Design as Future-Making is a collection of essays by international designers and theorists who share a new understanding of design as a socio-material practice embedded within a multiplicity of ways of making the world.

Issues such as social justice, environmental health, political agency, education, and even the right to pleasure and play, are customarily thought of as dematerialised ideas and values. Yet, each of those realms of daily life are affected by – indeed, determined by – their physical and virtual contexts.

Design as Future-Making argues that design is not only integral to social issues, but it is also an integrated mode of thought and action – one that variously draws on and informs disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, anthropology, political science, and psychology.

The chapter explores Design, Science and Bioethics collaborations with an emphasis on the relationship between the material and immaterial aspects of design, where the product or service is an embodiment of philosophical inquire.

More specifically, the chapter investigates the use of design as a tool for philosophical inquiry by discussing examples of design objects which do not just promote social innovation, or functional or stylistic enhancement, but which prompt the viewer to ask philosophical questions about life.