Designs for Different Futures

Designs for Different Futures records the concrete ideas and abstract dreams of designers, artists, academics, and scientists exploring how design might reframe our futures, socially, ethically, and aesthetically. Encompassing nearly one hundred contemporary examples—from wearable objects to urban infrastructure—this handbook interrogates attitudes toward technology, consumption, beauty, and social and environmental challenges. The projects examined include a typeface unreadable by text-scanning software, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a dress incorporating the sound-wave patterns of birds in flight, a shelter for cricket farming, and a speculative prosthetics catalogue for the “post-human.” Commissioned essays and interviews from figures such as Francis Kéré, Bruno Latour, Neri Oxman, and Danielle Wood give voice to issues faced in futures near and far. With perspectives ranging from historical visions of the future to the use of biological materials in production processes, this is essential reading for anyone interested in how design might shape the world to come.

Kathryn B. Hiesinger, Michelle Millar Fisher, Emmet Byrne, Maite Borjabad López-Pastor, and Zoë Ryan (editors), with Andrew Blauvelt, Colin Fanning, and Orkan Telhan.

Contributions by Juliana Rowen Barton, V. Michael Bove Jr., Christina Cogdell, Gabriella Coleman, Simone Farresin, Marina Gorbis, Aimi Hamraie, Srećko Horvat, Nora Jackson, Francis Kéré, David Kirby, Helen Kirkum, Bruno Latour, Marisol LeBrón, Ezio Manzini, Jillian Mercado, Alexandra Midal, Neri Oxman, Chris Rapley, Maude de Schauensee, Andrea Trimarchi, Eyal Weizman, Danielle Wood, LinYee Yuan, and Emma Yann Zhang