Futuring and defuturing, Design Futures, Politics, Tony Fry

Abstract

According to Tony Fry who first coined the term, Defuturing names two things. First, it designates the character and the historical consequence of the nature and the product of design practice, and second, it methodologically designates the way in which design can be interrogated, as it acts in the way just described. The term, a combination of the prefix de- and the noun future turned into verb, describes the reduction of the future, caused by human actions and a certain understanding of the future as something unpredictable and unaffected by past and present conditions. The use of “future” as a verb (futuring) is strongly related to ontological design and its “directorial consequence of the ‘thing-ing’ (the on going effects and environmental impacts) of some ‘thing’ designed” (Fry, 1999, p. 40).