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Paper short abstract

This paper presents some reflections on a series of pedagogical exercises in which design master students engaged in speculative designing. It will explore how future and futurelessness figured in their design process and result.

Paper long abstract

Bifo Berardi has argued that the twentieth century was “the century that trusted in the future” and that we then moved on to a “century with no future”. In contemporary design, the rise of speculative projects and approaches can be seen as evidence of a growing sense of futurelessness among designers whereby the very idea of the future is problematized. Arguably, speculative design is deeply hauntological. The notion of hauntology denotes how the absent future makes itself present as a loss. This paper presents some reflections on a series of pedagogical exercises in which design master students engaged in speculative designing. It will explore how future and futurelessness figured in their design process and result.