Course syllabus

The Voyager Station Orbital Assembly Corporation (OAC) 2021

On 01 March 2021, The New York Post tweeted the picture of an elaborate looking space station orbiting earth with the headline ‘First ever space hotel to be operational by 2027 trib.al/iswu2uU’. The following day, Twitter user @benyahr responds with the tweet ‘We literally just want Healthcare’.

‘...a text in its being a text is a being in the world’ Edward W. Said (1975)

Introduction

From individuals to states organisations ‘what if’ questions are widely used on a day-to-day basis to think into the future or to think otherwise. In many circumstances they are used across contexts, situations and disciplines as ‘tool/s’ for collective and material imagining. Within the field of critical and speculative design the ‘what if’ question, sometimes unfairly, shares a close alliance with the techno-utopianism now commonly associated with Silicon Valley and its insatiable investments into imagining and developing new technologies, usually within its problem-solving saviour matrix to colonise space, fix the environmental crisis and even eradicate global poverty. As such, ‘what if’ questions in design and specifically ‘speculative’ design and architecture rarely focus on technologies of the everyday, what some might describe as banal technologies of governance that are in constant (but out of view) development such as state policies. 

Maybe one reason being that it is difficult to render policies into captivating imagery that can be smoothly mediated into view for public consumption. Another reason being, that policies as statements of intent already have a close affinity with ‘what if’ questions as they can also be seen as tools on the same spectrum that help to point in some way to organizing and disciplining futures. This closeness could be one excuse why state and governmental policies of all types are rarely discussed and welcomed into creative arts education. Given that national policies (also) provide shape and material to our designed and living environments at all scales, design education in particular has a negligent history of viewing ‘policies’ as guidelines, conditions and even creative frameworks to both critique or to work with. Generally deemed as obstacles to creative thinking, the mindset being that students should somehow be free to express themselves within the safe space of education - and not to be burdened by the reality of everyday policies as graduates will eventually work within the so called ‘real world’ that is so beloved by design educators. When in exceptional circumstances policies are brought into the space of design education they are rarely seen as living, organising things in the world to negotiate, to trouble and to stay with.  

What if, the ‘what if question’ could also be used as a tool for opening up the space for alternative possibilities and imaginaries with and within national policies? Given that policies are broadly speaking state-crafted by those within the proximity and access of power and to do so, the opportunity presented is not only to bring policies within the domain of design education and education more broadly, but to also imagine the public spaces and frameworks that would allow broader constituencies of individuals and groups to understand, contest and reimagine policies that impact on their designed and lived environments.

As an example, and within the context of Sweden, one such policy in need of closer (public inquiry) scrutiny is the government bill the ‘Policy for Designed Living Environment’ (Bill 2017/18:110). Although not necessarily within the domain of education, this policy has received much attention within certain quarters of Sweden's cultural sector. The attention generally siding with an enthusiasm that recognises that with any new policy follows a commitment for much required funding within the sector. To some degree this enthusiasm consumes and ignores any space and appetite for analysis and genuine critique of the how and what the policy is saying and who it is really speaking to. As an example, one of the key repeats of the bill states that ‘architecture and design will help to create a sustainable, equitable and less segregated society with carefully designed living environments in which everyone is well placed to influence the development of their shared environment.’ 

What if we take this statement and therefore policy at face value rather than reading it as an ambition that risks being grinded down and diluted by the system it is set out to transform. While indeed pointing at the value our designed living environment has and could have, it has to be said that the bulk of the policy also reads as a “realpolitik” - a peace treaty, setting up the rules of the game, postulating and consolidating the territories of existing governmental bodies. But what if we read the above quote not as ambition but as an obligation and impetus for real change. If so, is it ambitious enough? “Sustainable” - yes! “Equitable” - yes! But is “less segregated” acceptable? Why not desegregated? and what would a situation “in which everyone is well placed to influence the development of their shared environment” really look like?

This course will not only think through policies but closely think with them in relation to the public institution of the ‘design museum’ to both critique and reimagine what design is and could be - we could define this exercise as a form of ongoing public inquiry, considered as a space to understand, to challenge, to re-think how policies are not only implemented but publicly imagined otherwise.

--