Embury’s practice is grounded in a reconsideration of what designing is—what forms of knowledge it produces—and how it shapes our engagement with the world. At a historical moment when design risks being subsumed by instrumental reasoning, his practice attempts to advance thought-acting: the inseparability of thinking (intellectually and emotionally) and acting (ethically) as mutually informing ways of engaging with and making sense of the world. Drawing on Clive Dilnot’s philosophical interrogation of design, particularly his consideration of the ontological conditions of relationality, this position moves beyond thinking about Design toward thinking through designing. Designing, understood as an embodied and situated mode of inquiry, is a practice of designing for relationality: investigating how relationships among human, non-human, technological, material, and social conditions are constituted, negotiated, and transformed through observation, interpretation, experimentation, and intervention. It thus exceeds the production of objects and solutions, becoming a constitutive way of engaging with the world.
                    This conception of designing exceeds the horizons of any single field. It calls for an engagement with multiple ways of knowing, experiences, and practices, bringing them into relation through processes of inquiry and making. In doing so, designing challenges established boundaries, creates new connections between knowledge, and generates questions that unsettle familiar understandings. Its capacity lies not simply in drawing upon different fields, but in establishing conditions through which new forms of knowledge, thought, and action can emerge.
                    This orientation also informs the methods of inquiry, which move between calculative and meditative thinking. Drawing on Heidegger’s distinction between these modes, the practice shifts between an orientation toward progress, prediction, and predetermined outcomes and one grounded in process, reflection, and attentiveness to what emerges. This does not reject calculation or instrumental reasoning, but rather questions their dominance as primary means of understanding and engaging with the world. Meditative thinking, in turn, allows for a more receptive form of inquiry, making room for uncertainty, ambiguity, and possibilities that unfold through practice.
                    Central to this position is the epistemological significance of making—a means through which assumptions are unsettled, relationships become tangible, and previously unrecognized possibilities emerge. The material and practical dimensions of designing are therefore fundamental to the development of understanding. Making becomes a way of encountering what is not yet known.
                    Ultimately, Embury’s practice positions designing as a critical and generative mode of human engagement. Its concern extends beyond what is produced to what becomes possible through the process: what it allows us to perceive, question, and act upon. Rather than treating designing as an instrumental means of achieving predefined ends, the practice approaches it as a consequential form of inquiry through which new understandings and possibilities for engaging with the world can emerge.

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His practice is situated within the domain of inquiry-led, creation-based research—connecting artistic and academic discourse through scholarly examination, visual exploration, and critical reflection. His methods and perspectives engage critical discourse in fields ranging from cultural studies to ecological thinking.