Brighter horizons: Superflux’s visions, Takram’s roadmap, and the case for optimism

Spring is a time of fresh possibility – particularly this year – as the sense of the world opening up has become much more than a metaphor. It’s starting to feel as though we can look to the future again with something close to confidence. There’s hope in the air.

Across Zetteler’s world, the optimism is tangible. Superflux’s double whammy of continental Biennale installations find a promise of resurgence for the planet after climate crisis. The team at Takram have crafted a step-by-step guide to changing the world. And the Fandangoe Kid is launching a nationwide effort to help the country come to terms with its grief (she needs your support with that actually – more below).

With the arrival of its first tenants, Design District is officially on the way to fulfilling its aim of becoming London’s creative heart. And trailblazer Morag Ofili is injecting a much needed sense of positivity and possibility into the diversity and inclusion space with her new consultancy Kiltered.

Good things are happening.

Superflux unveils landmark installations for Venice and Vienna

What will the world look like after the Anthropocene era comes to an end? This May, speculative design studio Superflux offers two evocative and immersive visions of our planet’s possible future, with major installations at the biennales in both Venice and Vienna. As founders Anab Jain and Jon Ardem deepen their focus on alternative futures in a climate-altered world, each work examines the directions in which our planetary cultures and ecosystems are moving, imagining a world adapted to climate collapse and considering the possibilities of hope and resurgence.

In Venice, from 22 May to 21 November, Refuge for Resurgence will bring together multiple forms of life on earth – humans and animals together – around a dinner table to mark their ecological interdependence. Meanwhile in Vienna, Invocation for Hope runs from 28 May to 3 October and will lead visitors through a blackened forest of wildfire-damaged trees to a central pool, where they will be encouraged to reflect on their place in a more-than-human world.

Launching Kiltered: The diversity consultancy doing things differently

A lot of companies are scared of tackling issues of diversity and inclusion in case they somehow get it ‘wrong’. Others view it as a chore – a box to be ticked with a training course and never thought of again. Morag Ofili sees things differently. Disillusioned with off-putting language and negative perceptions, the corporate lawyer set up Kiltered to show SMEs that embracing diversity can lead to exciting and positive changes in company culture.

Kiltered’s consultancy service is set up to make diversity training an empowering process rather than an intimidating one, offering leadership teams clear steps to transforming workplace culture. The goal: creating genuinely inclusive spaces and reaping real-world business benefits as a result.

Flow X: Pearson Lloyd brings the stairlift into the 21st century

When you’re looking for groundbreaking design innovation, stairlifts probably aren’t the product category at the top of your list. With the launch of Flow X by Pearson Lloyd, however, that may well be about to change…

Developed with mobility specialist Access BDD, Flow X sets out to overturn the assumption that the design audience is primarily young and able-bodied, and to demonstrate that conventionally ‘unglamorous’ function-first products can be as aesthetically appealing and technologically innovative. As well as being a brilliant example of user-centred design in action, Flow X serves as a call to the design community at large to shift the focus from high-profile, marketing-led designs towards products that have real-world positive impact. 

Alex Booker illustrates the Long Term Design Manifesto

Known for his beautiful and intricate woodcut prints, artist Alex Booker is behind a series of wonderful illustrations for the latest issue of Viewpoint Colour – FranklinTill’s must-read magazine exploring the role of colour in design and society.

Themed ‘The Spirit of Nature’, this edition features the Long Term Design Manifesto, created in collaboration with the Long Term Project. The manifesto is built on five pathways that call on designers to consider the impact of their design decisions and actively assess their relationship to nature and the biosphere, considering ideas such as deep time, awareness of mortality, and emotional connections across generations. Booker’s accompanying artworks beautifully respond to such ideas, combining conscious pattern making with spontaneous personal associations – filtered through the behaviour of wood itself as an artistic medium.

The Fandangoe Kid crowdfunds UK summer tour for mental health

This summer, artist Annie Nicholson – aka The Fandangoe Kid – will be setting off around the UK in an ice cream van, dishing out mint choc chip and exploring the universality of grief. But she needs the public’s help to get the van going.

Marking 10 years since Annie lost most of her close family in a tragic accident, Fandangoe Whip is a mobile installation that uses the comforting and familiar icon of the ice-cream van as a conduit to encourage open conversations about mental health, the experience of loss, and the way we process grief. Supported by specialists and partner organisations across the UK the project aims to eliminate the remaining stigmas and taboo surrounding mental health at a time when a great many of us are grieving for losses of all kinds – offering the UK a kind of free national therapy programme, with added ice cream.

Spring awakening: Design District to welcome first tenants

It’s been a long time coming, but having overcome the obstacles imposed by Covid and a wave of lockdowns, Design District on Greenwich Peninsula is now just steps from completion, and the first creatives are on the verge of moving in. It’s early days, but London’s new hub for art, design, tech, craft, fashion, architecture, music, gaming, food– every creative discipline – is starting to feel real.

Among the first settlers is Ravensbourne University, which will soon open its Institute for Creativity and Technology in the heart of the district, and Bureau, the new members’ club for the creative industries, which is now open for membership applications. Other arrivals – from plucky start-ups to household names – will be announced soon.

Nine ways to save the world: Takram reveals new research on the route to a sustainable future

After a year-long research project with Hitachi, the global innovation studio and transitional thinking champions at Takram have just unveiled their roadmap to a viable future.

Created in collaboration with a dozen of the world’s leading minds and institutions in the field of sustainability, and brought to life by a nifty new website, the Transitions to Sustainable Futures report is not just a call for transforming society – it’s a guide and a toolkit to do exactly that.

Rather than looking for quick fixes or technological solutions, Takram outlines nine clear-cut, concrete and consensus-driven transitions that need to be made if the world is to escape catastrophe. From shifting economies from linear to circular, political power from centralised to distributed, and business goals from profit to purpose, Takram’s insights offer new ways of understanding the big issues of today – from the climate crisis to democracy, technology and design.

Void Matters furniture collection launches on Note Editions

Last year, Note Design Studio introduced an extraordinary new furniture concept for Sancal, playing with the relationship between positive and negative space. Titled Void Matters, the highly sculptural seating and table collection included pieces so unorthodox in structure they required new production methods to be developed especially. As team Note put it: “The idea was to put emphasis on nothing.”

twentytwentyone re-opens its doors

With the reopening of shops, London’s beloved design store twentytwentyone can at last celebrate its 25th anniversary year in style. The brand has thus far marked the milestone by launching a series of limited editions of some of the iconic designs that have shaped its story – now for the first time you can see these pieces in the flesh at twentytwentyone’s outlets in Islington and Clerkenwell.

They include the gloriously galvanised ‘hot-dip’ edition of Jasper Morrison’s Thinking Man’s Chair; an exclusive version of Robin Day’s iconic 1952 Reclining Chair, as well as a never-before-available transparent coffee table; and a duo of reinvented Artek classics – Stool 60 and Tea Trolley 901. Watch this space for news of more launches from the likes of Annie Albers but in the meantime, do pop over to twentytwentyone, check out the limited editions, and wish the team a happy birthday.

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