Refuturing Studies: Rehumanizing Futures through/by Design
PhD Doctoral Thesis, March 2023
Awarded by The Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Abstract
With the onset of climate and ecological breakdown, organized human life faces a precarious present and an even bleaker future. The sixth IPCC report (2021-2022) states that the window for drastic climate action is closing fast. At the same time, the atmosphere of climate disinformation, denialism, and delay has calcified the collective social imagination, unable to see desirable futures beyond Business as Usual. For this thesis in Industrial Design, the question is relatively simple—can Industrial Design imagine radically hopeful climate-resilient futures? This Research through/by Design thesis answers this question by imagining a desirable future that doesn’t yet exist and what it may take to get there.
This thesis travels through two worlds or paradigms—‘What-is ‘and ‘What Could-be.’ The world of ‘what-is’ explores the typologies of defuturing and dehumanization as they manifest with climate breakdown. The thesis imagines a speculative future world that ‘could-be,’ explored in the accompanying The Open Journal of ReFuturing, a fictional design research journal from 2131 AD. The journal is written as an indigenous critique from the future, looking back at the first century of climate reparations through the speculative solutions enacted today. These speculative solutions are generated through/by designerly ‘What-ifs’ and its designed artifacts for climate-resilient solutions and ‘Technologies of Care’ that make this world thinkable and doable today. This seriously playful yet studied imagination of ReFuturing Studies is an invitation to reimagine a transformed ‘ecology of disciplines’ for climate action—to reclaim and rehumanize the dehumanized present such that the future is profoundly different when we arrive in it.
The Open Journal Of ReFuturing
Spring 2131, Centenary Edition
Design Fiction as a Designed Artefact for Climate Science communication, a layered systemic critique, and a strategy document for Climate Justice, Long-Term Sustainability and Climate Resilient infrastructuring.
PhD Research by Design, 2021
A design research journal from the year 2131 celebrating it’s centenary edition on a planet having experienced an unprecedented transformation of social ecology. The fictional research journal is written as an Indigenous critique of the late 20th and early 21st century, discussing and reframing the existential issues we face collectively now and talks of the first century of climate reparations. The centenary journal edition is designed as a reviewer’s copy for a fictional journal being read in 2131, where the world is facing climate uncertainties, and human societies have undergone drastic, more “down to earth” pathways of climate reparations through and by design.
It tries to rethink, reclaim and rehumanise the present such that the future is profoundly different when we arrive in it. The premise as such points out that designers don’t need to be creating ecocidal consumerist desires, but can instead propose and articulate real choices, holistic imaginations for climate just futures. Where radical climate justice and climate action are realised across space and time; making the unthinkable thinkable, and doable— from whole systems change to climate reparations to the rehumanization of the everyday—which seems impossible today. Industrial designers have more than just the responsibility to do this, their training allows them to fabricate these futures and already possess the disciplinary skills to do so. This document demonstrates such tacit knowledge and brings these desperately needed creative skill-and mindsets to the table and articulate actions based on these concerns and complement other disciplines in what could become a healthy "ecology of disciplines" for climate reparations. This publication and the artefacts discussed in it are somewhat of a case study for where those choices and alliances might lead to. It is not to claim this is how our collective futures will be, but how it could be— towards a more human, more caring, and radically just society even as we trigger climate tipping points.
As of 2023, the journal has been translated into 4 languages—Portuguese, Russian, Hindi and Chinese. I am immensely grateful for the generous contributions by the translators who did an incredible job including Anna Martino (Portuguese), Vyacheslav Lyakhov (Russian) and Rajendra Singh Negi (Hindi).
Design disciplines in the age of climate change
Systemic views on current and potential roles
DRS 2022: Research Papers
Citation:
Edeholt, H., and Joseph, J. (2022) Design disciplines in the age of climate change: Systemic views on current and potential roles, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.365
After working several years with industrial design as a tool for the kind of radical systemic change, climate change arguably requires; it now seems timely to discuss the systemic obstacles that make such a shift so hard to implement. Much at odds with current discourse, the article defends current design disciplinary skills by focusing on the tension between what designers tend to do for sustaining the present system vs. what designers could do to support transition to a radically different system and why the latter is so hard to achieve but still so urgently required. With the overarching question – "what can design(ers) do?" – the article establish design disciplines as a distinct entity apart from design. Subsequently it gives an overview of how different disciplines have emerged as 'answers' to how societies, have developed and finally suggest a model for how to address climate change through disciplinary cooperation.
ReFuturing Studio
Designing long-term sustainability for the biosphere
Conference Proceedins: 2021 ACSA/EAAE Teachers Conference: Curriculum for Climate Agency: Design (in) Action, Oslo, New York
Volume Editors
Jonathan A. Scelsa & Jørgen Johan Tandberg
Citation: Joseph, J. (2021). ReFuturing Studio: Designing Long-term Sustainability for the Biosphere. 2021 ACSA/EAAE Teachers Conference: Curriculum for Climate Agency: Design (in)Action, 75–80. https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.Teach.2021.10
The trajectories of the Earth’s climate and ecosystem ser-vices are unravelling, pushing the life sustaining biosphere on the path towards “biological annihilation”. As the worst climate predictions come to pass, it has become urgent to introspect on the predictable consequences of our global economic system designed for extractivism. Attempting to address and understand these issues seems to create a sense of foreboding and anxiety about our climate futures. This paper will discuss this in relation to the tendencies of defuturing in design, that is, the negation and erasure of our better futures and possibilities when trying to imagine a long-term sustainable future for human and non-human others. The discussions here are based on observations and discus-sions with design students in a workshop called “ReFuturing Studio” which attempts to engage young designers to con-front the urgency of climate breakdown and long-term sustainability beyond “business as usual” (BAU).
This paper argues for a “refuturing”— to reclaim that which is defutured and dehumanized, beyond the homogenizing and hegemonic futurism of BAU by re-imagining, rethinking and ‘re-humanizing’ through a ‘designerly knowing’ of the yet unknown long-term sustainable futures. Refuturing thus critically proposes alternative perspectives, solution spaces where designers and design educators can begin to under-stand and reconcile design practice with climate action by “designing for the biosphere” by imagining possibilities for co-regenerative practices as a means for human well-being and ecological flourishing.
Walk the Talk
Towards an ecological futures framework for our designed cultures
Citation:
Edeholt, H., Joseph, J., & Xia, N. (2021). Walk the Talk: Towards an ecological futures framework for our designed cultures. Design Culture(s). Cumulus Conference Proceedings Roma 2021, Volume #2, 2, 3863–3877. https://cumulusroma2020.org/proceedings-files/DC(s)_RESILIENCE_track.pdf
Based on the bleak trajectory of the near and far future due to climate change, this
paper outlines some of the assumptions that makes relevant actions so hard to implement.
We suggest a framework that enables us to radically rethink sustainability as well as both
human and design agency. Based on a simple “Walk-the-Talk” model, potential actions are
mapped for both (i) established and (ii) more alternative approaches. The former being the
one espoused in today’s discourse, while the latter seems to get surprisingly little support. By
describing three concrete product concepts we illustrate how by shifting focus to more
alternative approaches, we can precisely address the challenges that more traditional
approaches have obviously failed to address. In order to find relevant leverage points for both
design and required systems change, the paper finally discusses why the traditional
approaches still are so dominant in our quest to address climate change.
Critical Futures Today
Backcasting speculative product design towards long term sustainability
Citation:
Joseph, J. (2019). Critical Futures Today: Back-casting Speculative Product Design towards Long Term Sustainability. Designing Sustainability for All, 3, 904–909. http://www.lensconference3.org/images/program/VOLUME3.pdf
The age of climate breakdown brings with it an uncertain future, even within our collective imagination we are presented with increasingly dystopian visions of the future. This tendency towards a dystopian future can also be seen in product design practise. Speculative and Critical Design (SCD) process emerged as a disciplinary response to challenge the commercial design by envisioning radical futures scenarios and artefacts. These future scenarios work within existing product design praxis to create sustainable, diegetic artefacts that are embedded with certain values of that future. However, at its core, these SCD scenarios end up rejecting any solution driven perspective that ends up confining the artefacts limited to museum exhibits. This paper explores a “backcasted” solution into the present through a ‘designerly' reimagining of existing technology. This paper reflects on these radical future visions in the case of a designed artefact, a 3D printed optical solar cell. The solar cell is proposed as a possible alternative for existing solar cells which draws upon pre-existing technology and its speculation. This exploration creates new possibilities for technological forecasting in a futures-oriented practise where solution driven speculations might pose the question “what if” to the ways in which product design can contribute to climate action today while still looking towards visions of better, more thriving paradigms of the future beyond ‘business as usual’.
Artefacts from the Pluriverse:
Designing for long-term futures and sustainability
AHO PhD Literature Review + Proposal 2019
The age of Anthropocentric climate change brings with it an uncertain future for organised human life while we continually plunder our life sustaining biosphere in the pursuit of mass consumption, enabled by design. Yet, we are still bound by this wicked problem of ecology versus economy. While in the “real” world ecology is interconnected and communicating all the time, our economic systems of business as usual assumes that every action and interaction is solely derived from a singular profit motive, regardless of the true costs to our biosphere, which is taken as an externality. Given the need for immediate climate action there seems to be a crisis of imagination in seeing beyond ‘business as usual’, particularly when it comes to the industrial design practise. Seeing as we are left with self-fulfilling death spirals of dystopias, the challenge for design is to construct new paradigms that point towards solution spaces and facilitate the transition and transformation to an ecology of desirable futures as opposed to an insular point of view of ‘business as usual’. To evaluate the possibilities of a thriving, sustainable future world, we need to be able to ‘foresee’ radically different futures. Designing for such a radical future depends on being able to visualise a future that doesn’t yet exist, garnering valuable foresight that can help create a vision both desirable and feasible, through and by design. The following research looks at the ways in which design can contribute to adapt, iterate and redefine the narrative of long-term sustainability. Such an enquiry calls for an exploration into the possible modes of futures engagement that might expand the possibilities of our collective future frame through a designerly solution-driven exploration for facilitating climate action. Actions that by design clear up better, more hopeful visions of the future, committing to modes of positive change, enabled by industrial design solutions. Given such as outlook, the research leads with the following question:
“How can Industrial Design be an enabler for imagining more hopeful futures in the context of long-term sustainability?”
Speculative Solar
Towards long term futures and sustainability
Masters Thesis Project, AHO 2018
With the onset of cataclysmic climate change and the sixth mass extinction, organised human life is presented with a bleak future. Even in our collective imagination we are forced to comprehend the self-reinforcing loops of dystopian thinking. This project proposes an exploration in speculative industrial design through both process and artefact-making for the purposes of creating a more resilient, hopeful narrative of the future and subsequently provide alternatives to our current predicament. The specific speculation focuses on the context of solar energy but the project could just as well be applied in diverse ways to a number of inquiries of the future(s). From an interdisciplinary lens, this project has attempted to trigger a discourse through industrial design, ways in which we can think about a long term future that is sustainable for future generations in the age of the Anthropocene. In so far as it enables for visualising scenarios and as a tool for collaboration, a speculative future fiction in VR was also explored as a means to ‘time-travel’ where the designed artefact from the future could be interacted with and brought back to the present. As a manifestation of that future transposed back to the present, an artefact, a 3D printed optical solar cell was proposed as a potential alternative to existing solar cells. The designed artefact here draws on existing technology as means of agency, enabled by industrial design to create a framework of climate action that this project proposes is critical to long term futures thinking and sustainability. The exploration of the process also poses the question “what if” to the ways in which industrial design can serve society today and how it could strive towards visions of better, more thriving paradigms as we head into an uncertain future.