On what ground to design change: An inquiry into emerging design epistemologies

Design contributes to producing unsustainable worlds because it has limited projective capacities to reflect about what design designs and about power structures it reinforces or conceals. In response, several design approaches emerged, equipping designers with philosophical and social science frameworks to reorient design away from its ‘defuturing’ effects. Yet, the ability of these theories to fundamentally change design remains debated. This paper contributes to this discussion by exploring the epistemological underpinnings of five approaches: Transition Design, Mission-Oriented Design, Speculative Design, Pluriversal Design, and More-Than-Human Design. It examines how their theoretical framings reconfigure the design’s object, agency, and process altering the world. An archaeological analysis of these theoretical formations surfaces the epistemic discontinuities introduced to overcome prevailing modes of doing and knowing in design. This paper argues that meaningful change in design depends not only on new projective capacities for design, but on rethinking what projecting means within design practice itself.