Tony Fry

sustainability, ethics, and new practice

Design futuring

"The last in Tony Fry's celebrated trilogy of books continues his radical rethinking of design. 'Becoming Human by Design's provocative argument presents a revised reading of human 'evolution' centred on ontological design. Examining the relation of design to the nature of the human species - where the species came from, how it was created, what it became and its likely future - Fry asserts that current biological and social models of evolution are an insufficient explanation of how 'we humans' became what we are. Making a case for ontological design as an evolutionary agency, the book posits the relation between the formation of the world of human fabrication and the making of mankind itself as indivisible. It also functions as a provocation to rethink the fate of Homo sapiens, recognising that all species are finite and that the fate of humankind turns on a fundamental Darwinian principle - adapt or die. Fry considers the nature of adaptation, arguing that it will depend on an ability to think and design in new ways"--P. [4] of cover.

Becoming Human by Design

- Preface - Introduction - An introductory lexicographical review -- PART I: AN OPENING Chapter 1: Technology, warring and the crisis of history - Technology in flux - From structure and from techné - From war to warring - The crisis of the crisis of history -- PART II: HISTORY, MODERNITY AND DEFUTURING Chapter 2: Made in America: a world production - America - Then and now - Productivism and a history of world making -- Chapter 3: Dwelling in streamlined America - Streamlining design - The New York World's Fair - Utopia: a designing idea Chapter 4: Total design: Europe - The Bauhaus, as told - The Vkhutemas postscript -- PART III: ONE POINT: FOUR LOCATIONS Chapter 5: Design and the body of competition - The body - Bodies of the body - The measure that measures the standards - Openings as endings -- Chapter 6: Time and China - Time - The years of 1926 - China: four perspectives -- Chapter 7: Televisual in-human design - The televisual - Perspectives and horizons - Ecology of the image -- Chapter 8: The autonomic technocentricity of computers - The reason machine - The force of design - Reiterations towards making decisions -- Concluding impressions - Select bibliography - Index.

A New Design Philosophy

Defuturing

Eleni Kalantidou

Design in the Borderlands

Design as Politics

Adam Nocek

New Worlds, Philosophies and Practices

Design in Crisis

City Futures in the Age of a Changing Climate

This book is an essential contribution to the transdisciplinary field of critical design studies. The essays in this collection locate design at the center of a series of interrelated planetary crises, from climate change, nuclear war, and racial and geopolitical violence to education, computational culture, and the loss of the commons. In doing so, the essays propose a range of needed interventions in order to transform design itself and its role within the shifting realities of a planetary crisis. It challenges the widely popular view that design can contribute to solving world problems by exposing how this attitude only intensifies the problems we currently face. In this way, the essays critique the dominant modes of framing the meaning and scope of design as a largely Anglo-European 'problem-solving' practice. By drawing on post-development theory, decolonial theory, black studies, continental philosophy, science and technology studies, and more, the contributions envision a critical and speculative practice that problematises both its engagement with planet and itself. The essays in this collection will appeal to design theorists and practitioners alike, but also to scholars and students generally concerned with how the past and future of design is implicated in the unfolding complexity of ecological devastation, racial and political violence, coloniality, technological futures, and the brutality of modern Western culture generally.

A New Design Philosophy: An Introduction to Defuturing will profoundly offers a challenging archaeology of how the worlds we inhabit have been made unsustainable, and then makes available knowledge that has the potential to radically change design thinking and to dramatically change how futures are constituted.

An Introduction to Defuturing

Susan Stewart

Clive Dilnot

Design and the Question of History is not a work of Design History. Rather, it is a mixture of mediation, advocacy and polemic that takes seriously the directive force of design as an historical actor in and upon the world. Understanding design as a shaper of worlds within which the political, ethical and historical character of human being is at stake, this text demands radically transformed notions of both design and history. Above all, the authors posit history as the generational site of the future. Blindness to history, it is suggested, blinds us both to possibility, and to the foreclosure of possibilities, enacted through our designing. The text is not a resolved, continuous work, presented through one voice. Rather, the three authors cut across each other, presenting readers with the task of disclosing, to themselves, the commonalities, repetitions and differences within the deployed arguments, issues, approaches and styles from which the text is constituted. This is a work of friendship, of solidarity in difference, an act of cultural politics. It invites the reader to take a position – it seeks engagement over agreement.

Design and the Question of History

"Illustrated throughout with international case material, Design Futuring presents the author's ground-breaking ideas in a coherent framework, focusing specifically on the ways in which concerns for ethics and sustainability can change the practice of Design for the twenty-first century. Design Futuring extends far beyond Design courses and professional practice, and will also be invaluable to students and practitioners of Architecture, the Creative Arts. Business and Management."--Jacket.

Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice

Design Futuring

Radical rethinking of the relationship between design and history.

“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.

Written by leading design philosopher Tony Fry, Writing Design Fiction: Relocating a City in Crisis is both an introduction to the power of “design fiction” in the design process, and a novella-length work of fiction in itself-telling the dramatic story of the relocation of the City of Harshon. Set in the near future, Harshon, a delta city, is facing environmental catastrophe due to rising sea levels-consequently, a decision is made to relocate the entire city inland. A diverse cast of voices-including an architect, a journalist, an economist, a construction worker, and residents-narrate the extraordinary challenges and complexities which follow. This work presents a real-world scenario which, in coming decades, will face many of the world's cities. The fictional format provides a novel way of exploring the very serious inherent technical, social, political, economic and cultural challenges. The story provides a rehearsal of the design challenges which are likely to face architects, planners, and designers in an uncertain global future. “Design fiction” is a fast-growing area within design and architecture, increasingly deployed as a serious methodology by designers as a tool in scenario planning. Writing Design Fiction takes the practice to a higher level conceptually and theoretically, but also practically. The book is divided into four parts, with the fictional narrative bookended by further critical analysis. Part One shows how a critique of existing modes of design fiction can lead to more grounded and critical thinking and practice. Part Three critically reflects on the narrative, while Part Four presents the practical application of the second order design fiction approach. This book demonstrates the value of a more developed mode of design fiction to students, professional designers and architects across the breadth of design practices, as well as to other disciplines interested in the future of cities.

Relocating a City in Crisis

Writing Design Fiction

Sustainability is now a buzzword both among professionals and scholars. However, though climate change and resource depletion are now widely recognized by business as major challenges, and while new practices like 'green design' have emerged, efforts towards change remain weak and fragmented. Exposing these limitations, Design Futuring systematically presents ideas and methods for Design as an expanded ethical and professional practice. Design Futuring argues that responding to ethical, political, social and ecological concerns now requires a new type of practice that recognizes design's importance in overcoming a world made unsustainable. Illustrated throughout with international case material, Design Futuring presents the author's ground-breaking ideas in a coherent framework, focusing specifically on the ways in which concerns for ethics and sustainability can change the practice of Design for the twenty-first century. Design Futuring - a pathfinding text for the new era - extends far beyond Design courses and professional practice, and will also be invaluable to students and practitioners of Architecture, the Creative Arts, Business and Management.

This book presents the concept of ‘unstaging’ war as a strategic response to the failure of the discourse and institutions of peace. This failure is explained by exploring the changing character of conflict in current and emergent global circumstances, such as asymmetrical conflicts, insurgencies, and terrorism. Fry argues that this pluralisation of war has broken the binary relation between war and peace: conflict is no longer self-evident, and consequentially the changes in the conditions, nature, systems, philosophies and technologies of war must be addressed. Through a deep understanding of contemporary war, Fry explains why peace fails as both idea and process, before presenting ‘Unstaging War’ as a concept and nascent practice that acknowledges conflict as structurally present, and so is not able to be dealt with by attempts to create peace. Against a backdrop of increasingly tense relations between global power blocs, the beginnings of a new nuclear arms race, and the ever-increasing human and environmental impacts of climate change, a more viable alternative to war is urgently needed. Unstaging War is not claimed as a solution, but rather as an exploration of critical problems and an opening into the means of engaging with them.

Unstaging War, Confronting Conflict and Peace

In Remaking Cities, design theorist Tony Fry addresses the challenge of urban sustainability and resilience from a conceptual design perspective. In a typically provocative work, Fry presents ideas and actions for 'metrofitting' - a radical approach which expands the concept of 'retrofit' up to city scale, and places social, cultural, political and ethical concerns at its heart.

An Introduction to Urban Metrofitting

Remaking Cities

Unprecedented challenges await the future of the world's cities. Accelerating population pressure, climate change, food insecurity, poverty and geopolitical instability – in the face of such problems our current attempts at producing a sustainable agenda for the world's cities appear fragmented and inadequate. Fresh thinking is needed. In Remaking Cities, renowned design theorist Tony Fry brings a conceptual design perspective to the challenge of urban sustainability and resilience. In a typically far-sighted and provocative work, Fry presents ideas and actions for 'metrofitting' – a new kind of practice in architecture and urban design. Metrofitting expands the technological concept of retrofit up to the city scale, placing social, cultural, political and ethical concerns at its heart. Metrofitting is not about visionary technology, it is about transforming existing cities by combining available resources with human creativity, prompted by new thinking about new and old urban problems. It requires overcoming outmoded Eurocentric assumptions of what constitutes a city, rethinking their forms and structures, and understanding their metabolic processes and social and economic functions. This book provides conceptually strong practical approaches that will ultimately change the whole way we view cities and the way the urban future is designed. Illustrated with international case studies of metrofitting in action, Remaking Cities will provoke and stimulate debate among architects, urban designers, and anyone concerned with the urban environment and social and cultural change.

Tony Fry

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