Not Here, Not Now: Speculative Thought, Impossibility, and Design Imagination

The author of "Speculative Everything" returns after 12 years with a magnum opus!

What does design mean when "the future" seems impossible for many?

When reality disappoints us, what more can designers do? Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby take us on an exhilarating and thought-provoking journey to the frontiers of science, philosophy, and literature, questioning the relationship between design and reality, and seeking new ways to rethink "possibility" and the meaning, function, and place of design in that speculative world of "not here, not now." "Not Here, Not Now" is both a conceptual travelogue and a design experiment, combining text, images, and objects to capture the ideas encountered during the journey in the form of design. This richly illustrated book explores how these ideas and objects can converse through fictional archives, libraries, glossaries, taxonomies, lists, stories, and discourses.

Many ideas presented through design in "Not Here, Not Now"—such as a floating island made of stone, a plant-sheep, fabric samples of imaginary colors, pocket-sized micro-universes at home, or objects undergoing spacetime collapse—are, like the most captivating utopias, inherently impossible designs. Their purpose is not to be realized, but to nourish the soil of creativity, thought, and imagination, allowing new, as-yet-unknown possibilities to sprout.

【Book Features】
(1) The evolution of speculative design, designing for "imagined possibilities."
Not to respond to current reality, but to tear open the boundaries of reality. Not designing objects, but designing the way ideas are generated. Not to construct the future, but to enable the "world that is yet to come" to be imagined.

(2) This is Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby's most representative, philosophical, and poetic work since "Speculative Everything." "Not Here, Not Now" takes us on a journey of thought through science, philosophy, literature, and design, contemplating what design can do when "the future" seems to become impossible.

(3) This book views design as a "speculative journey," constructing an "imaginary archive" between fiction and reality through text, images, and objects—where each design is a microcosm of a world, a trigger for thought. They are not solutions, but instigators of questions; not products, but a reconstruction of reality.

(4) For designers—this book will remind you that design is not just about "making the future happen," but about "questioning why the future happens this way." For thinkers—this book invites you to consider how we can use design as a philosophical practice to redraw the "imagination of reality."

(5) "Not Here, Not Now" is an atlas of ideas, a journey into the "possibility of the impossible." It makes us understand that reality is not the only coordinate, and imagination is the starting point to new worlds.