Design and Unknowns

Design is often viewed as an activity focused on shaping futures or, more precisely, on creating ‘better’ futures. However, an important yet often overlooked reality is that the future is uncertain, unpredictable, and fundamentally unknown. Based on this premise, the Open Debate section seeks to explore the relationship between Design and Unknowns. By examining its philosophical, ethical, cosmological, practical, and pedagogical implications, it offers new perspectives for design research: slowness, as a way to approach the encounter with the unknown, as well as a way to design it; problematization, as a rethinking of what we know; possible, as potential realities to be shaped by the unknowns, that also deals with non-linearity; de-scripting, as a way to de-colonise futures; inevitabilism, that strips potential from the unknown. These concepts introduce the voices that populated the section, exploring different dimensions of the relationships between Design and Unknowns.