Design & Territories: Emergencies and Conflicts at the Time of the Anthropocene

The aim of the paper is to present a focus on the relationship between Design and Territory, framing it in the contemporary debate about the Anthropocene and orienting the discussion in the direction of emergencies and conflicts concerning the evolution of our artificial world. After an overview about typical issues regarding the relationship between design and territory, the authors propose to interpret it through the concept of “time”, which is the, often underestimate, paradigm at the base of Advanced Design studies. This reasoning will be developed in three phases: how design relates itself with the past of territories and with the forms inherited; how contemporary design deals with the current issues of the territory, in terms of emergences and conflicts; how design anticipates visions of sharable future themes and solutions.