Designs for Different Futures

The role of designers in shaping how we think about possible futures is the subject of Designs for Different Futures, a major exhibition organized by the Walker Art Center, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. The presentation brings together some 80 dynamic works that address the challenges and opportunities that humans may encounter in the years, decades, and centuries ahead.

Thinking about our futures has always been part of the human condition. It has also been a perennial field of inquiry for designers and architects whose speculations on this subject—ranging from the concrete to the whimsical—can profoundly affect how we imagine what is to come. Among the questions today’s designers explore are: What role can technology play in augmenting or replacing a broad range of human activities? Can intimacy be maintained at a distance? How can we negotiate privacy in a world where the sharing and use of personal information has blurred traditional boundaries? How might we use design to help heal or transform ourselves, bodily and psychologically? How will we feed an ever-growing population?

While no one can precisely predict these futures, the works in the exhibition provide design solutions for a number of speculative scenarios. In some instances, these proposals are borne from a sense of anxiety, and in others from excitement over the possibilities that innovative materials, new technologies, and fresh ideas can afford.

Designs for Different Futures is divided into 11 thematic sections—Labors, Cities, Intimacies, Bodies, Powers, Earths, Foods, Materials, Generations, Informations, and Resources—and features an international array of designers from all fields. Among the many forward-looking projects on view are lab-grown foods, textiles made of seaweed, a typeface that thwarts algorithmic surveillance, a series of books that will only be available 100 years from now, an affordable gene-editing toolbox, a shoe grown from sweat, a couture dress made with a 3D printer, and a system that learns from our sewers.

Each of these projects—from small product innovations to large-scale system proposals—asks us to imagine futures different than what we expect, and in doing so, helps us craft a fascinating portrait of our diverse and turbulent present.

Featured designers include Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Stephanie Dinkins, Robyn Rihanna Fenty, Forensic Architecture, Formafantasma, Mary Maggic, Keiichi Matsuda, MOLD magazine, Office for Political Innovation, Neri Oxman, Martine Syms, Iris van Herpen, and Liam Young, among many others.

The exhibition is accompanied by a major publication overseen by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, designed by the Walker Art Center, and distributed by Yale University Press. Through new contributions by the show’s curatorial team and a broad range of scholars and designers including Bruno Latour and Danielle Wood, the catalogue delves into themes such as human-digital interaction, climate change, political and social inequality, resource scarcity, transportation, and infrastructure.

Curatorial team: Emmet Byrne, Design Director and Associate Curator of Design, Walker Art Center; Kathryn B. Hiesinger, the J. Mahlon Buck, Jr. Family Senior Curator and Michelle Millar Fisher, formerly the Louis C. Madeira IV Assistant Curator in the department of European Decorative Arts after 1700, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Maite Borjabad López-Pastor, Neville Bryan Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design, and Zoë Ryan, the John H. Bryan Chair and Curator of Architecture and Design, the Art Institute of Chicago. Consulting curators: Andrew Blauvelt, Director, Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and Curator-at-Large, Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Colin Fanning, Independent Scholar, Bard Graduate Center, New York; and Orkan Telhan, Associate Professor of Fine Arts (Emerging Design Practices), University of Pennsylvania School of Design, Philadelphia.

Designs for Different Futures is organized by the Walker Art Center, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Lead support for the Walker Art Center’s presentation is provided by Martha and Bruce Atwater. Additional support is provided by Deborah and John Christakos, Andrew Duff, and Annette and John Whaley.