Faculty

Profile

Otto von Busch is Professor of Integrated Design at Parsons School of Design and holds a Ph.D. in design from the School of Design and Craft at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He has a background in arts, craft, design, and theory and many of his projects and publications explore how making practices, and especially fashion, can mobilize community capabilities through collaborative craft and social activism.

Recent Publications

Otto's latest publications include: 

• The Deep History of Dress: Fashion's Evolution with Human Cognition and Culture (Bloomsbury 2026), 
• Making Civic Crafts (RIT Press 2026, co-authored with Helena Hansson and Karl Hallberg), 
• The Design Comedy: The Descent Through Inferno (Set Margins 2025), 
• The Corruption of Co-Design: Political and Social Conflicts in Participatory Design Thinking (Routledge 2023, co-authored with Karl Palmås), 
• Making Trouble: Design and Material Activism (Bloomsbury 2022), 
• Silhouettes of the Soul: Meditations on Fashion, Religion and Subjectivity (Bloomsbury 2022, co-edited with Jeanine Viau), 
• The Psychopolitics of Fashion: Conflict and Courage Under the Current State of Fashion, (Bloomsbury 2020),
• The Dharma of Fashion: A Buddhist Approach to Our Life with Clothes, (Schiffer 2020).

Other artistic and fashion-related projects and publications can be found at the SelfPassage site; www.selfpassage.info

Research Interests

I am interested in design and craft as a form of societal construction, where people come together to build essential goods with basic materials. Design beyond consumerism, craft that cultivates agency, civic judgement and responsibility. That is, society is something we build, together preferably.
In my classes, I try to get us to touch civics, not only talk about it.