“We use design to ask questions about the kinds of worlds we want to live in.”
British designer Fiona Raby is a partner in the New York-based design studio Dunne & Raby, whose practice is centered on Critical Design, which applies a critical theory approach to design. She is University Professor of Design and Social Inquiry, and co-director, together with studio partner Anthony Dunne, of the Designed Realities Studio at The New School in New York.
Raby is a co-author, together with Dunne, of Design Noir (2000, 2021), and Speculative Everything (2013) and her design projects are in several permanent collections including MoMA, New York; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and MAK, Vienna. In 2021, Raby was made a Royal Designers for Industry (RDI) and Life Fellow by the Royal Society of Arts (UK). Dunne & Raby received the inaugural MIT Media Lab Award (US) in 2015.
“When we recently tried to explain what we do to a colleague of ours in the humanities, he said, ‘Oh, so you design for non existent worlds?’” says Raby. “We hadn’t thought of it like that, but yes! I think that’s pretty much what we do. At Dunne & Raby, we think of it as designing for the ‘Not Here, Not Now,’” she adds.
