With this special edition of the Strategic Design Re- search Journal (SDRJ) we want to contribute to the emerging debate on design’s role in the creation of the very worlds within which we live, the conditions for plural possibilities of being, and in critically self reflecting on the conditions, infrastructures, networks and scaffolds that world-making in our troubled times require. It should not come as a surprise that calls for a reorientation of the design disciplines, away from the functionalist, rationalist, and industrial traditions dominant for most of their history are surfacing to- day. The past decades have seen multiple calls from both mainstream and critical positions.