Speculative Urban Futures: Five Design Approaches presents the outcomes of the Speculative Urban Futures (SUrF) Erasmus+ project, a collaborative initiative exploring the role of speculation in contemporary design education. Bringing together work from five European institutions—ENS Paris-Saclay/ENSCI les Ateliers, Paris; ELISAVA, Barcelona; Arts Academy, University of Split; Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft; and The Estonian Association of Architects, Tallinn—the book offers a flexible toolkit of pedagogical approaches developed through design briefs, workshops, and situated experimentation across diverse educational contexts.
Rather than proposing universal solutions or fixed methodologies, the publication foregrounds plural, context-sensitive approaches for expanding future imaginaries through design. Its five approaches—Counterfactual Histories, Situation Rooms, Communities and Futures, Sensing–Intuiting–Imaging, and Semiosphere and Imagosphere—invite students, educators, practitioners, policymakers, and other stakeholders to question inherited assumptions and develop alternative responses to both present and future challenges.
Speculative Urban Futures: Five Design Approaches
Editors: James Auger, Ivica Mitrović, Roger Paez
Contributors: James Auger, Céline Chip, Emile De Visscher, Lena Galanopoulou, Stavros Kousoulas, Ivica Mitrović, Roger Paez, Lorène Picard, Andrej Radman, Heidi Sohn, Jüri Soolep, Oleg Šuran, Manuela Valtchanova, Dora Vanette
Managing Editor: Dora Vanette
Graphic Design: Morgane Aubert
Typesetting: Oleg Šuran
Publisher: Arts Academy, University of Split
ISBN: 978-953-6617-82-1
The book is available to download free of charge as a PDF. A limited number of free printed copies are available for academic use and may be requested by emailing contact@surfutures.eu.