Pilot projects

Situation rooms

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. 
Situation rooms, and play and games in general, have a long history of being used in arts and design. Critical theory has consistently construed play as a necessary condition for the generation of culture and as a crucial process in human cognitive development. Since the trailblazing work of Johan Huizinga, pioneering authors have definitively disconnected play and games from their traditional association with frivolous or inconsequential activity.  Following the spirit of these authors (if not always their statements), we claim that play is so relevant that it should be conceived as a way of relating to the world rather than a  sub-set of ‘childish’ activities that can be isolated and treated accordingly. 
Other fundamental aspects notwithstanding, we are particularly interested in the generative value of play: play may be used as a way of transforming reality. We can understand play as addressing three basic themes: limits, self and chance. These refer, respectively, to the way we construe an understandable order of the world (how we establish physical, temporal and normative limits to define a specific subset of actionable reality in order to deal with it), the way we construe ourselves (how we construct our own selves in relation to others) and the way we construe the unobservable or hidden forces of reality (how we deal with asubjective agencies). Play, then, simultaneously addresses the objective, subjective, and asubjective realms. This threefold capacity of play to define limits, test and expand the self, and address chance makes it a perfect ally for all design-based disciplines, whose primary aim is to transform our world, imagining and projecting other realities. The relationship between play and design is a very strong one, and one worth exploring in a radical way. Indeed, thanks to their simultaneously regulated and exploratory nature, games and play can be harnessed to fuel the disruptive capacities of design.
An expanded notion of play holds an incredible potential for design. We can summarise the contribution of play to design in three concepts that mirror the triad of play’s pursuits: constraints (facilitating an exploratory use of factual or self-imposed constraints); engagement (prompting new types of engagement and authorship); and chance (creatively embracing chance). Coupling pragmatic efficacy with visionary criticality, combining its role as solution provider and as a problematising practice, design can further its relevance as a practice that simultaneously contributes to proposing solutions and posing questions that help address significant societal, technical and cultural issues.

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Situation Room methodology diagram, with a special focus on its game-like dynamics

Within the array of playful and game-based formats, situation rooms hold a special position. Situation rooms were first used for military purposes, and their format derives from the need to address emergencies through a multi-actor arrangement in a space single (which is enclosed, yet strongly connected to the outside) and in a limited (and usually critical) timeframe. What characterises a situation room is a heightened sense of heterotopia, achieved through the definition of an self-contained space where all information meets, an intense timeframe and chance (or unpredictable) inputs that force rapid decision-making, and a multivocal structure that nonetheless needs to provide a single response. 

So, how can situation rooms be used to teach and test a different version of design? Here are a few key steps that describe a new methodology based on the situation room approach. The methodology is boldly structured in the following manner:
• Research to define the main challenges and hypotheses of the chosen topic, including the definition of the (physical, social and cultural) context of interest, and preparation of the research booklets and the cards needed to play the game.
• Game-based practice in a situation room setting, fostering lateral thinking to explore novel ways of addressing design opportunities on the chosen topic and context, distilling them into design briefs with a potential high impact in triggering positive changes in the present.
• Proposals responding to the design briefs generated in the previous phase. The main objective of the proposals is to test, visualise and evaluate future urban scenarios to prompt design challenges in the present.

This core methodology can be adapted to various topics of interest, matters of concern, skill sets, maturity levels of students, and timeframes, resulting in a rich array of possibilities. In summary, ELISAVA’s enactment of the situation room methodology in 2023–2024 addresses the aforementioned phases in the following manner:
• Research: researchers investigate the chosen topic (future of inhabitation) in relation to a specific aspect (temporality) and context (Catalonia). This research is summarised and formalised in booklets that are used as a starting point by master’s students in the game phase.
• Game: a) definition of the specific work space of the situation room, set apart from conventional space, time and rules; b) definition of the game inputs through three sets of cards (hypothesis, desire, and wild cards); c) definition of a strict game protocol based on multiformat iteration of the following sequence: individual desires, affinity groups, chance element (randomisation to obstruct linear thinking), negotiation process, exchange (fuzzy authorship), and collaborative assessment of (preliminary) results.
• Proposals: a different set of people, not involved in the game phase, receive the design briefs and respond to them individually using their specific design capacities, skill sets, design formats and personal interests, in order to test the validity of the methodology and its capacity to creatively imagine and rigorously explore speculative urban futures.


Perhaps the most vital use of game-based and playful practices in design, and their most valuable contribution to design education is the possibility to enrich creative thinking through constraints, authorial displacement and chance. Embracing chance and harnessing the constraints imposed by the game break down linear thinking and individualistic authorship modes, and in doing so they open creative paths that use immediacy and intuition in visceral ways, as well as rational-discursive thinking. Using situation rooms to engage with possible futures, and as tools to better understand the present, allows us to imagine and discuss desirable urban futures, and, most importantly, to transform them into specific design challenges that can be addressed by universities, research centres, professional practices and public administrations.

Project for Situation rooms, Session n°1

Fluid boundaries for nomadic existence, Athena Fatourou, Rana Genç, Sofia Giannoulidou, Xavier Molins, Sahar Hameiri

This triplet of design briefs speculates about a future scenario where 70% of population under 30 would be recent migrants. In a context of high demographic mobility and multi-culturality, nomadism, short term home and social cohesion would be essential issues. The physical boundaries between intimate, community and public spaces would be extremely fluid and the virtual boundaries between safe privacy and surveillance would have to be reconsidered.

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This brief package requests to provide solutions at three different levels: radical nomadism, dynamic management of the available inhabitable space in the city and portable shelter for urban contexts.

1DS01 - Fluid definition of inhabitable space at territorial scale.

In this extremely dynamic future scenario, radical nomads, individuals that live on the go and are constantly changing home, would be numerous—a community of isolated human beings. For this community, the boundaries of domestic space would be fluid, in constant transformation responding to each individual’s inputs. The challenge is to imagine these fluid boundaries, propose ways to represent them and design operative interfaces to connect the radical nomads’ community.

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2DS02 - A new way to manage fluid, unused yet available domestic spaces in the city.

Our cities have a critical lack of affordable inhabitable space. Demand is massive and offer is almost null, although there is an immense amount of unused inhabitable space. In this future scenario, it would be essential to transform this fluid mass of domestic space into temporary basic home space. The design challenge is to define what would be the basic necessary permanent infrastructure to make these spaces become home, how would temporary users complement the permanent facility and how could it all be managed.

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3DS03 - Existing in the public sphere without being caught.

Existing in the public sphere without being caught by the prying gaze of strangers and the unforgiving scope of surveillance systems is becoming progressively difficult. Right now, more than ever, the concept of privacy in public space is being challenged. People feel like they have to regulate their interactions and tailor their behaviors because at all times someone may be watching.

The design challenge, how to generate an intimate shelter within the highly circulated and surveilled urban fabric without hiding in dark alleys or behind closed doors.

For this case, the proposal is centered around a portable shelter that is managed by one person but allows a maximum of two people to occupy it if needed.

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Project for Situation rooms, Session n°1

New habitats for climate emergency, Diego Sanchez, Kiran Karwal, Lara Bertin, Majka Tkacikova & Rebecca Diaz

This triplet of design briefs speculates about a future scenario where world average temperatures would raise 3 degrees and 5 degrees in cities.

In this climate emergency context, it would be imperative to explore new ways of inhabitation that provide climatic shelters for both humans and other species and drastically reduce the carbon footprint of our existence. Building new ecosystems where humans and other animal and plant species coexist in harmony and balance, finding new ways of communal organisation where energy waste is minimised by sharing resources and infrastructures, creating closed cycles for all processes related to construction, waste, food chain, water management, cancelling fuel-based mobility, etc...

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This brief package requests to provide solutions at three different scales: the basic inhabitation unit, the close community and the urban neighbourhood.

1DS01 -Re-defining home for regenerative communities

The design challenge is to rethink the concept of home in a scenario of consolidated climatic emergency. This new home conceptualisation should put the focus on basic needs, community collaborative dynamics, generation of climatic shelters, energetic self-sustainability, sharing of resources and inexistence of waste.

Individual units should not have any energetic demand and the organisation of communities should be based on food, aiming to create closed cycle food chains.

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2DS02 -Communal kitchens

In a scenario where food would be central, the kitchen would necessarily become the core of the community space and food would be the catalyser of cooperative life, resource sharing, social cohesion and inter-cultural exchange.

The communal kitchen should also be conceived as a paradigm of sustainability, promoting closed cycles for food, water, waste and energy.

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3DS03 -Emerging urban eco-systems

In order to build viable inhabitable environments in a scenario of climatic emergency, it is essential to rethink the urban context. Our present cities would have to experience profound changes to become climatic shelters, eco-systems where human communities could become self-sufficient and coexist with other species. The starting point for this transformation would be the disappearance of fuel-dependent mobility and therefore, the re qualification of all the public space that is currently determined by the presence of cars.

Re-naturalisation, radical elimination of the heat-island effect, permeabilization of the ground would be key issues to rethink our urban environment.

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Project for Situation rooms, Session n°1

New habitats for intergenerational cohesion, Ane Santillan, Axelle van Eupen, Eduardo Lazo Torres, Josefina Gestoso & Ufkum Kaçar.

This triplet of design briefs speculates about a future scenario where 70% of the population would be above 65 years old. In a possible future where the demographic pyramid would be totally inverted, the need for new ways of inhabitation that promote intergenerational cohabitation and social dynamics based on mutual care would be essential to sustain our system and ensure social cohesion. Even in wealthy social-democratic societies, the public system would fail to sustain a system were less than 30% of the population would be in the productive age range and over 50% would be dependent. Any solution to avoid chaos would imply the proliferation of self-managed inter- generational communities that would (at least partially) replace public social assistance with mutual care dynamics.

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This brief package requests to provide solutions at three different scales: large community housing building, new housing typologies for large contemporary families, and inter-generational urban furniture prototypes.

1DS01 -Inter-generational communities

The design challenge is to transform a pre-existing slab structure into a habitat for a large intergenerational community, including private domestic spaces and shared facilities, spaces for care for both dependent seniors and children, The re-design and organisation of the building should promote mutual care, intergenerational interaction harmonic cohabitation.

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2DS02 - Flexible housing typologies for large contemporary families

Until early 20th century, three to four generations of a family used to live together. Nowadays, the general tendency in our cities, for both private and public housing, is to reduce the size of the housing units and, therefore, to assume and promote small and isolated cohabitation groups. In a future scenario where mutual care and collaboration would be essential, new housing typologies that allow for large contemporary family groups to live together would be necessary. The challenge is to design new housing typologies suitable for 10-to-15-member intergeneration contemporary families, very different from the traditional ones.

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3DS03 - Adaptative furniture prototypes for shared public spaces

Positive social interaction in public space is crucial to achieve social cohesion. In this possible future scenario, interaction between opposite generations, children and elderly, would be essential. The challenge is to design prototypes of urban furniture that would enhance this interaction between kids and seniors by simple closeness or by offering options to share activities and experiences.

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Project for Situation rooms, Session n°1

Climatic shelters, Mar Gené Cuairan

Today, a large part of the population is living in urban areas, dealing with increasingly high temperatures. How could we explore with innovative approaches, focusing instead on survival needs by reintroducing shared spaces and resource-sharing to minimize energy consumption in a crisis context?

This project imagines a future scenario where world average temperatures have raised between 3 degrees and 5 degrees in cities and the fuel-dependent mobility has disappeared.

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1FUTURE SCENARIO

The majority of the population is living in urban areas, dealing with increasingly high temperatures. We are in a future scenario where world average temperatures have raised between 3 degrees and 5 degrees in cities. In such a context, citizens have had to explore with innovative approaches to break the spatial experience rooted in the modern life, focusing instead on survival needs by reintroducing shared spaces and resource-sharing to minimize energy consumption in a crisis context. In this climate emergency context, humans have had to explore new ways of inhabitation that provide climatic shelters that drastically reduce the carbon footprint of their existence. In this way, they have built new ecosystems finding new ways of communal organization where energy waste is minimized by sharing resources and infrastructures, creating closed cycles for all processes related to construction, waste, food chain, water management, cancelling fuel-based mobility, etc.

Traditional single-family housing models are no longer viable as they contribute significantly to energy consumption and carbon emissions. By reinventing urban residential spaces as communal nests and promoting resource-sharing initiatives, resilient communities have emerged, thriving in a constantly changing climate. Individual units do not have any energetic demand anymore and the organisation of communities is based on food, aiming to create closed cycle food chains.

In order to build viable inhabitable environments, the urban context has been reconsidered. The starting point for this transformation has been the disappearance of fuel-dependent mobility and, therefore, the re qualification of all the public space previously determined by the presence of cars.

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2CLIMATIC HUBS, ENERGY CENTRALISATION AND RENATURATION OF PUBLIC SPACE

Facing an emergency climate scenario, the urban public space and its streets have undergone a process of renaturalisation, particularly the land that was previously devoted to cars. The fuel-mobility has disappeared so that the asphalt has been replaced by green areas to alleviate the heat.

Throughout the territory, a set of hubs have been built to centralise all the activities that require electricity in an infrastructure. In this way, resources are shared, and responsible consumption is carried out. Hubs are not private or have exclusive access, people distributed throughout the territory can have access to their nearest or most convenient hub according to their daily activities. The distribution of the hubs varies according to the urban conditions of the territory and each of its neighbourhoods, taking advantage of those spaces that are in disuse. For example, due to the disappearance of the automobile, parking lots provide an ideal space for the centralization of neighbourhood activities. This system of horizontal rotation to access the hubs, at the same time, acts according to a vertical logic. Hubs are extended at three main levels to take advantage of the climatic conditions offered by the territory. A groundwater reuse system allows cooling of the upper levels. At the same time, the subway spaces are much cooler and allow spaces for better cooling of resources, such as food, or even create more pleasant atmospheres for working, meeting or eating if temperatures are very high above. Inside the hubs people can perform any activity that requires the use of energy such as washing clothes, cooking, consulting the Internet, among others. A third floor on the roof of the hubs is covered with vegetation to provide a better temperature, in addition to having solar panels for the collection of solar energy.

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Project for Situation rooms, Session n°1

The domestic city guide, Cristina Sanuy Hereter

This project paints a picture of a dynamic and ever-changing world. The highly mobile population redefines the concepts of home, privacy, and community. Individuals must navigate fluid boundaries, high surveillance, and a lack of traditional housing, all while trying to build a sense of belonging and security in a rapidly evolving urban landscape.

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1FUTURE SCENARIO

In the future, about 70% of people under 30 are recent migrants, leading to a highly mobile and multicultural society. Traditional ideas of home are redefined as individuals, known as radical nomads, live in a state of constant movement, rarely settling in one place. This creates fluid boundaries between private, communal, and public spaces, blurring the lines between them.

Solitary nomads navigate dense, hyper-organized urban environments, often existing on the margins amidst highways, signs, and parking lots. The idea of home becomes ambiguous as familiar elements and relationships are absent. These individuals must adapt to environments where traditional notions of consistency and individualism are out of their control.

Home ownership becomes a distant dream for many young people due to high real estate prices and a lack of inhabitable spaces in major cities. People live parallel lives, occupying the same spaces without ever meeting. This new reality challenges conventional concepts of ownership and privacy, as individuals spend less time at home and more time on the go, only returning briefly to meet basic needs.

Public spaces are heavily surveilled, making privacy difficult to maintain. The constant presence of surveillance forces people to regulate their behavior and interactions, as they feel watched at all times. This creates an environment where the concept of intimacy is challenged, and people struggle to find private moments in public.

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2AN OPEN-SOURCE PLATFORM TO TRANSFORM THE CITY

The Domestic City Guide is an open-source platform that understands urban spaces as domestic areas. In a future where 70% of people are radical nomads, it promotes community growth by encouraging innovative ways to experience and inhabit the city. Exploring big cities, the platform shows how public spaces can become personal or community areas using techniques like camouflage and repurposing resources. This lets people experience the city as an extension of their home. It provides detailed maps of major cities, marking places for sleeping, cooking, resting, cleaning, and moving around. Users can contribute by sharing their own hacks at specific locations, with instructions and open-source files for others to use.

In this speculative future, 3D knitting and 3D printing are so common that vending machines around the city can print or knit products from a pen drive cheaply and efficiently. This makes it easy for anyone to create what they need on the go. For example, city skyscrapers can be used as cooking aids by reflecting the sun’s rays, while existing architecture can be repurposed to create secure spaces for rest and sleep. To handle surveillance and privacy issues, the guide introduces disruptive coloring techniques that help nomads maintain privacy, anonymity, and security.

The guide covers all aspects of domestic life, from personal activities to hygiene, offering ways to adapt and use the urban environment. The goal is to foster a sense of community, autonomy, and engagement, allowing individuals to create personalized domestic spaces in the bustling urban landscape. This platform redefines the concept of home, offering a versatile and resilient approach to urban living that transcends traditional boundaries. By leveraging technology and community insights, the Domestic City Guide changes how people live and interact in the city, reshaping it into a versatile domestic space.

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