FUTURES THINKING AS AN INHERENT PART OF THE DESIGN

PROCESS - ARTISTIC FUTURES VS. FUTURES STUDIES METHODS

Chair: Pirjo HaikolaPanelists: Stuart Candy,

Johannes Koponen, Maaike Rijnders

Panel Session 12 June 2015 Futures Studies Tackling Wicked Problems

Turku, Finland

Pirjo Haikola: Futures thinking as an inherent part of the design process - artistic futures vs. futures studies methodsAssistant Professor, IADE Creative University Lisbon Sessional Lecturer, Aalto University Helsinki Designer, researcher, educator focusing on experimental approaches to the creative process - how methods from diverse fields from arts to sciences can be applied to creative work. Past work includes Future Cities research group the Why Factory at Delft University of Technology, designer at OMA/AMO among others.

Stuart Candy: Making Futures Matter: Lessons and questions from a decade of Experiential FuturesAssistant Professor, Strategic Foresight & Innovation Co-founder, Situation Lab, OCAD University Toronto Stuart is a producer, strategist and educator. He works with experiential futures and design fiction, evoking worlds to come via tangible artifacts and immersive encounters. In the past decade, Stuart has worked around the world with governments at all levels, the Sydney Opera House, IDEO, Wired magazine, Institute for the Future, and General Electric.

Johannes Koponen, Mikael Koponen: Just another pesto recipe: why the most widely used approach to holistic thinking isn’t by definition comprehensive and what can we do about it University of Helsinki, Department of Social Research

Aalto University School of Science, Information Networks

Researcher, Head of Foresight at Demos Helsinki focusing on strategic futures studies and development of business models through the scenario method and other futures studies methods. Innovator across disciplines.

Maaike Rijnders, Patrick van der Duin: Improving future scenario visualisation through transmedia storytelling Futures Research and Trendwatching, Fontys Academy for Creative Industries, Tilburg, Netherlands Lecturer in Future Studies and she has recently developed the Minor in Transmedia Storytelling.

Design

Create based on research, materialize/visualize and

communicate futures yet to come.

Futures Studies

“[D]iscover or invent, examine and evaluate, and propose possible,

probable and preferable futures.”

Bell 2007, 73

Design Futures Studies

Both disciplines are multidisciplinary, adapting, appropriating, and creating

new methods as society changes.

And work with WICKED problems.

“[D]esign is a natural ally to futurity*.”

*Appadura. A. in Yealvich. S., Adams. B. Design as Future Making. 2014, 9

5 10 15 20YEARS 0 25 30 50 55 60 70

INRASTRUCTURESERVICE LIFE

INRASTRUCTURETRANSITION

TIMERAIL / ROAD

Lemer, Member, 1996. 154,157Stappers et.al 2003Yohanis, Norton 2001

*100

DESIGN LIFEBUILDINGS *-60

65 80 90 95 10035 40 45 75 85

CONSUMER PRODUCT

SERVICE LIFE

*1-5

*30-70

BUT, most designers have never heard of futures studies,

or its methods.

Futures Studies is also largely unaware of design methods.

FS

...

PRAGMATIC PREDICTION

CAUSAL LAYERED ANALYSIS

ENVIRONMENTAL SCANNING

BACKCASTING

EXTRAPOLATION OF TIME SERIES

SURVEY RESEARCH

DELPHI METHOD

SIMULATION AND COMPUTER MODELING

GAMES

MONITORING

CONTENT ANALYSIS

PARTICIPATORY FUTURES PRAXIS

FUTURE WORKSHOPS

SCENARIO PLANNING

...

...

CONTEXTMAPPING

CULTURAL PROBES

USER OBSERVATIONS

INTERVIEWS

FOCUS GROUP

CUSTOMER JOURNEY

MIND MAP

SIMULATION AND COMPUTER MODELING

GAMES

STRATEGY WHEEL

TREND ANALYSIS

FUNCTION ANALYSIS

PROCESS TREE

SWOT

PERCEPTUAL MAP

SCENARIOS ...

How have the design disciplines engaged with ´visionary´ future thinking?

What can we learn from the past?

How could the fields learn from each other?

A boom of artistic futures projects in architecture until (and especially) in the 60´s and 70´s.

They are still the examples for the discipline.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Broadacre City. http://library.columbia.edu/news/libraries/2014/2012-1-16_Avery_Library_Co-Presents_FLW_MoMA_Exhibition.html

Broad Acre City 1935-34 Frank Lloyd Wright

Spacious suburbias as a better alternative to urban living. Proposal for the American suburbia, 4000m2 for each family. Most transportation planned with cars.

Continuous Monument 1969 Superstudio

The omnipresent grid as a symbol of artificiality.

An architectural model for total urbanization, critical dystopia of a world rendered uniform.

No-Stop-City 1969 Archizoom

Dystopian / utopian artifical living. “Modeled on the supermarket, the factory, and the horizontal plans of Büro Landschaft, No-Stop-City was envisioned as a ‘well-equipped residential parking lot’ composed of ‘large floors, micro-climatized and artificially lighted interiors.” (Andrea Branzi)

Design, architecture, and urban planning lacked futures thinking during

“1980´s hyper-commercialized period ”

“With the failure of the suburban experiment and the looming end-of-the-world predictions”

from the 1990´s onwards critical and conceptual de-sign brought it back to the forefront “design for de-

bate” - an alternative design channel.

Dunne. A., Raby. F. 2014. Speculative Everything. 6, Wood. D., Andraos. A in Feireiss. L. 2011,14

Design Academy Eindhoven Droof Design / Royal College of Art London / Dunne&Raby

Objects started to question and comment on their purpose, form, materials, and their relation to users and society and create debate.

Biojewellery 2006 Tobie Kerridge

Tissue engineering and design.

Speculative design and public engagement with science and technology.

Image source: http://studio.droog.com/contents/lab/multibox/lab_11_fantastical_investements_08.jpg

“Such [critical/conceptual] designs are typically displayed at elitists

contexts... Dunne and Raby themselves remain, who is having this debate?”

Blythe, Mark. The Context of Critical Design: Exhibitions, social media

and auction houses. The Design Journal. 2015, 18:85

Winy Maas, Ulf Hackauf, Pirjo Haikola, Bas Kalmeijer and Tihamer Salij (The Why Factory). Animations Wieland | Gouwens. Commissioned by Stroom the Hague and supported by In-

novatieNetwerk, LTO Nederland, Delft University of Technology and Wageningen University.

City Pig 2009 the Why Factory

Generate public debate towards improving farming practices. Study of pig farming based on data-and conceptual provocative designs for exhibition purposes.

2009-10Phase one: Winy Maas, Hui-Hsin Liao, Pirjo Haikola, Ulf

Hackauf, Young Wook Joung The Why Factory and MVRDV (2009-2012) for JUT Foundation for Arts & Architecture

Vertical Village

Participatory speculative urbanism

Every week a new house is built in our Vertical Village, and suddenly a new neighbour becomes part of our community. So do new shops, facilities and gardens. It’s exciting to be part of an ever-evolving development, and it’s beautiful to see everyone’s wishes come true and the diversity this creates.

494

‘49 Cities’ projects selected from 200 visionary pro-

jects, from the Roman times until now.

“Each of the cities is conceived as a reaction to the urban conditions and fears

of its time: overpopulation, sprawl, chaos, slums, pollution, war.”

49 cities, Wood. D., Andraos. A in Feireiss.l. Utopia Forever. 2011

Image source: https://communitydesignstudio.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/workac49cities.pdf

Futures Studies:

Contribute methods, more holistic approach

and longer time perspective?

Design:

Contribute methods, visualize, materialize, and prototype futures?

On-line Media:

Improve participation, data collection/analysis, and public engagement?

Futures Design

More unexpected, creative and

relevant futures?

IADE Creative University, Lisbon

Student projects: Superhuman by Ana Morais, Antía Area, Mariana Nunes, Pedro Gomes, Vera Bettencourt; Humanologic by Ana Sofia Serra, Anna Khomenko, Catarina Menezes, Joana Morgado, Malte Frisch

Designing Futures, masters course 2014 IADE

Use and modify Futures Studies methods for design projects.