Speculative Design and Climate Futures

In order to create relevant and responsible designs, we must consider both the present and future of what we make. Speculative design is an approach by which we can explore both alternate presents and possible futures and bring them to life in their full complexity. By doing so, we can uncover the full breadth of needs and challenges that our world faces and attempt to design for them in a farsighted, ethical way.

But how exactly does speculative design and futurescaping work? This workshop shares futurescaping methods, focusing especially on speculative design. We will guide participants through the many approaches, sharing specific methods and tools that they can apply to their own projects.

As hands-on learning is always better than sitting back and listening, we will work with climate migration as our anchoring topic and lead our participants through the different phases of the speculative design process as applied to this difficult and relevant subject.

This course is for designers, researchers and curious minds who would like to understand the power and potential of working with speculative design.