Planning the Future through Design
How can Speculative Design and Research Through Design contribute to plan long-term solutions to climate change?
Design is an incredibly multidimensional discipline, whose scope goes from problem solving to critical thinking, from projects to be implemented in the immediate future to creation of future scenarios and speculation.
A way to visualise this duplicity is imagining you are playing chess, but in two completely different moments of the game:
- In a SPRINT scenario, for example, your opponent just put you in check: you have to figure out how to move your king to a safe position or how to protect it immediately,
- In a speculative design scenario, instead, you are at the beginning of the game and are well aware of your final goal, that is killing your opponent’s king. However, your next move cannot just aim to taking the king, you’ll need to envision your opponent’s future moves and unfold a strategy that will both protect you and guide you towards your goal.
When Southwark Council approached the students at London College of Communication to look into what a Carbon Neutral Southwark could look like in 2030, the almost ten years long timeframe at stake required a speculative and critical type of intervention, whose aim is to visualise where do we want to get in ten years and spark a conversation that can help the council plan its next steps.
As part of the unit Design Futures, we used the methodology of research through design in order to investigate what solutions could be implemented in the future to reach the Zero CO2 emissions goal and how they would play out in the long term. At the beginning of the unit, I was completely new to this research method, which relies on making and prototyping so that a deeper understanding of the concept can be revealed by interacting with it instead of with something abstract.
“Designed things go on designing (be they designed to do so or not)”(Fry, T. 2009 p. 3)
Research through design fits this particular project quite well, as it allows all the participants to envision and experience how the unfolding of a particular design would impact society and the environment, to consequently take informed and sustain-able (Fry, T. 2009) steps towards the environmental goals set by Southwark Council when it declared Climate Emergency in March 2019.
What can designers bring to the table?
“Collectively imagining the future can generate new research ideas or opportunities for innovation, while also voicing public concerns.” — Strivens F., 2020
Becoming a carbon neutral area will require Southwark Council to engage with multiple stakeholders, who will in turn need to act on an individual, local, national and global level. This is where designers step in as facilitators in multidisciplinary teams and as translators between different experts and the public to spark conversations and collaborations. Design is, in fact, a discipline that is capable of creating pervasive images, stories or artefacts that can help the public envision the future — untold stories are in fact unthinkable and unimaginable, and therefore considered impossible.
Reaching this goal also means that Southwark Council will need to follow a plan, in which every decision will include someone and exclude someone else, align with an idea and against another. This is where the principles of Design Justice become extremely important to consider the consequences of the choices taken, the effects and ethical implications that they can have on people, society and the environment.
Lastly, as the consequences of successfully or unsuccessfully avoiding climate change will outlive those who are making the decisions today, Democratic Design also plays an important role, on two different levels:
- Question the role of democracy in climate action, where immediate action is required to support long term solutions,
- Give voice to the non-present, that is both the non-represented and the non-representable, who will be affected by the choices made today — in the case of Southwark Council, these are people who will leave in the area in the future, but who haven’t been born yet, as well as organisms such as plants and animals that cannot speak for themselves in a political context.
Our role, as designers, will be to ensure that everyone is equipped with information and confidence to be involved in making a decision, so that, for example, scientists, politicians, and the general public will inform each others’ decisions and acknowledge their effect in the long term.
It will also be important that the vision we create will acknowledge the tensions and conflicts instigated by the transition in behaviour and policy that the climate emergency has made necessary to preserve life on planet Earth.
Where are we now?
My team and I decided to focus on how Southwark could plan towards carbon emission neutrality in the field of energy and construction.
As I briefly mentioned earlier, the design practice starts from the observation and analysis of the present, in this case to set the starting point of an informed speculation. We decided to tackle this by pairing two particular methods that could support us in understanding the context we are designing in and also distinguish which practices belong to the current dominant system and to the emergent system: Horizon Scanning and the Three Horizon Model.
To create the setting of our speculation, we collected articles, reports, and case studies related to our main topic and/or area of intervention to describe the present situation from several points of view, that is the economical, environmental, technological, political, legal and social sphere, as well as news and best practices from all around the World that could inform our project.
We then positioned the information collected in concentric circles that would indicate the individual, local, national and international scope in which each piece of research sits — this activity helped us recognise the areas on which Southwark Council had the capability to act as opposed to the ones in which a national or global intervention is required.
Lastly, we applied the Three Horizon Model developed by H3Uni to understand the impact that the present can have on the future. To do so, we colour-coded all the information we previously gathered to indicate its belonging to:
- Horizon 1: the dominant system at present, that represents the practices of “business as usual”,
- Horizon 2: a pattern of innovation that could either reinforce and extend the life of the current dominant system or favour transition to a preferable future,
- Horizon 3: fringe activities or “pockets of future” that represent a disruptive innovation, which fits better in the emergent system of a viable future.
At the end of this analysis, our starting point was defined as the need to retrofit green energy solutions in the already existing buildings that can be found in Southwark. In particular, we found that many trends were pointing in the direction of communities taking ownership of their own energy generation and consumption, and we saw opportunity in the fact that Southwark Council owns 31% of the properties in the area (About the Housing Solutions service, 2021).
Where do we want to go? Who is “we”?
A preferable future is not a utopia, designed for heroes or model citizens, who 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.
“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)
Keeping in mind our aim to start a conversation, the future scenario we created needed to be relatable, it needed to be imperfect and showcase both the successes and struggles that people would be facing, as well as traces of the past that conducted society to that point in time.
Our starting point were provocative What if questions, like:
What if not meeting the goals set by the Paris agreement would lead to countries being heavily fined?
What if Southwark Council were to pilot a radical approach to sustainable energy by prototyping on-site green energy generation across its Council Estates?
The story we wanted to tell through our visualisation and prototypes was about one of the first energy self-sufficient Southwark buildings in 2030 and the people living in them. A sense of normalcy within a completely new set of values would allow us and our stakeholders to navigate an alternative world and interact with it to create a new insights and understanding of what can be done today to get there.
“Critical Design, by generating alternatives, can help people construct compasses rather than maps for navigating a new set of values” (Dunne & Raby, p. 44)
Like in the work by Jaemin Paik When all live to 150, we aimed to create images that would explore behavioural changes and consequences of shifting set of values. In our case, the shift went from an energy supply that depends on the consumers’ demand to one that depends on the availability of natural resources to generate energy. In this scenario, people living in an energy-self sufficient building would all need to collaborate to use the energy available efficiently, as well as distributing it equitably amongst them.
The first prototype we generated to investigate how energy efficiency could be monitored was a Heat Map of the building that could be used to warn residents about inefficiencies in particular areas and even set certain limits of inefficiency that could be punished with a fine.
As we prototyped, we realised that this solution would be a topdown approach that could potentially penalise people who need more energy or who are not in a position to upkeep the apartment to high efficiency standards, as well as increase the lack of transparency and ownership in energy management between the community and the council.
Technology vs. Behaviour
As we do already have the technology and buildings, what could be the obstacles that are preventing the development of this service today?
We engaged with an engineering consultant specialised in solar energy to find the answer to this question. The conversation was incredibly interesting to understand the technical viability of the project for example in terms of setting up a power purchase agreement (PPA) directly between a customer (building) and an independent provider through private wire, and of calculating how much energy would be available per person, while also ensuring that the building wouldn’t completely run out of it. We found ourselves particularly interested in this last point, that is the concept of side demand management: how could we equip residents to modify their habits and behaviours to adapt to new way of consuming energy? What could motivate them to do it?
Another important source of information to apprise our next iteration was the scenario explored by Martì Guixé in the project The Solar Kitchen Restaurant for Lapin Kulta (2011), where an entire restaurant business was run with the use of solar cooking technologies. The project revealed how, when the amount of energy is dictated by natural sources and not by human demand, customers needed to adapt and become flexible and forgiving, as a rainy day could be a plausible reason to cancel dinner.
Adapting the concept of energy self-sufficiency through renewable sources from the context of a restaurant to the one of a home required the development of a safety net, a plan B that could step in to help out residents in case of energy shortage, or in case they simply couldn’t live within the amount allocated to them. This is where our second prototype came into play: a socket that would provide the possibility to connect to the national greed to ease people’s transition. This iteration conveyed a completely new meaning to our concept: people living in the building would have access to the green energy generated by the building itself as a locally produced and cheaper alternative, but wouldn’t be prevented from using the national greed, as long as they paid for it.
Roleplaying — A day in the life of…
My team and I were looking for a way to put ourselves into the shoes of a person living in an energy self-sufficient building and represent what life could look like, in particular the transition from the current dominant system (energy consumption based on customer’s demand) to an emergent locally sourced energy consumption energy.
What could be causing friction? What tensions would this new system instigate?
We identified four possible behavioural archetypes that would inhabit the building:
- A pioneer, a person who has lived in the building since the beginning of the green energy implementation and who totally embraced this new way of living;
- A hacker, a person who struggles to adapt to the independent energy living project, who is always looking for ways to hack the system and access extra energy;
- A newbie, a person who just moved to the estate and is trying to learn how to consume energy more efficiently;
- A busy bee, a person whose personal and professional life often gets in the way of this new lifestyle.
We drafted out the “Rules of the Estate”, which would define the guidelines that tenants would have to live by, and each member of the team acted out as one of the archetypes to imagine how they would go about different issues. For example: how would they up skill themselves to be more energy efficient? How could they tweak the system to get more energy without paying for the national grid? How would they plan house chores according to energy availability? What would they be willing to change about their daily life to save energy?
After a series of iterations, mainly aimed at making the concept clear and understandable, we created this video to communicate what life could look like in the first prototype of energy self-sufficient estate run by Southwark Council in 2030.
Discussion and further iterations
After 7 weeks of research, each team prepared a presentation for Southwark Council with the aim of prompting a conversation about a CO2 Neutral future.
Even though the goal was mainly to provoke our audience, the discussion was extremely inspiring also to me as a designer, as it allowed me to clearly see areas where I need to improve about my practice in order to convey more inclusive and relevant work.
1. System thinking: Connect as many dots as possible
The brief we received was structured to be implemented on three different scopes: individual, local, and national action. Throughout the process, it became clear that an intervention within any of these scopes would systematically either need support from or have an impact on the others.
This systemic approach was a key aspect to support our concept, as we were encouraging collective responsibility to meet the Council’s goal, not only on an individual level, but also on a national scale where we found that the reinstitution of a Green Investment Bank in the UK would be vital to support local initiatives with the high upfront cost required by long-term solutions.
At the same time, it was pointed out during the discussion that we didn’t explore how all the different projects that the students developed could work together: where could there be crossovers between all of our concepts? How could they support each other?
2. Finding the right link to the present is key to a stimulating a great conversation about the future
The fiercest discussion was generated by a team that created a dystopian and, at times, scary scenario, where in order to travel by car or plane you had to apply for a permit through the government website.
Team Permit Kermit’s presentation was incredibly strong as it started by addressing what they knew was the biggest deviance of their project: limiting privacy and freedom of movement. The team didn’t stop here, they made visible the fact that the World is already going in that direction through evidence of current practices that track what we do and where we go today, like banking apps, vaccine passports and travel restriction waivers that have been implemented in some countries during the pandemic.
3. Don’t design within your own little bubble
My team and I contacted different stakeholders, such as Tenants and Residents Associations, Research centres about CO2 emissions, air quality and sustainable architecture, as well as building and energy managers… Unfortunately with very little success!
We therefore reached out to our personal connections, which mainly included one solar energy engineer and a person living in an estate in Southwark. Even though their contribution was extremely valuable to the project, it failed to provide enough insight about the accessibility of our concept. In fact, one of our oversights was that the only member of the community we managed to engage with was more or less from similar demographics as the members of our group.
In hindsight, as a general practice, but mainly if researching through design, it is crucial to take prototypes out in the World and see as many people as possible interacting with them.
4. Make things visible and tangible
Energy and its consumption are intangible concepts that we can make visible through design. This skill is key in encouraging greener practices — How else would people know that their action is needed to tackle climate change?
Moreover, creating a good narrative and representation is the only way to communicate ideas to others and receive feedback and reactions.
5. Encourage iteration
As designers we are trained to iterate our concepts through an infinite cycle.
Iteration isn’t a concept familiar to many disciplines, and it’s also quite a difficult one to master and accept — After all, who doesn’t ever get defensive of their own ideas? — but questioning briefs and being critical of your own ideas will ensure that you are doing you will the best solution at that point in time.
Presenting our concept as a prototype was effective to illustrate how an iterative, adaptable and collaborative approach can lead to finding the right solution — not only when designers are involved.
Bibliography
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What is the framework for innovation? Design Council’s evolved Double Diamond. (2015) Available at: https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/what-framework-innovation-design-councils-evolved-double-diamond (Accessed: May 19, 2021).
Dunne, A. and Raby, F. (2009) A/B, A Manifesto Available at: (Accessed: .
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Fry, T. (2009) Design Futuring. 1st edn. Oxford: Berg.
H3Uni Three Horizons | H3Uni. Available at: https://www.h3uni.org/practices/foresight-three-horizons/ (Accessed: May 18, 2021).
Guixé, M.(2011) Lapin Kulta Solar Kitchen Restaurant. Available at: http://www.guixe.com/projects/guixe_project_lapin_kulta_solar_kitchen.html (Accessed: 11/05/21).
Paik, J., Taehyung, K. and Héo, S. (2021) When we all Live to 150. Available at: https://www.heosohn.com/When-We-All-Live-To-150 (Accessed: 18/05/2021).
Strivens, F. (2020a) Finn Strivens — Other Martian Futures. Available at: https://finnstrivens.design/other-martian-futures (Accessed: May 16, 2021).
Strivens, F. (2020b) Finn Strivens — Unearthing Futures. Available at: https://finnstrivens.design/unearthing-futures (Accessed: May 16, 2021).
