“Let us imagine it is 2100 and you want to go and pick a 100 objects that sum up human history from 2011 to 2100. What are they going to be?” This is the question Adrian Hon posed – inspired by BBC Radio 4′s A history of the world in 100 objects – and around which plans to write a blog, publish a book, produce podcasts and publish a newspaper of the future. To fund his initiative, he turned towards Kickstarter – the famous crowdfunding platform for creative projects.

Some will know Adrian – co-founder and chief creative officer of nextgen games company Six to Start, as one of the people behind Perplexcity, the award-winning alternate reality game that imagined a parallel world set in the future.

Rendering the future tangible is an important element in lowering the level of abstraction and creating common ground when discussing the future. Crafting ideas and giving physical shape to them are powerful, debate-stimulating tools when exploring which changes the future might bring and what they might mean to one’s organization.

Looking forward to your project Adrian!

Image courtesy Adrian Hon

The 2010 German Future Prize – aka the Deutscher Zukunftspreis, a true prize with 250.000 euros for the winner(s) – went to Festo and Fraunhofer IPA for their Bionic Handling Assistant. Festo has a long history in biomimetic systems and also this time nature provides inspiration for their innovative design: the elephant’s trunk. Robust yet gentle, flexible yet precise.

“The plastic trunk is made of bellows structures arrayed in series, a movable hand axis and a grabber with three fingers,” explains Dr. Post, who heads up the research and development project at Festo. The structural elements are flexible and can be manipulated using compressed air. If air is pumped into the trunk, the bellows structures extend as an accordion would. This is how the high-tech trunk can be extended from 70 to 110 centimeters in length.

“The plastic trunk is made of bellows structures arrayed in series, a movable hand axis and a grabber with three fingers,” explains Dr. Post, who heads up the research and development project at Festo. The structural elements are flexible and can be manipulated using compressed air. If air is pumped into the trunk, the bellows structures extend as an accordion would. This is how the high-tech trunk can be extended from 70 to 110 centimeters in length.

The three fingers fitted to the trunk are also designed with a biological model in mind – the tail fin of a trout. The special feature: if you press these “FinGrippers” lightly with your finger, rather than retract in the direction of the pressure, they respond by moving toward the source of pressure.

The individual structural elements of the flexible arm are produced in additive manufacturing.

Via Research in Germany

When bringing possible futures to life and engaging an audience, many tend to resort to multimedia in its most tech-inspired/driven variant, while from a storytelling perspective “the art of acting” or theatre has so much more to offer. After some first experiences of our own in using theater as a way of communicating the future and triggering debate, we are definitely hungry for more. Yet our interest in theater goes beyond its utilitarian value in exploring and envisioning the future.

Theatre comes in many flavours and the Dutch theater company Theater AdHoc defies categorization in a lovely way. Join us on an inspiring trip through the mind and heart of its founder Jan van den Berg.

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Until the end of September 2009, the Musée du Cinquantenaire in Brussels showcases Vegetal City, an absolutely fascinating overview exhibition on the work of Luc Schuiten, the belgian visionary architect, illustrator, author. Years ago Schuiten started working on his archiborescence vision on urban development, as an alternative future to look out for, a way out of the current-day unsustainable impasse.

Vegetal city is a vision of a transformed society driven by a quest for sustainability in which notions of biomimicry provide for a solutioning framework.

“We can’t carry on with individualistic attitudes which boil down to ‘I’ll just do my own thing and let the rest of the world go by.’ We need to change the way our entire society thinks in order to make it compatible with the rest of the world of which it forms part, and on which it ultimately depends.”

Schuiten understands the power of stories to convey his vision. As such he moves beyond the mere aspect of ‘visualizing’ what one means.

Check out the unique exhibition and/or the book.

In 1970 the futurologist Alvin Toffler published Future shock … a book about signs of the time and of times ahead, times in which the (increasing) speed of scientific and technological progress oversteps the pace of the human heartbeat. It becomes too much for many to digest and a sense of discomfort rather than techno-enabled comfort sets in.

Few people remember – hey, I wasn’t even born yet – that in 1972, a documentary version was made of the bestselling book, narrated by Orson Welles. Although over 30years old, there remains a contemporary relevance to the story being told. Some might even see a few parallels between “the future shock” phenomenon and “the singularity”.

Sit back and enjoy the movies (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

Via Smashing Telly

In 1975 Ernest Callenbach published Ecotopia (revisited by NY Times here), a novel which quickly gained cult status (see also video). Three years later, fascinated by the book, architect Craig Hodgetts (of Hodgetts+Fung Design) crafted a set of amazing drawings depicting some of the scenes and concept envisioned in the book, eager to produce Ecotopia for the big screen. Imagine retro-yet-ever-so-futuristic balloon generators over San Francisco Bay, solar-powered high-speed mag-lev trains, helium-filled mylar balloons to lift and orient a wind-powered generator, …

Callenbach said it right: “It is so hard to imagine anything fundamentally different from what we have now, but without these alternate visions, we get stuck on dead center.” 

Inspired by TheArchitectsNewspaperBlog

“In this nearly 27 minute video Bruce Sterling, a leading futurist, speaker, columnist and science fiction writer, shares his vision on where mobile is heading. Preaching his story from a somewhat unconventional place, the pulpit instead of the stage, he managed to silence the audience. Check the video to see what he had to say to the Mobile sinners.”

Via MobileMonday

Guy Pieters Gallery in the coastal town of Knokke-Heist, Belgium, is currently (May 11th until June 2nd) host to a fascinating exhibition by the artist Jacques Charlier, entitled ‘Art in Another Way’.

Charlier, born in Liège (B) in 1939, masters a wide range of media, yet turned to good ol’ painting for this specific exhibition, which projects developments in current day culture and society into the future. Scenes in vivid colours against the night’s sky and with stars and planets as main actors, picture worlds many years ahead. The present and the future meet in clever ways on Charlier’s canvas, in what some might dub a retrofuturistic style.

Gene therapy, RFID, human cloning, climate change, teleportation, space travel, the year 4958, black holes, Planck’s wall, android love affairs, … they all play a part in Charlier’s artistic future(s) explorations.

For those of you in the neighbourhood, go check it out, it’s worth it!

PS. Don’t be fooled by the fact that all works are signed 2007. The artist envisioned and has been working on the exhibition as a whole for many years. He added the final touch to all the works in 2007, hence the signature date.

Flexibility, plasticity, elasticity … concepts about to move into the material world.

Imagine transformers, not as a mechanical capability but as a material characteristic. Imagine all problems where different contexts require different form factors, different functionalities etc. yet basically only one underlying system.

The Nokia Research Centre and Prof. Mark Welland’s Nanoscience Centre at the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge developed Morph, a concept for a shapeshifting multifunctional device based on nanotechnology.

“Nanotechnology allows control of physical properties of nanostructures and devices with single-molecule precision.”

Watch Morph’s concept video here and see how Morph senses our environment, scans our food, etc. See how its nanowire grass recharges the device via solar power, how its superhydrophobic surface repells dirt and keeps it clean, how its nanoscale structure allows the device to stretch and change shape (a nanoscale mesh of fibres controls the stretching when folding for example rendering parts of it tough and strong as spider silk), its surface (able to shift shape depending on context) is responsive to touch (yes, buttons in real 3D with haptic feedback), its electronics invisible to the human eye fully integrated into the material etc.

The video – a visual/storyboarded scenario of use – clarifies the various ways in which nanotech advances could find their way into future products, fulfilling a broad range of functions. In this sense the video is a wonderful example of rendering the future tangible.

The Morph concept is currently on display at the MoMa exhibition ‘Design & the elastic mind‘, curated by Paola Antonelli.

Via Slashdot. Image courtesy of Nokia

Bryant Rousseau of Architectural Record interviews William Mitchell, Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences at MIT and director of MIT’s Design Laboratory, author of fascinating books such as e-topia: Urban Life, Jim—But Not As We Know It and ME++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked city. Mitchell speaks about future challenges for our cities, for the architectural profession, etc. Check out the video and/or read onwards.

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Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) – aka Bucky – lived and worked by a nobel and clear mission: “to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or disadvantage of anyone”. An architect, designer, engineer, philosopher, … Buckminster Fuller was a Renaissance man, a visionary, an early futurist and global, integral thinker. He called his line of work: “comprehensive anticipatory design science”

For various reasons ranging from his boundless creativity, his inherent focus on sustainability, his integrative systems thinking, his notion of design science, of synergetics, his passionate, ever forward-looking nature etc. … he is and should be of inspiration to anyone thinking about the future.

Bucky was extremely fascinated by geometry, patterns of nature and coined the term tensegrity in order to describe a structural state of tensional integrity. It is the strength that results when a pushing and a pulling force have a win-win effect upon each other. Examples of structures based upon tensegrity at work are Bucky’s famous geodesic domes, fullerene molecules or buckyballs, etc. That notion of tensional win-win, finds a broader conceptual application in the term synergetics (see also here), where the notion and philosophical background of tensegrity forms the basis for its application beyond pure engineering such as other technological, but also economic, societal challenges etc.

Bucky recognized and anticipated upon many of the challenges we face today and will tomorrows, e.g. resource scarcity, energy efficiency, globalisation etc. Some of Bucky’s designs, such as the Dymaxion car (and ensuing experiments) and the Dymaxion house are unequaled in terms of efficiency and engineering innovation till this very day. He coined the catchy phrase “Think global, act local!” … and he meant not only by ourselves, but also together.
Bucky’s strong belief in (the utter need of) working together is exemplified by his notion of our planet as Spaceship Earth (for which he also wrote an operating manual), in which we all cruise together (see also quote below).

No short blog entry can do full justice to Bucky’s person, work or thoughts. More information can be found at the website of the Buckminster Fuller Institute.

You may assume that you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all your experience to the highest advantage of others. You and all men are here for the sake of other men.

 

—Buckminster Fuller

Many immediately associate Italy with its Roman, Etruscan past … Yet the Italians have quite a history in future-related stuff as well. Think of the utopian city designs of Paolo Soleri, Marinetti’s futurist movement … or Joe Colombo? The famous Italian designer who died way to young at age 41 designed everything from lighting, to seats, to underground cities, James Bond like environments where screens fold out of the ceiling, climate controlled sleeping cells, pivoting walls etc. Vitra’s exhibition on Joe Colombo’s life and achievements (curated together with the Triennale di Milano and Studio Joe Colombo) has been on tour for almost two years now and is currently on show at the Museum for Decorative Arts in Paris, France.
For those of you still planning their summer city trip or European tour, pay it a visit while you still can.

“The possibilities presented by the extraordinary development of audiovisual processes are enormous … Distances will no longer have much importance; no longer will there be any justification for the ‘megalopolis’ … Furnishings will disappear … the habitat will be everywhere … Now, if the elements necessary to human existence could be planned with the sole requirements of maneuverability and flexibility … , then we would create an inhabitable system that could be adapted to any situation in space and time …”

The Swiss city of Yverdon-les-Bains – where Diller+Scofidio set up their famous blur building during the 2002 Swiss Expo – features a unique museum, called La Maison d’Ailleurs (the House of Elsewhere), dedicated to science fiction, utopia and extraordinary journeys. The museum will soon also feature a Jules Verne Exhibition Space.

Recent exhibitions include the work of our visionary belgian Luc Schuiten (indeed, brother of), photographer Mario del Curto’s, the Blue Man etc.

The current exhibition ‘Entropia‘ features the work of Christian Lorenz-Scheurer (Swiss-born, attended art-school in Brussels), the illustrator/matte-painter/concept designer for movies such as Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element, the Wachowski brothers’ The Matrix and Peter Chung’s The Animatrix, Vincent Ward’s What Dreams May Come and Alex Proyas’ Dark City.

Currently, (until October 28th 2007) there’s also a fascinating exhibition (incl. lecture series MundAgoras) on the topic of utopias going on at the Mundaneum in Mons (Belgium), titled Utopia, de l’Atlantide aux cités du futur.

Also in Belgium, at the Museum of Fine Arts (BOZAR) in Brussels (until September 16th 2007), sixteen architects and urban designers enrolled at the renowned Berlage Institute in Rotterdam (Netherlands) share with the world their visions of Brussels as a European capital in an exhibition titled A Vision for Brussels: Imagining the Captial of Europe.

It’s been a while since we last put another visionary figure from the past in the spotlight. For that matter, let’s pay a visit to France, a country which has brought forth quite a few. Among them there is the fascinating Albert Robida (1848-1926) (or for those of you who understand French, see also here).

Albert Robida – visionary, illustrator, caricaturist, novellist – had a visual  mind, which allowed him to ‘distort’ reality and explore what such new forms of the world might mean. Both his drawings as well as his stories show a scenarist at heart, stage-setting an integrated view of a world yet to exist. He was a visionary who not only looked at technologies, but also at their consequences, social changes brought about in society, etc. In a unique way, his work showed a future ‘in context’.

In retrospect many of Robida’s boundless ‘fantasies’ at the time have turned into reality in one way or another, in some contexts, to certain degrees. His visionary mind’s eye saw the female’s struggle for gender equality, modern warfare with robotic missiles and poisoned gas, the ‘air-bus’ (cf. airliners), the phono-opéragraphe (cf. walkman), the ‘telephonoscope’ (cf. tv), ‘téléconférences’ (made me smile and think of our friend Otlet), mass produced food, the abolition of the death penalty, pollution and the need to conserve nature, mass-tourism, etc.

For those of you hungry for more, several of his written works are freely available online (e.g. The end of books, visit the French National Library’s online digital archives Gallica for several more of his works)

Chlorofilia 2106 … a mysterious title for a fascinating project, a gaze into the long term future of what we call cities. The reason why I blog about this is threefold, since the project deals with:

- ways to visualize a possible future by means of images and story
- organic systems & organic metaphor as a lens through which to look at and act within/upon the world
- contemporary architecture

The History Channel recently held a competition inviting architectural teams to design a city of the future, to envision Los Angeles, New York and Chicago a hundred years from now.

One of several fascinating and inspiring entries from a futurist’s perspective was the work of the Xefirotarch team (Hernan Diaz Alonso and colleagues) who did a marvellous job envisioning an organic future for Los Angeles. In 2106 Los Angeles became Chlorofilia, it became a “self-sustaining, self-protecting natural ecology, used converted highways as aqueducts and dispersed nutrients into an adaptable organism that continuously adjusted itself to changes in demographics and housing requirements.”

Together with the renowned motion graphics office imaginary forces, the architects introduced a new Los Angeles by means of a future-scenario video set in 2106, interviewing a person looking at the city in retrospect, how it came to be, how society is organized differently, how mobility is differently (although perhaps not ‘that’ much), how communication takes place via ‘cloud’-technology instead of phones etc. As such they touch upon a variety of aspects of the city and city-life in the future, in a changed and ever-changing context. As experience has taught us, such portrayals are powerful and effective means to convey a multi-perspectival, contextualized image of the future to a large audience.

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