Defuturing: A New Design Philosophy (Radical Thinkers in Design, 1) - Softcover

Fry, Tony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1350089532 ISBN 13: 9781350089532

Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020

Synopsis

“Once one understands the nature and magnitude of defuturing as the negation of world futures, how one has to account for the history and making of the material world – including design - dramatically changes. Defuturing as our condition forces the generation of a new philosophy of design.”

With these thoughts this book presents a radically new understanding of the history, context and futures of designing.

First published in 1999, now reissued with a new preface by the author, Defuturing: A New Design Philosophy is a prescient and powerful account of what it means to comprehend that we live in world that is taking away futures for ourselves and non-human others. Arguing that designing is doubly implicated in this process, first in its roles in helping to create the unsustainable, but second, re-thought through the lens of defuturing, as a mode of acting in the world that can help contest the negation of the world, Defuturing transforms our comprehension of designing and of how futures can be constituted.

Working not through abstract theorizing but through the analysis of concrete examples, the book uses historical material on design to expose the archaeology of defuturing. Shattering the illusion that the future simply “is”, Defuturing confronts designing with the challenge of remaking while offering the elements of a new practical reasoning of design acting.

About this title

About the Authors

Tony Fry is Principal of the Studio at the Edge of the World, Tasmania, Adjunct Professor at the University of Tasmania, and the former Director of the EcoDesign Foundation in Sydney, Australia. A writer, researcher, educator and award-winning designer, he is author of 20 books including Design as Politics, Becoming Human By Design, Defuturing, Writing Design Fiction and Contrapractice.

Eduardo Staszowski is Professor of Design Strategies at Parsons School of Design and Director of the Parsons DESIS Lab, USA. He is the co-editor of the Designing in Dark Times, Radical Thinkers in Design, and Beyond the Modern series, and Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Clive Dilnot is professor of Design Studies at Parsons The New School for Design, New York, USA. Recent publications include Ethics? Design? (2005) and the text for Chris Killip: Pirelli Work (2007).

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1350089532
• ISBN 13: 9781350089532
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288