A symposium and summer school will be held in Nova Gorica in Slovenia, in September 2025.
The international, multifaceted event, which is based on the experience from the SpeculativeEdu project and in partnership with the SUrF project, is exploring how design can engage with uncertainty and shape more just, resilient, and imaginative futures —particularly in response to local and regional challenges.
The program begins with a two-day symposium (September 18+19), featuring two keynote lectures, eight presentations, and four panel discussions. Alongside formal sessions, the symposium will include a Chat the Future conversation with the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) and a Futures Garden workshop hosted by the EU Policy Lab. These sessions will offer a platform to critically examine design's role in shaping future urban systems, processes, and imaginaries. The symposium will be followed by the Design+Science Summer School (September 20–22), an intensive workshop for students and emerging practitioners.
Confirmed speakers include Ezio Manzini, Natalija Majsova, Lodovica Guarnieri, Maja Šuštaršič, Miriam Kathrein, Ákos Schneider, David Martens, Guillem Camprodon, James Auger, Jimmy Loizeau, José Luis de Vicente, Silvio Lorusso, Time's Up, Gerin Trautenberger, Lourdes Rodriguez and others.
The symposium is organised by The Centre for Creativity, Museum of Architecture and Design, Ljubljana and is curated by Ivica Mitrović (University of Split) with expert advisorsAnja Zorko (The Centre for Creativity) and Sara Božanić (Institute for Transmedia Design) in collaboration with international partners. Both the symposium and the summer school are part of the program of the European Capital of Culture GO! 2025 Nova Gorica.
1CURATORIAL STATEMENT
We are living in a time of polycrisis, when extreme catastrophic scenarios are likely to take place in the near future, reflecting the fact that the future did not turn out as bright as envisioned by the Western world in the second part of the 20th century.
Such futures bring drastic changes not only to the natural environment but also to our social, cultural, economic, and political relationships, reshaping power relations and increasing social inequalities. All these global threats are present in the local community on an everyday basis and on multiple levels, from the social, economic, technological, and environmental to the psychological.
This complex context calls for reflection on how communities can work together to address specific, localized challenges. Historically, design and architecture, as worldmaking agents, have had the agility to explore diverse versions of the world using speculation and imagination. It is today’s challenge to revisit how design and architecture thinking and doing can contribute to reclaiming imaginations of the future and shape new, bright, and viable future paths. This is particularly relevant in an educational context where universities, research centers, and design and art institutions should be some of the most dynamic speculative spaces.
This symposium and the associated summer school seek to investigate these speculative, critical, and future-oriented practices in design and architecture, bringing together educators, thinkers, practitioners, social innovators, local communities, municipalities, and representatives from local and international institutions. The event aims to foster new collaborations between diverse actors, starting from the bottom-up level, to explore and propose new fluid collaborative platforms for collective engagement, to discuss what is a better, i.e., a preferable future, and for whom, and to create possible paths and actionable plans (in the here and now) toward those futures.
Free registrations: https://www.rehope.czk.si/.