Exhibition, Workshop and Forum at National Design Centre, Singapore

The renowned 20th century designer Charles Eames described design as “a plan for arranging elements to accomplish a particular purpose” (1972). The power of this simple statement is that it operates across multiple scales, material complexities and time-frames – from a piece of furniture to a city plan; a length of wood to biological parts (now seen as being designable through synthetic biology); for the marketplace of tomorrow or a distant future world.

But particularly poignant is the issue of a “particular purpose”. In normative (generalised) terms, this is the arranging of available elements to create useful objects designed to exist (and usually be sold) in the real world. Increasingly, these elements are technological and as such, the designer’s role could be seen as the translation of technological potential into useful, usable and desirable products.

Speculative design borrows many practical methods from its more well known counterparts (such as industrial and graphic design) but as a form of research it de-couples the practice from direct market imperatives, in turn creating a space to arrange emerging (not yet available) technological “elements” to hypothesise future products and artefacts; or apply alternative plans, motivations or ideologies to those currently driving technological development to facilitate new arrangements of existing elements; and design big systems or forms of interaction that would be impossible to implement in reality.

This forum will ask how emergent digital technologies such as Big Data, sensing, prediction algorithms and robotics could enter everyday life. The session will begin with a presentation on the methods and approach, giving examples of relevant projects. Followed by a practical workshop session in exploring Big Data to speculate the future products, systems or services that could emerge.