Part of the Project
The compelling thing about speculative design is that there are no boundaries. In fact, the aim of the discipline is to take every constraint and turn it on its head. By length and breadth we can expand the way we live, eat, move and more.
Nowhere was this princple more clear than at the inaugural antenna, a global scan of design graduates. Here we've rounded up the antenna speakers who predict how design can alter the way we eat, travel, and even age in the future.
Consuming food as a multisensory experience
Masterchef finalist Naresh Ramdjas and fashion researcher Vera du Pont from AnoukxVera curated the Memory Shop project as a way to combine culinary expertise and experiential elements of design, taking experience of dining at a restaurant to an entirely new level.
Ramdjas, who built the brand Creative Food Studio, created an 8-course meal for the launch of the event. Each course was accompanied by different wine pairings. The menus were also especially designed to feature different colours to match the outfits of the waitstaff and reflect the origins of some of the food. The waitstaff changed their outfits to match each course, which was servered on bespoke ceramic plates.
The team wanted to take diners on a journey so that they could explore how boundaries between food and design fade when every sense of the diner is catered for. Ramdjas added that the focus is not only on the food, but rather that every detail stimulates your senses as a whole; from the ceramics and the furniture to the clothes of the staff.
Driving cars using interactive windshield interfaces
For Sebastien Gier, a graduate of the The Umeå Institute of Design in Sweden, the car window presents interesting possibilities when looking at the future of mobility. In his project, Xplore Window Into The Future, the car is not only a way to see outside, but also way to control and curate past experiences by looking back and forward in time.
The window can zoom into your views but also work as a way of bookmarking what you see. The window then becomes a way of curating your memories on the trip and sharing them with your friends and family.
Gier wanted to make people exprience what it would be like to manipulate your surroundings to make experiences like driving through traffic (or in a foreign country) a more interesting adventure.
Rethinking architecture and careers as our lifespans change
Design Academy Eindhoven graduates Mar Ginot Blanco and Aaron Garlick collaborated speculate on how design could respond to aging in decades to come and how increased lifespans will affect the way we work, engage with architecture and eventually retire.
The duo tackle the question “what will it mean to age in 2050?” as opposed to current norms surrounding the lifespan and careers of elderly folks. Based on their research, Blanco and Garlick designed a hypothetical scenario in which people reach the age of 120 easily.
With modern medicine and bioengineered organ design advancing rapidly in years to come, Blanco and Garlick forecast an era in which retirement is determined by cognitive ability rather than the number 65. This will greatly affect the world’s population, the accessibility of housing in urban areas and the transport systems that connect them all.
More on future living and design:
9 Design Indaba speakers that told us more about the future of architecture
