This catalogue, which covers multiple disciplines and eras, examines the demands that scientific, technical, and social developments place on design. Its essays explore artistic, natural, scientific, and engineering processes in addition to formative processes in society and politics. How do the materials and tools of design leave their mark on the processes and results of scientific research? How do they change our ways of thinking? And how do they influence the shaping of both the environment and humans themselves? In short: what agencies do images and objects, materials and forces develop? These are the fundamental questions addressed by the essays in this book.