Designers are traditionally seen as problem-solvers, addressing the diverse spectrum of human needs and desires. However, as the market-driven, user-centred paradigm is being challenged by ecological, technological and economic shifts, designers have started exploring complexities that come hand in hand with the acknowledgment that the spatial-temporal dimensions of design extend far beyond the human. This change in perspective serves as a catalyst for new enquiries, in which design ventures into the realm of the speculative, the unconventional, and the transformative. Can the role of design transcend established boundaries? Can our frame of reference encompass distant futures, parallel timelines, or competing pasts? Can preferences of biological and technological meshes be unravelled through design? Can we open the doors to a more expansive design philosophy?

Potential themes

• Critical design
• Speculative design
• Post-critical and post-speculative practices
• More-than-human timescales
• More-than-human spatial complexities
• Shared agency, co-creation (digital and/or biological) and creative hybridisation
• Critiques of human-, user- and designer-centered design
• Critical and speculative posthumanism in design and art
• Philosophy of design

Track chairs

Ákos Schneider

Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest

Karina Vissonova

Institute of Advanced Design Studies

Ivica Mitrović

Arts Academy, University of Split