What does the future look like?

We can’t be sure, but Speculative Design builds on informed hunches to imagine ‘what might be’...

Rather than providing solutions to existing problems, Speculative Design ask questions; exploring new behaviours, attitudes, desires and anxieties suggested by emerging social, technological, ecological and political trends.

Using a process of intelligent, creative abduction - what if? -  Speculative Design responds to what we see on the near horizon in the form of innovative products, services and experiences which focus on the social - as opposed to commercial - value of design.

Brand X is the outcome of an 8 week project by product design students from the School of Innovation and Technology at Glasgow School of Art.

Taking the domestic landscape as a familiar context, the project is an opportunity to translate speculative visions of the near future into prototypes of the imagined everyday tools, systems and services that we might want & need in the near future.

Working in teams of 3 or 4, students were asked to develop the concept for a speculative lifestyle brand, each situated in a different room in the Home of the Future 2035... Tomorrow’s World.

The project concluded with an exhibition at Edward House, a former retail space on Glasgow’s busy Sauchiehall Street. Open to the public over 4 days, this experience afforded students an opportunity to showcase their work to a curious public in a real-world setting.

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