Hybrid Future
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Full project title
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Project Description
Hybrid Future Workshops will bring together community stakeholders and invite them to co-create visions of a hopeful regenerative future with a new set of tools and a blueprint provided by nature. The foundation of this concept lies in 3 key elements: nature knowledge, emerging technology and human creative imagination. Participants will leave with an illustration of their co-created future scenario along with actionable steps to make these visions a reality.
Geographical Scope
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Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
EU Programme or fund
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Description of the project
Summary
Hybrid Future Workshops will bring together community stakeholders and invite them to co-create using an entirely new set of tools and a blueprint provided by nature. The foundation of this concept lies in 3 key elements: nature knowledge, emerging technology and human creative imagination.
The workshops will introduce communities to various nature inspired & future thinking methodologies such as Biomimicry, Speculative design, Circular economy, Nature based solutions, and ecosystem services. They will also educate participants about various technologies that are readily available. Participants will learn how to design better, with nature as their guide. For eg., coral reefs can teach us how to rethink ‘waste as a resource’: Corals treat carbon not as a waste product but as a building block. This has inspired carbon sequestering concrete that can be used to rethink our infrastructure’s carbon emissions. Together we will come up with narratives of what life could look like if we were able to find a way to be bold and to act in proportion to the challenges we are facing while aiming for a future we actually feel good about.
The workshops (held partially outdoors) will begin with an introduction to a set of innovative tools that can support the challenges participants have identified in their community. After a discussion about these tools, the group will embark on an ideation session. Imagining positive, feasible and delightful versions of the future is a perquisite to creating them and play is central to this. It can bring the future alive to the extent where we can see it, feel it, taste it, smell it. After receiving an illustration of the ideation outcomes, the participants will meet on day-two to outline next steps for themselves and their community. Day- two’s exercises will focus on existing tech that could help the community take action in alignment with their vision. We will co-create actionable steps that the participants can take now and in the future.
Key objectives for sustainability
At the heart of this work is the need for community stakeholders to be able to imagine a better, more sustainable world, to tell stories about it, to long for and therefore take an active role in its realization. If we can imagine a climate positive future, desire it, dream about it, it is so much more likely that we will put our energy and determination into making it a reality.
Biomimicry is innovation inspired by nature. It is about learning to abstract proven strategies from the natural world to build healthier, circular, more resilient communities and a new green economy. The uniqueness and creativity of this project comes from our ability to harness the genius of nature - the time tested model with 3.8 billion years of R&D experience in creating the most resilient & sustainable designs on the planet. When we design our living spaces in harmony with nature we move beyond sustainability into regeneration.
My expertise in Biomimicry and Architecture provides me the unique skill to act as a translator of nature’s strategies to our human design. Life creates with a simple set of raw materials, procured locally, manufactured at body temperatures and pressure, processed silently in water. The hardest material in nature goes on to decompose not unlike its softest. There is NO waste. The ingenuity of natural designs holds the power to shift mindsets. We will be leveraging this ingenuity to co-create future scenarios where our cities and communities are able to function sustainably using nature as it’s model, measure and mentor.
We will also be working with a tool called “Life’s Principles” that is a set of 26 overarching patterns common to all natural systems. These will help the community to set benchmarks against which we can measure the efficacy of our sustainable strategies. We will use Life’s Principles as a measure for deeper sustainable practice in planning, design and technological implementation through the lens of economic and ESG factors.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
Beauty is a central part of what it means to be human. We have evolved as an imaginative species with the ability to think up ideas and find a way to bring them into existence. Our ability to create a better place for community, diversity, and interconnectedness relies on these powerful leverage points of imagination and design. This depends on being able to understand and facilitate a deep connection to our place on earth with the millions of species we evolved alongside. Emulating nature’s order inspires us to create more efficient and sustainable designs that are naturally pleasing to our design aesthetic.
The natural world has been a source of inspiration for designers for centuries. Over time we have become embroiled in the idea that we are separate from nature. The workshops will question this and explore our deeper connections with the local natural world by spotlighting inherent values and connection we have with the nature around us. The biophilia hypothesis suggests that humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with other forms of life. Including nature in our designed environments creates an extraordinary human experience that provides a rich, variable, and multi-sensory environment while encouraging people to feel engaged, alive and comfortable in their spaces.
The workshops will explore place-based, nature-positive futures that can be realized by an action oriented approach of empowering the participants with the mindset, tools and technologies that can be readily implemented. The outdoor setting of the workshop will encourage the participants to reconnect with nature and understand nature’s design strategies for sustainable innovation (Biomimicry), inspiring the visions they create for the future. An experienced designer will illustrate these co-created visions to bring feelings of beauty and hope to the participants, encouraging them to take action towards realizing these futures that are beneficial to both human and planetary health.
Key objectives for inclusion
With these workshops, a crucial goal is to bring diverse voices to the table from the beginning, to imagine and co-create a future that is diverse, pluralistic and welcoming for all life. And because our work focuses on learning how to create in harmony with a landscape, we must and will include the socio-cultural knowledge of the communities who stewards it. Without the knowledge of those with the deepest ties to a place, our interventions can only be superficial. We’re not inheriting land from our ancestors, we are borrowing it from our descendants, and our designs need to honour this. It is thereby also important to us to include voices of the youth within these design workshops to ensure the designed futures are relevant to their needs. The local stakeholders involved in these workshops will include at least four individuals up to age 20 in observance of the European Year of Youth. Additionally, we will also have urban planners and regional policy makers.
The strength of this project lies in the diverse global ecosystem of experts from industry, design, and academia, that we will leverage to train all participants. We are focused on empowering individuals while achieving a common goal. To do this, we focus less on top down governance and more on a collective vision. We rely on multiple perspectives to help us see the world from new angles. Nature will also serve as a stakeholder in these conversations. By using methodologies such as Biomimicry and rebuilding the human nature connection, our hope is to bring the voices of local nature to the design table as well, helping us create worlds that work in harmony with nature. We strive to extend humility in engagement from people to wildlife and the land.
By taking a nature-first approach to design, we will include insights into how we can use nature as a model to address the impacts of climate change, enhance physical and mental health, and leverage ecosystem services, all while reducing costs over the long-term.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
Hybrid Future is a regenerative artistic project endeavour that taps into the creative imagination of the participants while leveraging the 3.8 billion years of knowledge that nature provides us. We want to tap into the beauty that we as humans can conceive. This coupled with the greater knowledge of sustainability that nature holds, has the potential to deeply shift our paradigm to that of hope and action. By educating the participants of the tools and methods at their disposal, we can co-create an experience of a future that works for all life.
The next generation is stepping up to demand action, for a future which is theirs to hold, but that is possible only if we leave a world naturally prosperous enough for them to cherish. These workshops will tap into the collective community hopes of a future that is sustainable, inclusive and beautiful for all involved.
Learning from nature’s complexity of form and order, inspires us to create resilient, resource efficient and sustainable designs that are visually pleasing while also positively impacting our health (Biophilia hypothesis). It also helps us look beyond our anthropocentric viewpoint, extending empathy and inclusion to the nature that sustains us encouraging an ecocentric view point. Recognizing the rights of the natural world, brings us closer to nature, and also helps us feel closer to one another, shedding the ideas of separation. A diverse set of stakeholders will be present at the table and can bring their individual dreams, visions, needs and expectations of the future to the conversation to help co-create a future in harmony with nature.
My own personal and professional experience as a global citizen positions me well to facilitate and mediate cross-cultural conversations where needed, while also bringing the voice of nature to the discussions. Effective communication and deep listening strategies will be implemented on site to bring more clarity to the requirements of a community- visioned solution.
