Audacity, imagination, and critical thought underpin this vital compendium of future possibilities 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 100 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.

Designs for Different Futures

Arts & Photography

Blauvelt, Andrew

FANNING, COLIN

Telhan, Orkan

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Yale University Press

When Guy Debord identified the image consumerism of “the society of the spectacle” in the 1960s, he could not have forecast that language would threaten to eclipse the image in the medium of personal technology, creating a world of ubiquitous legibility. Today, we read anytime and anywhere, on screens of all sizes; we read not only newspaper articles, but also databases, online archives, search engine results and navigational structures. We read while out on the street, at home or in the office, with a complete library to hand--but less and less we read a book at home on the couch. In other words, we are, or are becoming, a different kind of reader. I Read Where I Am contains visionary texts about the future of reading and the status of the word in the digital age from designers, philosophers, journalists and politicians, looking at both sides of the argument for printed and digital reading matter.

I Read Where I Am: Exploring New Information Cultures

Gomez, Jeff

Ehmann, Sven

Campanelli, Vito

Ferro-Thomsen, Martin

Decorative Arts & Design

Valiz/Graphic Design Museum, Breda

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Books by Blauvelt, Andrew