DI:Rectangle

Bethlehem, New Hampshire, July 2026

DI: Rectangle was a collaborative inquiry and publishing initiative between DesignInquiry and Directangle Press, built around the DesignInquiry Fellows program and a period of collective research that culminated in a series of publications and a two-day public symposium held at Directangle Press and other locations in Bethlehem, NH, from July 31 to August 1, 2026.

The project investigated the concept and form of the rectangle as both a constraint and a creative catalyst. Rectangles shape how we see, organize, create, communicate, and publish, and their ubiquity often renders them nearly invisible—transparent containers for content rather than active participants in meaning-making.

Drawing on Ursula K. Le Guin's Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (1986), the initiative reframed the rectangle not as a neutral vessel subordinate to its contents but as an active collaborator in meaning-making: a thing that holds something else—a bag, belly, box, or medicine bundle—"the container for the things contained." Participants explored how this seemingly neutral carrier actually shapes seeing, thinking, organizing, and communicating, determining what can be gathered, how elements relate, and what stories become possible to tell. In the spirit of the carrier bag, the project moved storytelling away from the linear, hero-driven narrative toward a capacious container holding life's messy, nonhierarchical multiplicity of objects, stories, and meanings.

Contributors responded to the theme with an edition of 10 prints, zines, small books, visual investigations, essays, and objects. The work came together as a limited-edition portfolio of 10 complete deluxe sets featuring original contributions from all participants and is available to collections in a bespoke wooden box.