scholarly journals The Future as a Design Problem

Design Issues ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 6-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Reeves ◽  
Murray Goulden ◽  
Robert Dingwall

An often unacknowledged yet foundational problem for design is how ‘futures‘ are recruited for design practice. This problem saturates considerations of what could or should be designed. We distinguish two intertwined approaches to this: ‘pragmatic projection’, which tries to tie the future to the past, and ‘grand vision’, which ties the present to the future. We examine ubiquitous computing as a case study of how pragmatic projection and grand vision are practically expressed to direct and structure design decisions. We assess their implications and conclude by arguing that the social legitimacy of design futures should be increasingly integral to their construction.

Author(s):  
Oana DĂSCĂLOIU ◽  
Theodora RADU

The future seems to bring along with the intense densification of cities the tendency to uniformize architecture by losing interest in the value of the heritage of the past and its characteristic forms. In this context, the actions for safeguarding and functional aligning to contemporary requirements of monuments and historical assemblies contribute both to the sustainability of the constructed fund and to the (social and cultural) activation of the areas to which they belong. The case study focuses on a proposal for urban regeneration of Assan’s Mill, an ensemble classified as a historical monument that tells about Bucharest’s industrial past, which is enriched through the project with a new contemporary function designed to extend its life and diversify its possibilities of use.


Legal Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Rebecca Probert ◽  
Stephanie Pywell

Abstract During 2020, weddings were profoundly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. During periods of lockdown few weddings could take place, and even afterwards restrictions on how they could be celebrated remained. To investigate the impact of such restrictions, we carried out a survey of those whose plans to marry in England and Wales had been affected by Covid-19. The 1,449 responses we received illustrated that the ease and speed with which couples had been able to marry, and sometimes whether they had been able to marry at all, had depended not merely on the national restrictions in place but on their chosen route into marriage. This highlights the complexity and antiquity of marriage law and reinforces the need for reform. The restrictions on weddings taking place also revealed the extent to which couples valued getting married as opposed to having a wedding. Understanding both the social and the legal dimension of weddings is important in informing recommendations as to how the law should be changed in the future, not merely to deal with similar crises but also to ensure that the general law is fit for purpose in the twenty-first century.


Futures ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 118-134
Author(s):  
Barbara Adam

This chapter comprises an interview between Barbara Adam and the editors, and is followed by Adam’s ‘Honing Futures’, which is presented in four short verses of distilled theory. In the interview Adam reflects on thirty-five years of futures-thinking rooted in her deeply original work on time and temporality, and her innovative response to qualitative and linear definitions of time within the social sciences. The interview continues with a discussion of the way Adam’s thinking on futures intersects in her work with ideas of ethics and collective responsibility politics and concludes with a brief rationale for writing theory in verse form. In ‘Honing Futures’, a piece of futures theory verse form, Adam charts the movements and moments in considerations of the Not Yet and futurity’s active creation: from pluralized imaginings of the future, to an increasingly tangible and narrower anticipated future, to future-making as designing and reality-creating performance. Collectively, the verses identify the varied complex interdependencies of time, space, and matter with the past and future in all iterations of honing and making futures.


2008 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
SueAnne Ware

Andreas Huyssen writes, ‘Remembrance as a vital human activity shapes our links to the past, and the ways we remember define us in the present. As individuals and societies, we need the past to construct and to anchor our identities and to nurture a vision of the future.’ Memory is continually affected by a complex spectrum of states such as forgetting, denial, repression, trauma, recounting and reconsidering, stimulated by equally complex changes in context and changes over time. The apprehension and reflective comprehension of landscape is similarly beset by such complexities. Just as the nature and qualities of memory comprise inherently fading, shifting and fleeting impressions of things which are themselves ever-changing, an understanding of a landscape, as well as the landscape itself, is a constantly evolving, emerging response to both immense and intimate influences. There is an incongruity between the inherent changeability of both landscapes and memories, and the conventional, formal strategies of commemoration that typify the constructed landscape memorial. The design work presented in this paper brings together such explorations of memory and landscape by examining the ‘memorial’. This article examines two projects. One concerns the fate of illegal refugees travelling to Australia: The SIEVX Memorial Project. The other, An Anti-Memorial to Heroin Overdose Victims, was designed by the author as part of the 2001 Melbourne Festival.


Author(s):  
Sarina Bakić

The author will emphasize the importance of both the existence and the further development of the Srebrenica - Potočari Memorial Center, in the context of the continued need to understand the genocide that took place in and around Srebrenica, from the aspect of building a culture of remembrance throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H). This is necessary in order to continue fighting the ongoing genocide denial. At first glance, a culture of remembrance presupposes immobility and focus on the past to some, but it is essentially dynamic, and connects three temporal dimensions: it evokes the present, refers to the past but always deliberates over the future. In this paper, the emphasis is placed on the concept of the place of remembrance, the lieu de memoire as introduced by the historian Pierre Nora. In this sense, a place of remembrance such as the Srebrenica - Potočari Memorial Center is an expression of a process in which people are no longer just immersed in their past but read and analyze it in the present. Furthermore, looking to the future, they also become mediators of relations between people and communities, which in sociological theory is an important issue of social relations. The author of this paper emphasizes that collective memory in the specific case of genocide in and around Srebrenica is only possible when the social relations around the building (Srebrenica - Potočari Memorial Center) crystallize, which is then much more than just the content of the culture of remembrance.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Nandang Rusnandar

Uga merupakan salah satu tradisi lisan masyarakat Sunda, di dalamnya terkumpul segenap memori kolektif. Analisis terhadap uga meliputi nilai-nilai dalam bentuk simbol yang tersirat di dalamnya. Uga mampu meramalkan perubahan sosial sesuai dengan zamannya. Apabila dilihat dari orientasi waktu, uga dapat  menunjukkan: (1) tercipta dan dituturkan pada masa lampau; (2) dituturkan pada masa lampau dan terjadi pada waktu lalu; (3) dituturkan pada masa lampau dan sekarang (sedang terjadi); (4) dituturkan pada masa lampau, ramalan untuk masa yang akan datang. Fungsi uga di samping memprediksi ia juga harus dijadikan sebagai alat antisipasi tentang sesuatu yang bakal terjadi di waktu yang akan datang.Abstract:Uga is one of Sundanese oral tradition containing most collective memory. Analysis of the Uga includes the values in the form of symbols that implied in it. It  is able to predict social change in accordance with its time when viewed from the orientation of time. It  can  show that (1) it could be created and spoken in the past; (2) it was spoken and taken place in the past;(3) it was spoken in the past and is still being used now; (4)  it was spoken in the past and predictions for the future. Besides its functions to predict the social change, it  can serve as a tool in anticipation of something that might happen in the future.


2020 ◽  
pp. 42-59
Author(s):  
Bart J. Wilson

The custom of property emerges out of the social practice of tool use in primates when symbolic thought is applied to it. Primates socially transmit tool practices, but humans share meaning-laden customs. The thingness of property as a custom comes from tools. Tool use is embodied knowledge, and property embodies the claim, “This is mine!” Humans socially transmit property with moral force. With symbolic thought, we can think about our actions, or others’, in the past and in the future, and we can evaluate them to be good or bad. We contemplate our conduct and our character in regards to the connections we make with things.


2017 ◽  
Vol 97 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 334-345
Author(s):  
Kenneth J. Woo

Over the past fifty years Calvin research has seen significant turns toward interest in Calvin’s biblical exegesis, the social setting in which he was embedded, and the Frenchman’s self-understanding vis-à-vis such lived realities. These developments have resulted in a more deeply historicized Calvin, highlighting the benefits of contextual approaches for illuminating his life, work, and influence. At the same time, such research has relativized ideas about the reformer’s significance and originality. The future for Calvin research in an academy focused increasingly on contexts far removed from Reformation Europe should follow a similar course, relating the questions and insights of Calvin studies to an expanding group of conversation partners across diverse fields. Such projects include interdisciplinary historical work on Calvin’s context, more nuanced examination of Calvin’s reception in different settings up to the present day, and historically informed theological work related to the practices of faith communities.


2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 217-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suze M.P.J. Jans ◽  
Carla G. van El ◽  
Eddy S. Houwaart ◽  
Marjan J. Westerman ◽  
Rien J.P.A. Janssens ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
The Past ◽  

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-358
Author(s):  
Mariona Ferrer-Fons ◽  
Marta Rovira-Martínez

Abstract Learning about the past is becoming a complex issue due to the increasing need to ensure the approaches consider not only the facts, but also the implications for increasingly diverse future societies. This paper studies how experiential visits to memorial sites contribute to young people’s understanding of history from a wider and more inclusive perspective. The article presents a case study of two educational activities carried out at two memory sites related to the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) involving various qualitative techniques such as participant- and non-participant observation, expert interviews and focus groups with young people. The results show that an experiential approach to the past that works with emotions, empathy and dialogue with secondary students (17 years old) and older young people (15–25 years old) is a very effective means of offering a touching interpretation of the past and learning opportunity for youth, regardless of level of previous knowledge. Other findings show that the content needs to be reconsidered so new generations can interact with it. Young people’s worlds are shaped by cultural diversity, globalisation and the need to connect knowledge with the social environment, which enables them to engage in a critical re-appropriation of the past. This may be a new perspective that could be incorporated into the school curricula, and these types of visits could prove very useful for teachers and historical institutions such as museums or memorial sites interested in including young people’s experiences when planning their activities.


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