Post-Growth Traditions

What is Post-Growth Traditions?
Post-Growth Traditions will be a list of radical books which lend tradition and historical context to the idea of a post-growth future in the context of architecture and design. It will particularly focus on writers who were early to diagnose the problems of industrial society, from destruction of nature and pollution to high levels of social inequality. These writers, largely from the Arts & Crafts movements, were systems thinkers avant la lettre and their texts highlight with clarity the relational nature of social and economic systems with those of production and labour. For these writers, the state of the arts was inseparable from the nature of economic, societal and ecological relations.

Why start the Post-Growth Traditions series?
Changing paradigms from extractive to regenerative requires new vantage points and aspirations. The writings of those who witnessed the growth of our capitalist industrial societies provides a portal backwards and forwards in time : a way of relating to the extractive system that considers it an aberration rather than the norm. This series of books aims to contribute to the emergence of a post-growth and regenerative design paradigm through re-presenting texts which advocate for practices aligned with a post-growth ethos to a new audience.

How Post-growth traditions started and how it will evolve.
Zegris Books is a young press founded initially to publish works by the local Antwerp design scene. Increasing knowledge of ecological matters in general, and their relation to design practice in particular, has led to a change in the initial plan and the development of the Post-Growth Traditions series. The ambition is for this series to be ongoing (with books being accessible and ecologically produced) and, in time, to be augmented with a series of contemporary writings on regenerative architecture and design.