Q.       Is Critical Praxis only about design?

A.     No!. The examples used here are about design.

But critical praxis can be applied to any field. It just happens that Design is a useful lever for unpacking the critical issues of other field

In this section on Critical Practice you will find a range of examples in which the principles of Critical Theory have been put into practice. Mostly, these examples are in the field of Architecture or Community Design and involve an interrelationship between academic institutions, students and communities with issues and problems. But the issues are not just about Architectural Design. By its very nature Design extends into critical analyses of its subject area. Hence, issues such as Community Health or Education or Tourism or Cultural Politics and many more all come within its purview. In the design and construction of a children's playground, for instance, the child's needs and requirements as voiced by the child become the driving factors of the design.(below) Here, students working to the requirements and specifications of the primary school children themselves design and construct a school playground with the assistance of parents.

In this sense, Critical Design Theory is a lever for unpacking numerous social and political issues in a wide range of areas (in this case Early Childhood Education, Critical Pedagogy, Child-Centred Learning, the Politics of Schooling etc). Interestingly, Critical Architectural Theory is itself at odds with mainstream Architectural Theory. Projects such as the one illustrated above are generally deemed "not suitable" for architecture students because they do not grow from aspirations of cultural and aesthetic leadership and superiority. Architectural Education stresses the importance of a depoliticised aesthetic, while the former recognises the issues of cultural imperialism that lie masked behind every aesthetic judgement.

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