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Industry Insights: Designing for Alternative Futures
Explore how designers are creating alternative futures in this talk for university students and early-career practitioners.
What to expect
How can design imagine alternative futures?
Designers are active in shaping the future through the objects and systems they create and put into the world. From the work of speculative design to that of the ‘paper-architects’, designers have often acted as prophets, critics, story-tellers and dreamers.
Despite this, the imagining of different futures has often been confined to gallery spaces, whilst privileging the visions of some economies and cultures over others. This panel discussion asks how designers can imagine alternative realities that are inclusive, multiple and effective in the present.
Join interactive talks from a range of practitioners across design, architecture and fiction who will share their insights and recent projects, with practical tools and considerations for future thinking in design.
Speakers include:
Alexa Pollmann (Peut Porter), Matt Malpass (Reader in Critical Design Practice, Central Saint Martins, UAL), Hyphen-Labs, Gonzalo Herrero Delicado (Architecture Programme Curator, Royal Academy of Arts). Chaired by Tobias Revell (Haunted Machines and Programme Director, London College of Communication).
Participants will also have an opportunity to visit the Design Museum’s current exhibition Moving to Mars during the day.
Industry Insights is a talks series for university students which encourages knowledge sharing and networking.
speakers
Gonzalo Herrero Delicado
Gonzalo Herrero Delicado is the Architecture Programme Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts and advisor for the City Council of Madrid. Previously, he held different curatorial positions at the Design Museum and the Architecture Foundation.
Alexa Pollmann
Alexa Pollmann is founder of Peut-Porter. The design collective uses fashion, technology, performance and participation as main ingredients. Alexa is designer, researcher and educator and was Designer in Residence at the Design Museum in 2014/15. She describes her work as ‘design culturing’ and, whilst her practice is body-centric, constantly challenges current notions of ‘wear’.
Matt Malpass
Matt Malpass is a designer and theorist based in London. He is a Reader in Critical Design Practice at UAL: Central Saint Martins where he coordinates the Product Ceramic and Industrial Design Programme. He is author of Critical Design in Context: History Theory and Practices.
Carmen Aguilar y Wedge
Aguilar y Wedge is a latinx structural engineer and artist synthesizing design and technology to develop immersive - transmedia experiences. She is a co-founder and creative director at Hyphen-Labs, a London based studio blending themes of speculative design, digitalism, the environment and social issues.
chair
Tobias Revell
Tobias Revell is a digital artist and designer from London. He is Programme Director at the London College of Communication, UAL, co-founder of design research consultancy Strange Telemetry, and of critical technology outfit Supra Systems Studios and one-half of research and curatorial project Haunted Machines. He lectures and exhibits internationally on design, technology, imagination and speculation.
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