Emerging Ecologies of Health, Heritage, and Habitat: Looking into Living and Working in 2033

The ‘Emerging Ecologies of Health, Heritage, and Habitat: Looking into Living and Working in 2033’, project was jointly conceived by the School of Innovation & Technology at Glasgow School of Art and the School of Cancer Sciences at the University of Glasgow. The project partnership involved a community of experts working across both organisations including the University of Glasgow’s Advanced Research Centre (ARC). This project and exhibition, explores emerging ecologies of health, heritage, and habitat, through the design of speculative future worlds and experiences which envisage new ways of living and working in ten years time. An ecological perspective views the world as interrelated, living systems, recognising the need to go beyond sustaining our current ways of living and working towards building reciprocal, co-evolutionary relationships, where humans, other living beings, and the systems which surround us rely on one another to thrive rather than survive. This way of perceiving the world is not new. It has a long lineage, throughout cultures, knowledge systems, heritages and communities around the world. In this sense an ecological perspective is deeply embedded in human culture – it should be the approach for how we interact with each other and the planet – future ways of living and working focused on giving out much more than we take in. Life-centred Design is a practice that expands Human-centred Design to include the consideration of other living and non-living entities, and ecological, environmental, and social impact. Thus, designing ecological futures is about considering people, products and places as dynamic entities that affect, support, and interact with each other and with myriad forms of life, not just Human. The Emerging Ecologies project asked the final year BDes Product Design cohort to explore the future ecologies of health, heritage, and habitat. This project is not about learning how to design a more sustainable version of something that already exists, or ‘fixing’ a singular problem. Rather it asks you to look beyond how we currently live and work towards ten years’ from now – to speculate on what emerging ecologies of health, heritage and habitat might look and feel like, and what these might enable and afford in terms of future experiences for people and the planet. Working with an expert community of practice from the University of Glasgow’s Advanced Research Centre and a wider expert group of academic and professional stakeholders, the students, faculty, and experts co-researched, explored and designed speculative future worlds and experiences of HEALTH, HERITAGE & HABITAT which envisage new ways of LIVING & WORKING in ten year’s time. This brief gives the opportunity to explore the future ecologies of health, heritage, and habitat, reflecting on the underlying complexities regarding technological acceleration, human and more-than-human agency, and quality of life, to envision a future world, develop it as an experiential exhibit and create the designed products, services and experiences for the intended recipients. In the first part of the project, the student cohort work collaboratively to engage with the future; creating a Future World exhibit that represents shifts in one domain within the wider project brief; either in Health, Heritage or Habitat and from the perspective of Living or Working. Future Living is associated with a scale from the individual person, to their family, friends, and neighbours, community groups and beyond. Whilst Future Working refers to a person’s work peers and team members, their wider community of practice, professional relationships, networks and partnerships. The individual element of the project follows this stage, giving each student, as individual designers, the opportunity to select an aspect of your Future World research to develop as a design direction, from which they prototype and produce the product(s), service, system – and related narrative – to communicate a highly resolved and refined future experience. The output from this project is curated and presented as a public exhibition. Over a week in February 2023, an experiential exhibition on ‘Designing Future Experiences: Looking into Living & Working in 2033’ took place in the University of Glasgow’s Advanced Research Centre (ARC) exhibition space. This unique and creative event was the culmination of a joint project between students, staff, and communities of practice. The exhibition includes the products, services and experiences designed for the communities who might live and work within these future ecologies. The deposited materials are arranged as follows: 1. Emerging Ecologies Project Brief. The Project Brief is developed as rationale, context and a guide to the project. 2. Studio Life: The Co-creation Sessions. This section documents the critical co-creation studio sessions with experts and the studio development of the show exhibits. 3. Project Exhibition Guide: Looking into Living and Working in 2033. The Guide catalogues and describes the exhibits presented in the show. It takes you through each ‘Future World’ experience created by the students. It complements the videos, images and text presented in companion sections. 4. Experiential Exhibition in Video - Looking into Living and Working in 2033. In this section you will find short videos documenting the set-up of the exhibition and the exhibition itself. 5. Modelling the Exhibition Space in 3D. A unique scaled 3D model of the ARC gallery space was created to enable students, staff and partner lead to envisage, model, iterate and plan the choreography and curation of project exhibits and navigation of the work as a coherent visitor experience. 6. Designing Future Experiences: The value of exhibition spaces as creative environments for collaborative, multidisciplinary research, exhibitions, and audiences. 7. Exhibition guides for each individual World View. These guides take you through each individual ‘Future World’; Heritage (Living + Working), Habitat (Living + Working), Health (Living + Working). 8. Links to Previous Future Experiences Projects and Exhibitions. 9. Contributor roles (CRediT) and affiliations. This document is a high-level summary recognising the value and diversity of contributor roles. It also summarises contributor affiliations