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Contrapractice
Action Against Defuturing
Series: Beyond the Modern
Brief Description
Building on his foundational work on ‘defuturing’, a deconstructive method that exposes historically the unsustainability of a great deal of design practice and its products, Tony Fry now offers a powerful response. There is no shortage of analysis of the current state of the world. Climate...
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Contrapractice
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Building on Tony Fry’s foundational work on ‘defuturing’, a deconstructive method to understand fundamental flaws in the designed world around us, this book addresses current global unsustainable practices.
Building on Tony Fry’s foundational work on ‘defuturing’, a deconstructive method to understand fundamental flaws in the designed world around us, this book addresses current global unsustainable practices.
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Description
Building on his foundational work on ‘defuturing’, a deconstructive method that exposes historically the unsustainability of a great deal of design practice and its products, Tony Fry now offers a powerful response.
There is no shortage of analysis of the current state of the world. Climate change impacts are increasing, environmental destruction will follow, populations and settlements will be displaced, food security will become critical, geopolitical instability and escalating dangers of conflict will grow. Such an entangled complexity threatens life itself more seriously than at any time since the Ice Age. Against the real threats to life on Earth, what are the world’s political leaders doing? The answers sit between nothing and very little.
So, what is to be done? There is no immediate or simple answer. But what Contrapractice acknowledges is that nothing changes unless practices change. The intent is for the process to take on a life of its own by the many people who care about securing a viable future. It does not provide template solutions, but the ability to act. Every reader is viewed as a communicator of its message and a change agent of their own practice. Fry’s dialogue in the book with Dulmini Perera is a prompt for the book to be an object of discussion.
Series: Beyond the Modern
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Relationality
This important new book argues that at the root of the contemporary crisis of climate, energy, food, inequality, and meaning is a certain core presupposition that structures the ways in which we live, think, act and design: the assumption of dualism, or the fundamental separateness of things. The authors contend that the key to constructing livable worlds lies in the...Paperback$3699Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Contrapractice
Building on his foundational work on ‘defuturing’, a deconstructive method that exposes historically the unsustainability of a great deal of design practice and its products, Tony Fry now offers a powerful response. There is no shortage of analysis of the current state of the world. Climate change impacts are increasing, environmental destruction will follow, populations and settlements will be displaced,...Hardback$11000Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Contrapractice
Building on his foundational work on ‘defuturing,’ a deconstructive method that exposes historically the unsustainability of a great deal of design practice and its products, Tony Fry now offers a powerful response. There is no shortage of analysis of the current state of the world. Climate change impacts are increasing, environmental destruction will follow, populations and settlements will be displaced,...Paperback$3899Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Pre-order
(Designing) Beyond the Modern
(Designing) Beyond the Modern is the second volume in a trilogy by Eduardo Staszowski and Virginia Tassinari, following Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon (2020). This book is a provocation: how can we begin to move beyond the modern when so much of how we think and make remains entangled in its logic? Among the forces that have both...Paperback$3899Unit price /UnavailableOut 4 Feb 2027Pre-order -
(Designing) Beyond the Modern
(Designing) Beyond the Modern is the second volume in a trilogy by Eduardo Staszowski and Virginia Tassinari, following Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon (2020). This book is a provocation: how can we begin to move beyond the modern when so much of how we think and make remains entangled in its logic? Among the forces that have both...HardbackSold Out
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781350448506
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Format: Hardback
Date Published: 14 May 2026
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Contributors:
- Contributions by Dulmini Perera
Audience: Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 18.0mm
Width: 162.0mm
Height: 236.0mm
Weight: 480g
Pages: 224
About the Author
Tony Fry is Principal of The Studio at the Edge of the World, Tasmania, Adjunct Professor at the University of Tasmania, Australia and Visiting Professor at Universidad de Ibagué, Colombia. He is an award-winning designer, cultural theorist, educator and author. He has held academic positions in Australia and internationally and is the author of sixteen books, including Design Futuring (Bloomsbury, 2009); Design as Politics (Bloomsbury, 2011), Becoming Human By Design (Bloomsbury, 2012), Remaking Cities (Bloomsbury, 2017), Defuturing (Bloomsbury, 2020) and Writing Design Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2021).
Dulmini Perera is Lecturer and Researcher at Bauhaus University, Weimar, Germany. She works at the intersection of critical theory, design theory and systems/cybernetics research, and is the recipient of the Heinz von Foerster award (2021). She has written and edited a number of publications including the co-edited book The Space of Technicity (forthcoming, 2023) and the co-edited Footprint journal volume Engaging Cosmotechnical Difference in Architecture and Urbanism (forthcoming, 2024). She is a member of award-winning design and research teams in Sri Lanka and internationally.
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Contrapractice
Building on his foundational work on ‘defuturing,’ a deconstructive method that exposes historically the unsustainability of a great deal of design practice and its products, Tony Fry now offers a powerful response. There is no shortage of analysis of the current state of the world. Climate change impacts are increasing, environmental destruction will follow, populations and settlements will be displaced,...Paperback$3899Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks
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