Introduzione. Conoscere il futuro: invenzioni, programmi e progetti

The article describes the peculiar modality in which design combines predictable and unpredictable elements, and places different disciplinary contributes hosted in this number inside an ordering scheme about possible forms of future’s knowledge. The scheme is built on the intersection of two criteria: the first regards the ways in which the action of invention (expansion of reality) and the action of discovering (expansion of truth) are combined; whilst the second one regards the way in which the unpredictable of the subjects and the predictable of the objects is kept separated (truth explains reality from an external position) or weaved (truth is immanent to reality). Inside this general scheme of combination between predictable and unpredictable, the architectural project has a specific position. The promise of effect that characterizes each architectural project is an action’s strategy that builds programs on predictable elements and produces and exchanges inventions about what is unpredictable.