Discourse, speculation and multidisciplinarity: Designing urban futures

Abstract

This paper presents a design case study of a summer school that brought together a multidisciplinary group of early-career professionals to explore ideas relating to new technologies in an urban context. The organisers of the summer school took an explicitly design-informed approach to the event, specifically a 'critical design' approach. The aspiration of the organisers was that the school activities would lead to the creation of an exhibition of artefacts and visual media expressing the ideas explored during the school. The expectation of generating exhibition quality outputs influenced the participants' experience of the event, and this paper describes the process and reflects upon the success of this method. The authors address the question: in what way is it useful to adopt a critical design approach with a multidisciplinary group in a workshop or school setting? It is suggested that envisionment in the form of 'design fictions' is key to the success of this approach.