Conceptual Devices Information

Conceptual Devices is an epistemic design practice founded by Antonio Scarponi. It operates at the threshold where decisions are forming but not yet irreversible. Rather than delivering predefined solutions, the practice intervenes in the conditions that make decisions possible. It engages institutions, infrastructures, and organizational systems as spatial and relational fields where form, knowledge, and power co-produce one another. Through situated interventions, exhibitions, pedagogical formats, manuals, and institutional collaborations, Conceptual Devices makes epistemic design operational. Its work unfolds through recurring epistemic actions articulated as DEMA — a device that displaces, exposes, mediates, and activates relations before they stabilize into fixed structures. Projects such as ELIOOO (an open hydroponic manual for domestic food production), spatial installations, and research platforms demonstrate how design can act prior to prescription, shaping the conditions under which planning, policy, and form take shape. Working within the broader field of Epistemic Design and Spatial Thinking, the practice investigates how design operates ex-ante, before stabilization, and in-fieri, within ongoing processes of institutional and spatial transformation. Across more than two decades, Conceptual Devices has collaborated with cultural institutions, academic environments, and public platforms internationally, positioning design as a transformative mode of knowledge production.