What Doesn’t Have a Place in the Future? Exploring imaginaries of systemic transitions through speculative design probes

Lockton, Dan (2026) What Doesn’t Have a Place in the Future? Exploring imaginaries of systemic transitions through speculative design probes. Contexts—The Systemic Design Journal, 3. ISSN 2704-0542

Abstract

Designed visions of systemic transitions usually focus mainly on new possibilities, practices, and configurations of everyday life. We rarely consider what is missing: what aspects of our current everyday lives are not present in these futures? The notion of breakdown and phase-out is central to transition studies, but has been underexplored in design and in design education. In this paper, we explore the idea of “what goes away?” as a framing. Based on the context of IMAGINE: Contested Futures of Sustainability (2021–4), an interdisciplinary research project addressing the societal power of cultural imaginaries of sustainability, we examine how topics from design and transition studies fit together and identify opportunities for more nuanced approaches to the lived experience of being inside transitions. Through a provocation to Master’s students, around visiting a museum in 2050 and encountering a cabinet of rarities or curiosities featuring objects (or practices) that have disappeared from everyday life, we illustrate examples of three speculative design projects addressing sustainability and cultural topics, around coffee, marriage, and consumer choice, in the form of probes. The projects, and focus on what doesn’t have a place in particular imagined futures, offer a distinctive perspective for approaching designers’ responsibilities towards the future.

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