Tony Fry is Professor of Design Futures, Griffith University, Queensland College of Art, Brisbane. Tony‘s research interest span Design Philosophy, Design Futures and Sustainment, Resettlement Theory, Learning in the Third Epoch of the University, and Intercultural Understanding. He is an author of ten books, an award winning designer and design educator. He is currently completing a commission on a book on ‘the future of cities in the age of climate change’; two essays in a book on ‘globalism and border thinking’; and major essays for a book on ‘design and the question of history’–all to be published in 2014. Tony has worked and taught internationally, most recently in Timor-Leste, the USA, and India, with emergent projects in Greece and Egypt.
Keynote - An Agenda of Transformation: Tony will argue that the extant politics, philosophy and practices of design cannot get us to a ‘future with a future’, and that in this unfolding age of global unsettlement they have to be remade. Framed by this situation, the question becomes: what do designer and architects do when confronted with the 'defuturing' consequences of humanity’s anthropocentric fabrication of ‘a world within the world’? Rather than deal with this question in the abstract it be will be first brought to ‘thinking the future of cities in time, unsettlement and a changing climate. Thereafter, issues of the transformation of learning, methods and practice will be presented both in the context of questions raised and as contribution to on going discussion within the conference.