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, this section wishes to offer 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; an engagement with the possible, to emphasize the non-linearity of how unknowns may shape potential realities; de-scripting, as a way to decouple from established blueprints and de-colonise futures; and a stance against the inevitabilism that strips potential from the unknown. These concepts introduce the voices that populate the section, exploring different dimensions of the relationships between Design and Unknowns.