Re-Imagining alternative futures of sustainability through design fiction

Climate change, global warming, depletion of natural resources and biodiversity loss needs immediate action from many disciplines, including design and the arts. While previous sustainable design studies mainly focused on technical contributions (e.g., designing energy efficient products, or utilising recycled materials in the production of artefacts), creative futures-focused approaches like speculative design and design fiction have yet to appear. These approaches enable a variety of stakeholders encompassing a plurality of different perspectives to consider the potential future use of emerging technologies, products, services, systems, or infrastructures and the requirements necessary for these future worlds so that they have inherent flexibility and capacity to withstand shocks, deliver the long-term goals, and the agility to pivot to capture new opportunities. In this project, we plan to use design fiction to create pluralistic futures of sustainability that challenge and provide an alternative to the domination of techno-centric, corporate centric and western visions of futures. Collaborating with local designers and artists in Istanbul and Lancaster, we will explore futures of sustainability from a more-than-human perspective that considers non-human actors as relevant stakeholders in the design process (e.g., animals, plants, microorganisms, ecosystems, landscapes), with a specific focus on biodiversity loss, a common issue for both countries. In the first phase of the project, we will engage local artists/designers in Istanbul and Lancaster to create a network of creative professionals working on sustainability. In the second phase, a smaller group selected from this network will receive online training on design fictions and design for sustainability. Then, a design fiction workshop will be organised in Lancaster, where artists/designers from both countries will collaboratively create design fictions. In the last phase, the outcomes of the workshops will be exhibited at Lancaster University and Koc University.