Tuesday 2 January 2018

Designing the Future: what Design Fiction can teach to Sustainable Design.


Earth-chan is in a bad shape. The anime girl with coloured hair and a NASA T-shirt represents our planet's dire situation and it's last call for help.
The meme was born as a running joke against flat-Earth theories, where the girl would get offended for people calling her "flat". Soon enough, however, she put aside these mundane concerns and
started to focus on her own health issues - global warming above
all - asking internet users to do more recycling.



Recycling is indeed seen as a possible solution to prevent a planetary disaster without having to change our lifestyle. This year’s Dutch Design Week was crowded with Substainable Design projects dedicate to creatives ways of recycling - the theme of the event was "Good Design for a bad World".
But are we really sure that we can design our way out of the consequences of human pollution? Shahar Livne's Desing Fiction project forces us to ponder on the irremediable changes that human life has already engraved on our planet. An article by Meg Chaltron appeared on Slate explains us why.