Building A Future With Factual Foundations

Contemporary Design Culture: Week 6

In today’s world we are so numb to the wonders of modern technology, we don’t stop to think about how far we’ve advanced from 50 years ago. From smartphones to AI supercomputers we have never been in such a privileged position to design beyond our imagination. 3D printing is on the up and up, before long they will become so cost effective they’ll be in every household. Someday, in the near future, we’ll be self-reliant for many household goods from Tupperware to even 3D printing our dinner, all of this is in our grasp and isn’t too far of a reach. In times like this we can even imagine designs for technology that isn’t quite there yet, Nano-Technology for example. It’s unbelievable how Nano-tech could revolutionise our health care system for example. It’s interesting having redesigned a medical device, for a previous module, that someday in my lifetime I could be designing for Nano-tech or maybe another technology that we can’t even fathom yet.

Speculative Design is a very interesting field to research and turn-to as a creativity exercise. Who knows what the future will hold but it is very fascinating and fun to think about from a design perspective. Personally I like to look at speculative design and combine it with critical design. For example, critically speaking, Climate Change is going to decimate our current ecosystem at its current rate, so if we take that fact and pair it with a speculative design we can create futuristic concepts that are based on fact. An example of this is, with rising sea levels humans will have to adapt and build floating cities to survive. The technology doesn’t exist yet but it is solving a problem most of us know to be a fact (*cough*USA*cough*).

We can spend forever discussing the here and now but as designers it’s our obligation to design for more than the present, we must look to the future. It’s my opinion that we shouldn’t separate Speculative and Critical design, we should combine them into one Future Design. We should imagine futuristic concepts but tie it to a problem in the today’s world that we know isn’t going away. That’s what makes it so exciting, we can design incredible things that could one day solve a major world issue, whenever science catches up to the infinite possibilities of a designer’s mind.