Speculative Design in Real-World Laboratories: A theory of play and fantasy

Sunniva Münster

The workshop explores the meaning of play and playful methods in speculative design for sustainability. It explores the concept and theory of play and fantasy as a tool to create speculative design futures in contemporary societies. It presents a case study in a real-world laboratory where speculative design methods were utilised, and related theories form the basis for a theoretical discussion on play and speculative design for urban transformation. The workshop aims to facilitate cross-disciplinary exchanges of ideas by encouraging participants to draw parallels between the theories and methods with practice. Experiementationthrough gigamapping and group discussions are facilitated through guided questions to explore speculative design and scenario building.

Through theories on play and speculative design and by discussing these by using gigamapping (Sevaldson, B. 2022) as a tool for visual thinking and dialogue, the workshop aims to heighten awareness of play and speculative design and how they can contribute to socioecological systemic change and urban futures narratives. The research intended to develop a collection of speculative design tools that challenge ideas, systems, products,  and spaces, along with the theoretical traditions within product design education.

KEYWORDS: play, speculative design, design for dialogue and debate, real-world  laboratories, urban futures, narratives, meta-communication, gigamapping, systemic  co-design