Until recently, analysis of the future was left to forecasters and trend experts. Today, however, designers and architects are playing an increasingly important role, creating products and environments that will change the way we live. Design Futures is a thought-provoking exploration of the radical directions that the creative industries are taking. Design expert Bradley Quinn reveals how a new generation of products, materials and surfaces will align design with such areas as artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and nanotechnology, reinventing the spaces in which we live and work, and how we experience the human body. Featuring interviews with renowned designers, architects and trend forecasters - among them Karim Rashid, Toyo Ito and Li Edelkoort - and over 250 illustrations of futuristic products and concepts, this is a unique guide to some of the twenty-first century’s most compelling ideas.

Experiments in innovation, design, and democracy that search not for a killer app but for a collaboratively created sustainable future. Innovation and design need not be about the search for a killer app. Innovation and design can start in people's everyday activities. They can encompass local services, cultural production, arenas for public discourse, or technological platforms. The approach is participatory, collaborative, and engaging, with users and consumers acting as producers and creators. It is concerned less with making new things than with making a socially sustainable future. This book describes experiments in innovation, design, and democracy, undertaken largely by grassroots organizations, non-governmental organizations, and multi-ethnic working-class neighborhoods. These stories challenge the dominant perception of what constitutes successful innovations. They recount efforts at social innovation, opening the production process, challenging the creative class, and expanding the public sphere. The wide range of cases considered include a collective of immigrant women who perform collaborative services, the development of an open-hardware movement, grassroots journalism, and hip-hop performances on city buses. They point to the possibility of democratized innovation that goes beyond solo entrepreneurship and crowdsourcing in the service of corporations to include multiple futures imagined and made locally by often-marginalized publics. Contributors Måns Adler, Erling Björgvinsson, Karin Book, David Cuartielles, Pelle Ehn, Anders Emilson, Per-Anders Hillgren, Mads Hobye, Michael Krona, Per Linde, Kristina Lindström, Sanna Marttila, Elisabet M. Nilsson, Anna Seravalli, Pernilla Severson, Åsa Ståhl, Lucy Suchman, Richard Topgaard, Laura Watts

A diverse group of scholars redefine constructionism--introduced by Seymour Papert in 1980--in light of new technologies and theories. Constructionism, first introduced by Seymour Papert in 1980, is a framework for learning to understand something by making an artifact for and with other people. A core goal of constructionists is to respect learners as creators, to enable them to engage in making meaning for themselves through construction, and to do this by democratizing access to the world's most creative and powerful tools. In this volume, an international and diverse group of scholars examine, reconstruct, and evolve the constructionist paradigm in light of new technologies and theories.

This book discusses imaginary future generations and how current decision-making will influence those future generations. Markets and democracies focus on the present and therefore tend to make us forget that we are living in the present, with ancestors preceding and descendants succeeding us. Markets are excellent devices to equate supply and demand in the short term, but not for allocating resources between current and future generations, since future generations do not exist yet. Democracy is also not “applicable” for future generations, since citizens vote for candidates who will serve members of their, i.e., the current, generation. In order to overcome these shortcomings, the authors discusses imaginary future generations and future ministries in the context of current decision-making in fields such as the environment, urban management, forestry, water management, and finance. The idea of imaginary future generations comes from the Native American Iroquois, who had strong norms that compelled them to incorporate the interests of people seven generations ahead when making decisions.

The last decade has seen the rise of urban design which has taken a central position in the new agendas for urban regeneration and renaissance. Urban design has moved from marginality to mainstream. The principles espoused by urban designers over the past thirty years are now accepted as key to a better urban environment and as we move towards greater sustainability, different ideas are emerging that are challenging some of the accepted urban design norms; urban design is at a watershed. Urban Design Futures presents essays from an international cast of authors to review progress and explore emerging ideas: should urban design reflect the future rather than recreate the past? What are the new driving forces that will shape urban living and hence urban design in the future? This book explores new concepts and points the way towards a series of urban design paradigms for the twenty-first century.

Suburbs deserve a better, more resilient future. June Williamson shows that suburbs aren't destined to remain filled with strip malls and excess parking lots; they can be reinvigorated through inventive design. Today, dead malls, aging office parks, and blighted apartment complexes are being retrofitted into walkable, sustainable communities. Williamson provides a broad vision of suburban reform based on the best schemes submitted in Long Island's highly successful "Build a Better Burb" competition. Many of the design ideas and plans operate at a regional scale, tackling systems such as transit, aquifer protection, and power generation. While some seek to fundamentally transform development patterns, others work with existing infrastructure to create mixed-use, shared networks. Designing Suburban Futures offers concrete but visionary strategies to take the sprawl out of suburbia, creating a vibrant new, suburban form.

Internationally refereed papers present the state of the art in computer-aided architectural design research. These papers reflect the theme of the 12th International Conference of CAADFutures, Integrating Technologies for Computer-Aided Design. Collectively, they provide the technological foundation for new ways of thinking about using computers to design. In addition, they address the education of designers themselves.

The last decade has seen the rise of urban design which has taken a central position in the new agendas for urban regeneration and renaissance. Urban design has moved from marginality to mainstream. The principles espoused by urban designers over the past thirty years are now accepted as key to a better urban environment and as we move towards greater sustainability, different ideas are emerging that are challenging some of the accepted urban design norms; urban design is at a watershed. Urban Design Futures presents essays from an international cast of authors to review progress and explore emerging ideas: should urban design reflect the future rather than recreate the past? What are the new driving forces that will shape urban living and hence urban design in the future? This book explores new concepts and points the way towards a series of urban design paradigms for the twenty-first century.

CAAd Futures is a Bi-annual Conference that aims at promoting the advancement of computer aided architectural design in the service of those concerned with the quality of the built environment. The conferences are organised under the auspices of the CAAD Futures Foundation which has its secretariat at the Eindhoven University of Technology. The Series of conferences started in 1985 in Delft, and has since travelled through Eindhoven, Boston, Zurich, Pittsburgh, Singapore, Munich, and Atlanta. The book contains the proceedings of the 9th CAAD Futures conference which took place at Eindhoven University of Technology, 8-11 of July, 2001. The Articles in this book cover a wide range of subjects and provide an excellent overview of the state-of-the-art in research on computer aided architectural design. The following categories of articles are included: Capturing design; Information modelling; CBR techniques; Virtual reality; CAAD education; (Hyper) Media; Design evaluation; Design systems development; Collaboration; Generation; Design representation; Knowledge management; Form programming; Simulation; Architectural analysis; Urban design. Information on the CAAD Futures Foundation and its conferences can be found at: www.caadfutures.arch.tue.nl. Information about the 2001 Conference and this book is available from: www.caadfutures.arch.tue.nl/2001.

MARTENS Bob and BROWN Andre Co-conference Chairs, CAAD Futures 2005 Computer Aided Architectural Design is a particularly dynamic field that is developing through the actions of architects, software developers, researchers, technologists, users, and society alike. CAAD tools in the architectural office are no longer prominent outsiders, but have become ubiquitous tools for all professionals in the design disciplines. At the same time, techniques and tools from other fields and uses, are entering the field of architectural design. This is exemplified by the tendency to speak of Information and Communication Technology as a field in which CAAD is embedded. Exciting new combinations are possible for those, who are firmly grounded in an understanding of architectural design and who have a clear vision of the potential use of ICT. CAAD Futures 2005 called for innovative and original papers in the field of Computer Aided Architectural Design, that present rigorous, high-quality research and development work. Papers should point towards the future, but be based on a thorough understanding of the past and present.