How can we imagine desirable futures despite the complexity of the present?
In New Utopias and Designing Futures, designer, professor and theorist Oscar Guayabero invites us to reflect on how non-apocalyptic futures can be projected from the design sector, and on the importance of creating spaces for thought and action that allow us to move forward with optimism, based on his book Neutopías, publised by GG.
This workshop is part of the learning ecosystem of the University Master's Degree in Research in Art and Design (MURAD), a programme that promotes critical research and speculative creation to imagine new possible futures from design and artistic practices.
New Utopias and Designing Futures includes a talk in online and face-to-face format and a face-to-face workshop to be held at Eina Sentmenat.
→ Wednesday, 11 June
→ From 4 pm to 5 pm online and face-to-face chat
→ From 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm face-to-face workshop
→ Eina Sentmenat. Aula 1.02
→ Free event
What will you find?
In this talk, Oscar Guayabero, professor at MURAD, offers a critical reflection on the predominance of dystopia in the collective imagination, with a proposal to recover utopian visions and imagine more hopeful futures, despite the complexity of the present.
The author takes a look at classic utopias, analyses when the future began to be perceived as a worse place and offers tools for thinking about alternative imaginaries. Guayabero offers inspiration and examples to help generate non-apocalyptic narratives and to encourage purposeful thinking. The talk New Utopias and Designing Futures will be accompanied by a discussion with the audience.
This will be followed by a workshop to explore how design can imagine and shape possible futures through speculative scenarios. The aim is not to predict the future, but to provoke critical thinking, generate new ideas and design objects and environments that help us rethink the present. It is about building non-dystopian imaginaries that question the status quo and open debates about how we live and how we could live.
Based on speculative design - also known as critical or prospective design - we will work with one of the four hypotheses of the future:
1. Food shortages
2. Global Megapolis
3. Gender dissolution
4. Exponential increase in life expectancy
Participants will choose a scenario (or a combination) and define a context of intervention (body, house, city, world...) in which to explore design solutions. The focus will be on the hardware: the objects, spaces and environments that configure these futures, without going into their technological functioning.
The Manual Thinking methodology will be used to generate design ideas, objects and proposals that stage these futures in an agile way. The emphasis will be on how they relate to bodies, uses and emotions.
Aimed at
Anyone interested in design, culture, critical thinking, social foresight and the construction of more liveable futures.
Do you want to move forward?
This activity, linked to the University Master's Degree in Research in Art and Design (MURAD), is open to anyone interested in exploring new imaginaries through critical thinking and creative practices. Registration is free.
Registration
Free registration. Are you interested?
→ Online registration
→ On-site registration
