research laboratory founded in 2009 at The New School in New York City. The lab explores how designing, as a form of critical praxis, can act in both critical and affirmative ways to challenge existing systems and foster regenerative, equitable ways of living.
DESIS Lab critically re-examines the structures that shape contemporary life. Through situated, collaborative, and experimental practices, the lab—grounded in care, interdependence, and an ethics of responsibility—engages with the social, ecological, and political dimensions.
Design, for us, is not a tool for solving problems or optimizing systems. Instead, it is a practice of relational world making, reshaping the way we engage with one another, our environments, and material conditions. It draws on multiple disciplines and knowledge traditions to imagine and create alternative ways of living. In a similar way, social innovation is not driven by economic efficiency or the outsourcing of public responsibility. For us, it is a collective and situated process rooted in reciprocity, community knowledge, and diverse ways of knowing and acting.
Amid global crises such as environmental degradation, mass displacement, political instability, rising inequalities, and rapid technological change, DESIS Lab reaffirms its commitment to democratic values, planetary interdependence, and the preservation
of cultural and biological diversity as essential to collective well-being. Our practice focuses on the spaces that exist in the interstices of established disciplines, societal structures, and cultural norms—fluid and transitional zones where
new possibilities emerge. Inspired by Hannah Arendt’s notion of living "between past and future," we view these in-between spaces as catalysts for political action and regenerative ways of living, confronting injustices while cultivating the commons
as a foundation for shared futures.
We collaborate with local partners in New York City and allies around the world, engaging in both small- and large-scale research projects. Parsons DESIS Lab was part of the founding group of the DESIS Network in 2010, which now comprises more than 60 university-based design labs worldwide, all dedicated to advancing social innovation and sustainability through research and education.
DESIS Network initiatives include:
Parsons DESIS Lab
Eduardo Staszowski, Director
79 Fifth Avenue, 16th floor, room 1628
New York, NY 10003
staszowe@newschool.edu
The New School admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.