Essential Imperfection
In the past few weeks, my team and I have been trying to build a preferable future to help the Southwark council visualise what reaching their 2030 Zero CO2 Emissions goal could look like.
We are four very different people, to the point that coming from three different continents contributes very little to our differences. In fact, when we researched the present state of the energy and construction industry to set the starting point of our speculations, each member picked one particular nuance (or lenses) to investigate the topic very naturally, with no apparent overlapping: the political scene, the technological one, the latest innovations from all around the World, and pure data to picture the situation through numbers.
This is to say that when we were asked to create a preferable future, we all had a different strategy in mind to fight climate change:
Could it be through policy?
Could it be thanks to a technological miracle?
Is it possible that a solution already exists, and we just need to amplify it?
No no no, let’s look at the numbers again and check where the problem is exactly.
We almost lost the point of the exercise at this point, and the best thing to do in these situations is always to take a step back.
What is a preferable future anyway?
A preferable future is not a utopia, designed for heroes or model citizens that always perfectly know their way around technology and the environment that surrounds them. As it is impossible to please everyone in the present, it isn’t possible in the future either.
To be realistic, but most importantly relatable, our preferable future will need to be imperfect and showcase both the successes and struggles that people will be facing, as well as traces of the past that conducted society to that point in time.
“The characters in our future will not necessarily need to save the world at every turn — most of them will simply live in it, quietly enjoying each day.” (Foster N., 2013)
We will now look at two examples, they both look at everyday people, not heroes. However, they are completely different from each other.
A flat packed future
The Microsoft: Productivity Future Vision video created in 2015 to imagines what technology and work could look like in 5–10 years. Being now more or less living in that future, it is possible to notice some similarities: touchscreens, tablets and smartwatches, interconnectivity and collaboration between people that live on opposite sides of the World.
However, why does it not feel relatable? In my opinion, one scene, in particular, shows how little human factor is present in this vision, and that is when one of the protagonists is hired for a new and exciting job with a big research company far far away. This is how it happens: she receives the news on her smartwatch while she’s out with some friends, she slightly twists her wrist to select the “accept” button and moves her thumb towards her palm to “click” and confirm, finally, she repeats the same process to confirm time and location for her first meeting. This interaction is too focused on the technology itself and what it can do, its use is flawless, there is no consideration of human mistakes nor challenges: what if she selected the wrong button? What if she needed time to process the news? What if she agreed only partially to the offer? What if none of the meeting options suited her?
The future mundane
A preferable future aims to convey a vision, an aspiration for the future to work towards. In order to be effective, it needs to be credible and credibility comes from the imperfection that belongs to our very own nature of human beings.
A good example of this is the installation Mitigation of Shock that Superflux created between 2017–2019, the context is London heavily hit by climate change in the year 2050. The aim of this installation is to show how people have adapted to food shortage and various other consequences of climate change through optimisation of the resources and application of the knowledge available.
The installation consists of an apartment where we see new technologies, books, and handwritten recipes that strategically combine plants that can quickly be grown indoors through new experimental techniques and insects or animals that can be hunt in the urban environment.
“A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam.” (Pohl F.)
This is not all that we can see: the apartment is messy, there are reminiscences of the past like IKEA furniture, piled up newspapers, and an apartment where the living area has become a food-producing area due to these newfound needs. Even more interestingly, by stepping into this 2050 apartment we can get a sense of trial and error that people are going through in order to adapt.
What is the aim of a preferable future?
A preferable future is the visualisation of an aspiration to work towards, its main outcome is the spark of new conversations to understand how do we get there? or even do we want to get there? For whom is it preferable?
In our perspective, as designers, representing this future is a way to control the narrative, create a stage where our speculative service will take place and create a relatable situation to prompt people to have further conversation. This will help us inform our design, understand who we are designing for and with, as well as acknowledge our own biases about what preferable means.
At this point, we went back to our drawing board and, starting from our horizon scanning, put together a series of “What if” questions, like what if the Paris agreement was legally binding? What if energy was decentralised and each home could produce their own? What if everyone had to have basic training about energy efficiency?
We tried to answer these questions by combining data from the horizon scanning and our own views of a preferable future, trying not to fall into a utopia or dystopia, and produced a newspaper from 2043 to tell our story.
This collaboration between UAL and the Climate Emergency department of the London Borough of Southwark aims to create a vision to work towards, to spark a debate about what new roles and behaviours people living in this area will need to undertake and about who will have a hard time adapting to changes, and finally to understand the steps that will guide the borough to accomplish long term solutions against climate change.
Now that we set the stage, our next step will be to step into the daily life of a person living in Southwark in 2030 and investigate what objects will be suited to tell that story.
References
Mitigation of Shock (London). (2019) Available at: http://superflux.in/index.php/work/mitigation-of-shock/ (Accessed: May 1, 2021).
Microsoft: Productivity Future Vision (2015) Directed by Anonymous .
Foster, N. (2013) The Future Mundane. Available at: https://www.core77.com/posts/25678/The-Future-Mundane (Accessed: May 1, 2021).
