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“Design in the Present Tense” is not currently identifiable as one established book, exhibition, movement or design field. The phrase points to several different projects: a Vancouver studio’s public-space practice, a 2019 exhibition about women in design in Aotearoa, and a design-publishing project called The Present Tense. They should not be treated as one unified subject.
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The most useful provisional reading is a question: how can design respond to conditions as they are now, rather than relying on inherited forms, habits or timelines? The examples below show three distinct answers, while making clear what each source does—and does not—establish.
What “design in the present tense” means
In ordinary grammar, the present tense describes an action happening now. Applied to design, it suggests work that begins with current conditions and remains accountable to people using it today. That can involve a public square, an exhibition about who is visible in design, or a publication that changes how a practice is documented.
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This is a useful lens, but it is not evidence of a recognized school called “Design in the Present Tense.” The available records identify separate projects with similar language. A careful reader should ask which project a title refers to before drawing conclusions about its geography, medium, politics or outcomes.
The key distinction: a lens, not a movement
Reading a project in the present tense does not mean declaring it innovative, sustainable or socially successful. It means examining the decisions that connect a design to its current audience and circumstances. Those decisions may concern scale, access, materials, placement, participation, representation or the way a project is organized and interpreted.
Because the sources do not provide controlled comparisons or measured outcomes, claims about effectiveness must remain limited. The examples can illustrate different approaches to present-focused practice; they cannot prove a general theory.
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| Project | What the cited source establishes | What it does not establish |
|---|---|---|
| Meanwhile | An international studio for public-space products and places; founded in 2013 by CEO and creative director Chris Charest. Its manifesto asks how urban spaces and cities can respond to now and identifies City Blocks as a modular, adaptive urban-furniture platform. | Independent evaluations of the studio’s projects, measured social outcomes, or proof that it represents a wider design movement. |
| Present Tense: Wāhine Toi Aotearoa | A project described by Wendy Richdale, Director of RAMP Gallery, in a curatorial text dated April 30, 2019. It focuses on women in design in Aotearoa and links attention to the present with seeing and acting. | That this exhibition is the work meant by the title, or that its approach stands for design in Aotearoa as a whole. |
| The Present Tense and Rafael de Cárdenas interview | The Future Perfect describes The Present Tense as an editorial forum for design criticism, ideas, discoveries, new work and travel news. A 2017 interview discusses a monograph about de Cárdenas’s firm’s first decade, organized by mood rather than chronology. | That the editorial site or monograph is the intended subject, or that mood-based sequencing is a universal model for documenting design. |
Meanwhile: designing public space for “now”
Meanwhile presents the clearest literal use of the phrase. Its own manifesto describes an international design studio working on products and places for city life. The studio says it was founded in 2013 by Chris Charest, who is identified as CEO and creative director. Its stated ambition is to reimagine and activate urban spaces for people.
The studio’s central question is quoted as: “Meanwhile designs for the present tense asking how can we shape our urban spaces and cities responding to now.” This wording places time and use at the center of the brief. A street, plaza or other civic setting is not treated as a finished object detached from daily life; it is framed as something that should answer current patterns of movement, gathering and need.
City Blocks as an adaptive platform
Meanwhile identifies City Blocks as a modular, adaptive urban-furniture platform. “Modular” indicates that the system is described as a set of components rather than one fixed object; “adaptive” indicates an intention to accommodate changing arrangements or uses. Those terms are the studio’s description, not an independent assessment of how the platform performs in particular cities.
For a reader analyzing a public-space project, the important questions are practical:
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- Who can sit, move, pause or gather, and who may be excluded by the layout?
- How does the design respond to weather, maintenance, safety and changing patterns of use?
- Is the “present” defined by residents, visitors, municipal authorities, the designer or some combination?
These questions keep the discussion grounded in use rather than in a vague claim that a design is contemporary. The available account of Meanwhile does not provide enough evidence to answer them for a specific installation, so no performance verdict should be inferred.
A dated corporate claim
Meanwhile’s current about page says the studio became a certified B Corporation in 2025. That is a claim made by the studio and should be read with the date attached; independent certification details are not established here. It may be relevant when examining how the practice defines present-day responsibility, but it is not proof that every project delivers a particular social or environmental result.
Present Tense: Wāhine Toi Aotearoa
The second reference is an exhibition rather than an urban-furniture practice. In a curatorial text published April 30, 2019, Wendy Richdale, Director of RAMP Gallery, describes Present Tense: Wāhine Toi Aotearoa as a project focused on women in design in Aotearoa.
Richdale connects attention to the present with perception and agency: “Being mindful of the present, can become a powerful tool for action.” In this context, present-tense design is not primarily about a product that changes configuration. It is about noticing who is being seen, whose work is being given space and what choices become possible when attention is directed to current conditions.
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Representation is part of the design question
An exhibition can alter a design conversation through selection, framing and attribution. A focus on women in design in Aotearoa asks readers to consider whose histories and practices are usually centered, and whose may be overlooked. That does not make the exhibition a comprehensive account of all women designers or all Aotearoa design; the source establishes a specific curatorial project, not a census.
Richdale’s accompanying questions—“Do I want to be where I currently am? Do I want to do things the way they have always been done?”—can be used as prompts when viewing any design work. They encourage a reader to identify an inherited arrangement, then ask who benefits from keeping it and what an alternative would require. They are questions posed in the curatorial text, not survey findings about audience attitudes.
The Present Tense as design publishing
The phrase also names an editorial project. The Future Perfect describes The Present Tense as a forum for design criticism, ideas, discoveries, new work and travel news. Here, “present tense” refers to publishing: selecting and circulating design conversations while they are current, rather than presenting a settled historical canon.
That editorial role matters because documentation changes how a practice is remembered. A project can be experienced as a building, object or image, but it can also be encountered through criticism, interviews and photographs. The language chosen by an editor determines which questions become visible and which context travels with the work.
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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchA monograph organized by mood
In a 2017 interview published by The Future Perfect, Rafael de Cárdenas discusses a monograph about his firm’s first decade. He explains: “The book presents all of our projects in a series of chapters that are organized by mood, rather than chronologically.”
Organizing by mood is a documentation choice, not evidence that the projects themselves were produced in a present-tense method. It can make relationships between atmosphere, color, material or emotion easier to perceive than a year-by-year sequence would. It can also hide development over time. A reader should therefore distinguish the design of the book from the design of the projects it contains.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to analyze a present-responsive design
If you encounter the phrase in a studio statement, exhibition title or publication, use the following sequence. It prevents a fashionable label from replacing close reading.
- Identify the object and context. Determine whether the subject is a place, product, exhibition, publication or a specific designer’s practice. Record the geography and date before interpreting the title.
- Name the present condition. Ask what “now” refers to in this case: a change in public-space use, a question of representation, a new audience, a material constraint or a shift in how work is documented. If the source does not name the condition, do not invent one.
- Locate the decision that responds to it. Look for a concrete choice in form, layout, access, materials, commissioning, selection or sequencing. A present-tense claim becomes meaningful only when it is tied to such a choice.
- Ask whose present is being served. Designers, commissioners, residents, visitors, artists and readers may experience the same intervention differently. Identify the people named by the source and note anyone left unaddressed.
- Separate intention from outcome. Words such as “adaptive,” “activating” or “powerful” describe an ambition or interpretation. Look for independent observation or measurement before treating them as demonstrated results.
- Check the date and version. A manifesto, exhibition and interview describe moments in time. Later changes may alter a studio, a site or a publication, so keep the original date attached to the claim.
What this lens offers painters and visual practitioners
For painters, the present-tense question can be applied without pretending that painting and urban design are the same discipline. Start with the conditions in which a work will actually be encountered: the scale of the room, the available light, the sequence of viewing, the people represented and the assumptions carried by the medium.
A painting may respond to the present through subject matter, but it can also do so through display and attention. An exhibition that foregrounds artists previously omitted from a narrative makes a curatorial decision about the present. A series arranged by atmosphere rather than date changes how viewers perceive relationships between works. Neither approach is automatically better; each should be judged against its stated purpose and the evidence available.
The same discipline of qualification applies. Do not call a work “responsive” merely because it uses current imagery or digital tools. Explain which present condition it addresses, what formal or organizational decision follows, and what remains unknown about its reception.
What can and cannot be concluded
The three sources support a cautious conclusion. “Design in the Present Tense” is best treated as an exploratory phrase for practices that make current conditions, current audiences or current ways of seeing part of the design brief. Meanwhile supplies a public-space example; Present Tense: Wāhine Toi Aotearoa supplies an exhibition example centered on women in design in Aotearoa; and The Future Perfect supplies a publishing and documentation example.
They do not establish a single movement, a shared methodology or a measured record of outcomes. No named statistic for the unidentified subject is available, and no controlled comparison among the examples has been published in the cited material. Keeping those limits visible is not a weakness: it is what allows the phrase to remain useful without turning three unrelated references into one invented canon.
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