“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.

Design as Politics confronts the inadequacy of contemporary politics to deal with unsustainability. Current 'solutions' to unsustainability are analysed as utterly insufficient for dealing with the problems but, further than this, the book questions the very ability of democracy to deliver a sustainable future. Design as Politics argues that finding solutions to this problem, of which climate change is only one part, demands original and radical thinking. Rather than reverting to failed political ideologies, the book proposes a post-democratic politics. In this, Design occupies a major role, not as it is but as it could be if transformed into a powerful agent of change, a force to create and extend freedom. The book does no less than position Design as a vital form of political action.

"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.

Steel has, over centuries, played a crucial role in shaping our material, and in particular, urban landscapes. This books undertakes a cultural and ecological history of the material, examining the relationship between steel and design at a micro and macro level – in terms of both what it has been used to design and how it has functioned as a 'world-making force'. The research for the book is informed by diverse sources including industry journals, contemporary accounts and technical literature – all framed by rich, early accounts of iron and steel making from the middle ages to the opening of the industrial age, and most notably, the crucial works of Vannoccio Biringuccio, Georgius Agricola, Andrew Ure and Harry Scrivenor. In contrast, trans-cultural accounts of the history of metallurgy from eminent sinologists and cultural historians like Joseph Needham and G.E.R. Lloyd are used. Readings on the pre-history and history of science, as well as histories and philosophies technology from scholars such as Siegfried Giedion, Merritt Roe Smith, L.T.C Rolt, Robert B. Gordon inform the analysis. Social and economic history from historians such as Eric Hobsbawn, William T. Hogan and David Brody are consulted; labour process theory is also examined, particularly the influential writings of F.W. Taylor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and his contemporary critics, like David Nobel and Harry Braverman. Many other disciples also inform the account: histories of urban design and architecture, transport and military history, environmental history and geography.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"Introduces the idea of defuturing, which is first employed here as a deconstructive method to expose foundational flaws in those worlds so familiar to us. It places the significance of understanding design before all concerned people while also confronting design students and professionals with a practical retooling exercise" (Amazon)

This book goes beyond current ways that the impact of climate change upon the city are understood. In doing so it addresses climate in a variety of its connotations. It looks to the nomadic behaviour patterns of the past for lessons for today’s population unsettlement, and argues that as human survival will increasingly be linked directly to movement, the city can no longer be defined as a constrained space. The impacts of climate change must be understood as a combination of the actual and the expected, and have to be addressed both practically and culturally. City Futures in an Age of Changing Climate looks at how cities can adapt and respond to the unsustainable conditions they are now facing. The book considers possible post-urban futures, exposing a range of very different urban forms, and addresses the concept of fragmentation; the breaking up of any coherent economic or cultural nucleic urban spaces. Urban planners, designers, development practitioners, and anyone seeking to understand what the future is likely to look like for our cities, and how to prepare for it, will find this an essential read.