Design Futures

Design in the
Anthropocene
Designers and creatives are responding to climate change
with installations that bring the issue into the cultural
zeitgeist, and ambitious initiatives that aim to help keep our
planet liveable

Brodie Neill
 Action Points
Climate change and sustainability are two of the
defining challenges of our time. Designers are
increasingly engaged, both in raising awareness of the
issues and in searching for solutions. The best
approaches that are emerging are effective, inspiring and
radically hopeful.
1. Be an ally: invest in positive and proactive initiatives
which empower consumers to work towards a solution,
rather than just worrying.
2. Explore new aesthetics: new approaches to
sustainability are developing the movement with a
fresh and exciting visual language that feels less dry
and worthy, and more exciting and dynamic.
3. Work at every scale: within your business, look at
areas such as redesigning packaging and cutting
down on production waste. Think outside of your
immediate product, too, by investing in large-scale
visionary projects and pushing for systemic industry
change.
4. Seize the opportunity to innovate: many of the great
innovations in history emerged during crises. Use this
opportunity to push forward new ideas and radical
design futures.

Studio Weave for Ikea

 Embedded
Awareness
Societal awareness of the effect of humans on the
planet – as defined by the new geological era, the
Anthropocene – is growing. As the effects of
climate breakdown start to be seen and felt on a daily
basis, the majority of people are now accepting
climate change as fact.
David Wallace-Wells' book, The Uninhabitable Earth,
captured the cultural zeitgeist in early 2019, exploring David Wallace-Wells
a bleak future where a likely four-degree warming –
much higher than the two-degree that governments
have been working to avoid – reshapes the world
Vox
dramatically. The documentary Anthropocene: The
Human Epoch similarly charts the 'planetary
domination' of humans, blending VR and film to
immerse viewers in topics including urbanisation,
terraforming and deforestation.
Begun in 2018 by climate activist Greta Thunberg, the
global Youth Strike 4 Climate, where children leave
school on Fridays to protest the apathy of their elders,
shows the increased awareness of climate realities
among younger generations. Hello to a Better Future,
a new children's book by Danish clean energy firm
Ørsted, is one of a number of creative initiatives
engaging children and embedding climate awareness
The Anthropocene Project
early.
Ørsted
 Galvanised
Culture
On April 3 2019, more than 190 arts organisations
launched Culture Declares Emergency, an initiative
that combines activism and art.
Artists are increasingly vocal about sustainability.
Justin Brice Guariglia created a series of climate art
signs hosted in public spaces in New York last
Emily Raboteau
summer. "This is an exceptionally urgent problem," he
says. "It needs to get out into the broad public and
raise consciousness. That’s the responsibility of
artists and writers. Not the corporations."
Olafur Eliasson
In December 2018, artist Olafur Eliasson installed Ice
Watch outside London's Tate Modern, leaving
centuries-old Greenland icebergs to melt. "In order to
create the massive behavioural change needed we
have to emotionalise the data, make it physically
tangible,” says Eliasson of the work. Lines, an
installation by Pekka Niittyvirta and Timo Aho, which
projects rising sea levels onto the Scottish coastline, is
similarly visceral.
Future Knowledge, an annual exhibition at Modern Art
Oxford, explores the role of visual culture in raising
awareness of climate change. New York's Climate
Museum, opened in late 2017, is the first US museum
dedicated to climate change and building community
Pekka Niittyvirta x Timo Future Knowledge at
around solutions. Aho Modern Art Oxford Climate Museum
 New Narratives
For better or for worse, sustainability tends to be
associated with a raw, natural aesthetic. Now, as it
permeates cultural consciousness and becomes
ingrained in design thinking, the visual and cultural
narratives around it are diversifying.
The James Bridle-curated exhibition Agency, held at
Berlin's Nome Gallery in 2018, explored this topic,
stressing "the need to think these issues through non-
Western, non-male and non-heteronormative figures,
as a way of asserting the agency of other narratives."
Morehshin Allahyari’s 3D printed sculpture, Huma and
Morehshin Allahyari
Talismans, depicts Huma, a figure from Islamic
theology who represents heat and fever. "Huma is not
here to save us from climate change," says Bridle of
Allahyari's work. "She’s here to assert that it’s coming
for all of us and won’t discriminate."
It's Freezing In LA, a new magazine about climate
change, aims to bridge the perspectives of science
and activism with essays from wide-ranging thinkers
and dynamic graphic design.
The Solarpunk movement, which emerged in
speculative fiction and is now rising across youth It's Freezing In LA
culture, combines hi-tech, digital-first aesthetics with a
focus on radical sustainability.
@radicalzz.studio
 Restorative
Innovation
Writing in the design and science journal JoDS in
March 2019, researcher Johanna Schmeer makes the
case for a new design approach: 'xenodesign'.
"Human-centred design, which for many years has
been the predominant paradigm, has contributed to
contemporary environmental problems," she writes.
Schmeer argues for "more inclusive, multi-perspective Broken Nature
design practices, taking the complex entanglements
of humans and other entities into consideration."
Two of 2019's biggest design events, La Triennale di
Milano's Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Justinas Vilutis

Survival, and Nature—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial,

take a similar point of view, examining humanity's
dependence on nature, and presenting restorative
design as a way forward.
Projects exploring this symbiosis between humans
and nature include Mike Bianco's Hivecubator, where
bees sustain the growth of living human cells, and
Neri Oxman's Aquahoja, a pavilion made from
components found in trees, insects and human bones.
Glaciator, a solar-powered robot, has been sent to
Antarctica by artist Joaquín Fargas to try to restore
the region, by walking on the snow to compact it into
ice.

Joaquin Fargas Michael Bianco Neri Oxman

 Radical
Biodiversity
Animal populations are being decimated by the
effects of the Anthropocene. A new study has found
that 40% of insect species are in decline and could die
out in the next decades.
In the 2017 book Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature
Is Thriving in an Age of Extinction, Chris
Thomas explains how human changes to the planet
are also creating new and hybrid species. Menno
Schilthuizen's 2018 book, Darwin Comes to
Town, explores the animal species reshaped by
human urbanisation, from the parakeets established
Supermundane for Ikea
in Europe by the craze for keeping caged birds, to the
'urban blackbird' that has evolved to survive in cities.
As awareness of our impact on animals grows,
projects that protect and support animals are on the
rise. Ikea's campaign, Wildhomes for Wildlife,
commissioned designers including Supermundane
and Studio Weave to upcycle furniture into homes for
birds, bats, bees and insects. Designers Duncan Carter,
Mick Geerits, Arthur Gouillart and Eirini Malliaraki have
conceptualised a set of tools to help animals protect
themselves against humans. The bio-logging tags
Ariane Le Gros
inform the animals of human threats, empowering
them to survive.
Duncan Carter, Mick Geerits, Arthur
Gouillart and Eirini Malliaraki
 Architectural
Adaptations
From scaleable local solutions to radical concepts
that totally reimagine our living spaces, architecture is
adapting to help humans and the natural ecosystems
we depend on to survive.
Architect Bjarke Ingels has created a concept for a
future city that floats on water. Oceanix City was
created in response to the projection that "9 out of 10
of the world’s largest cities will be exposed to rising Bjarke Ingels Group
seas by 2050," says Ingels. "The sea is our fate – it
may also be our future." Designed for 10,000 people,
the self-sustaining city creates its own food and
Volvo x Reef Design Lab
power, and is set up to withstand the extreme weather
of the future.
Brands are beginning to make major investments in
future-proofing design solutions. Volvo teamed with
Reef Design Lab on Seawall, which is made from
marine concrete that is textured to attract marine life
such as oysters and molluscs. Once installed on
Sydney's existing sea walls, the tiles will promote local
biodiversity.
UNStudio and Monopol Color's The Coolest White
paint uses fluoropolymer technology to achieve TSR
(Total Solar Reflectance), a new building standard that
will be used to protect building facades from radiation UNStudio
as our world heats up. Volvo x Reef Design Lab
 Post-Plastic
Materiality
The challenges of the Anthropocene era have given
rise to a rich seam of material development and
innovation, from plastic waste streams to new
organics and digital mimics.
Shown at Collect 2019, Broken Ocean by Sophie
Thomas and Louis Thompson brings disruptive
beauty to the topic of material pollution, using waste
glass and Hawaiian ocean plastic to visualise Sophie Thomas & Louis Thompson
concerns around the end of more.
Garance der Markarian's Manufactured Geology
project explores the opportunity humans have to Garance Der Markarian
create entirely new 'natural' materials. Her rock-
making machine compresses rocks from a new
geological source: domestic human dust.
Researchers at Columbia University have created one
of the most advanced replicas of wood yet, 3D
printing resin using 'voxels' to add an extremely fine
internal grain (0.027mm wide) that mimics the growth
patterns of olive wood.
Davide Piscitelli's 'digital plastiglomerate' is a new
breed of material that bridges virtual and physical to
suggest "what a rock could be today". The concept
points to a future where virtual materials are
@psithurism_trnk
as thriving a sector as physical materials.
Columbia University
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