SUrF focuses on the creation of new design methodologies and epistemologies developed and shared through five pilot packages that encompass all the educational materials required to replicate each course in other academic, civic and corporate contexts. Each partner institution is responsible for the creation of one pilot – which will then be tested through short-term academic or workshop-based courses with graduate students, doctoral candidates or adults undertaking life-long learning modules. The process and results of each academic pilot will be monitored, documented and interpreted before being shared with another partner for a second stage of testing and development.
Each package has the following aims:
• To facilitate transversal crossovers of expertise among the consortium members as they pertain to the sustainable future of the lived environment: critical topics, trends, problematics and formats on inhabitation, climate, energy, labour, society and culture.
• To design novel and versatile methodological frames for speculative thinking, research, and knowledge production in relation to (future) design, architecture and the environment.
• To develop trans-disciplinary modalities of research and design: game-based formats, multi-agent collaborative environments, counterfactual histories and storytelling (narratives), as well as genealogies of sensing, imagining and intuiting.
• To set up collaborative platforms for the development of academic material and pedagogical tools that support teaching activities and exchanges based on speculative design education.
• To co-produce the formats for common course components (readers, syllabi, digital repositories or archives, knowledge sharing platforms, and so on), their implementation and monitoring.
• To compile academic course material and methodological reports per pilot package: course development, syllabi, readers, lectures and so on, focusing on methodological approaches in terms of conceptual framework and protocol of implementation (per pilot).
Simply stated, alternative presents (through counterfactual histories) use the technique of modifying the outcome of a historical event and then extrapolating a new version of history. In literature, imaginaries based on a poignant counterfactual history can offer thought-provoking insights and perspectives on contemporary life.
Simply stated, situation rooms use play and game-based practices to proliferate imaginaries. Using the basic tenets of play – a specific space and time, a series of (factual and self-imposed) constraints, and chance – situation rooms generate a temporary heterotopic condition conducive to exploration to address significant societal, technical and cultural issues through design.
Sensing-Intuiting-Imaging (SII) explores speculations that demand both the formation of new sensibilities and new forms that can express their potential. We call these forms ‘images’, but we do not equate them with visual representation. Instead, we open images to an untapped affective potential that not only provides an account of ‘what has been’ but can also intuit ‘what is to come’.
Design processes and design languages change rapidly. The first major disruption appeared around 2000 with rapid digitalisation and automation. The second is happening now, in artificial intelligence in language modelling and image creation. Semiosphere sets the goal of comparing professional design languages to non-professional AI-assisted designs, to establish how exposed the architect/design profession is to such developments in technology.
This approach deals with potential future implications of major global changes (technological, economic, political and environmental) in local contexts, through the application of speculative design practice.