Margolin, Victor. “Design, the future and the human spirit.” Design Issues 23.3 (2007): 4-15.
Foresight and design are both activities that aim to imagine the future in response to change and uncertainty. (Celi, Rudkin 2016).
The famous Italian master Achille Castiglioni stressed the meaning of the word “project”, in Italian “progetto” and in their shared Latin root pro – jacere as to throw forward. The use of project instead of design underlines the future perspective: to go beyond the existing and towards innovation. Design a multifaceted discipline detached from any specific area is able to shape the objectives and to indicate directions of change. Design is not art because, although intuition and creativity are always present, the produced insights reflect various stakeholders’ needs (Margolin, 2007, p.16). Design, despite attempts in the sixties (Simon, 1969), is not a science because it doesn’t seek descriptive and repeatable models of reality. Designers try to shape the elements of new structures (Alexander, 1964) and even the most scientific design method can be considered only as a pattern of behavior employed in inventing things which do not yet exists (Cross, 2001).
Design, while sharing functional objectives with technology is not limited to it as it deals with fuzzy, discursive criteria rather than objective ones (Margolin, 2007).
Design is something very special, and obviously, it has many points in common with futures studies: future- orientation (Zamenopoulos & Alexiou, 2007), service to people and social institutions, deals with fuzziness, change, cultural as opposed to scientific criteria, negotiation between stakeholders and with the aim of understanding each other’s viewpoint (Margolin, 2007, p.5)
Considering the classical and shared idea of design (from industrial design to communication, interior or fashion design) the natural propensity for crystallization of the projection into a concrete material product implies effects on today and tomorrow. The importance of the projection of a single designer is infinitely smaller than the effect of a future policy but it is pulverized, diffused, widespread, and so visible and tangible that it can heavily influence even the most remote future in a concrete way. Through objects, environments and communications, design orients behaviors more or less consciously (Celaschi& Celi., 2015).
There are some similarities between Design and Future studies (intended as disciplines) especially in their aim of shaping future. Already in the fifties’ Fred Polak, recognized the role of future for society and trough the title of his work : The image of the future (Polak, 1973) underlined that the capability to imagine several futures, the capacity to project their image, are the key to all choice-oriented behavior. According to his view the greatest task of human knowledge was to bridge this gap and to find those patterns in the past that can be projected into the future as realistic images (Van der Helm, 2005).