A fundamental challenge for contemporary societies lies not in dispelling the unknown but in reorienting our relationship to it, recognizing uncertainty not as a void to be filled, but as a generative space of epistemic and material possibility. With its entanglements in speculation, anticipation, and world-making, design operates not simply as an instrument of resolution, but as a sophisticated approach for negotiating indeterminacy. This Open Debate section explores the theme of Design and the Unknown, interrogating how design might engage with uncertainty beyond the extractive logics of control, prediction, and optimization. By foregrounding problematization over prescription, hesitation over closure, and contingency over linear progression, the contributions in this issue critically reframe design’s encounter with the unknown. Spanning diverse disciplinary intersections, from translation to technology and foresight to education, speculation and critical theory, these perspectives invite us to rethink the epistemic conditions under which design both encounters and constitutes the unknown, unsettling its supposed boundaries while rendering its latent potential thinkable. Flaviano Celaschi
