Earlier this year, Copenhagen-based design lab SPACE10 launched its first AI & Design Competition, called Regenerative Futures.
— Over the past year, generative AI tools have created the opportunity for millions of people to visualise worlds beyond those we ever thought possible, says Ryan Sherman, Creative & Strategy. Part competition, part open-source research, we encouraged play and imagination to create visual concepts of future homes, communities, and cities to help address the challenges facing everyday life. As global populations are changing as a result of climate impacts, migration, and resource scarcity, we must not only think differently about our future homes, not only in terms of design and function but how they can replenish and restore the world around us. Innovation cannot exist in the absence of difference, so we wanted to have an open call for thinkers, dreamers, and troublemakers from diverse backgrounds to share their visions of the future through this AI design competition. With over 250 entries across four continents, a panel of 10 globally renowned architects, designers, AI artists, journalists, and creatives selected four winners. The results truly show the potential of emerging AI tools to allow for new, diverse, and hopeful visions of the future, in a time that requires us to imagine new ways of living.
Yes, what can you say about the winners?
— The overall winning project was by Kedar Deshpande whose project Designing for the Future in Harsh Environments really exemplifies the potential of human-AI collaboration to envision a resilient, imaginative and accessible way of living that is regenerative by design.
— We received such different and creative visions for a better future. Plant Pods, for instance, by Branden Collins, showed a proposal for a regenerative, inflatable, and wearable home. The exterior of the pod is covered in an algae film that captures solar energy, generating all of the electricity needed to power the home. It looks at how we could embrace a more nomadic lifestyle, moving away from taking and rather living in harmony with nature. WombHome was by a design and architect duo, Takbir and Abeer Fatima, from India. Instead of artificial construction systems that cannot be recycled, their project proposes a gentle carving of space within natural structures. This imagined cave provides shelter and safety, without consuming excess energy or creating harmful emissions and construction waste. And we had City After the Flood by Gustavo Jimenez, an architect from Spain. These post-flood cities would be built using materials extracted from buildings and homes wrecked by flooding. This was the only urban project to show a creative material system that merges biomaterial usage with form and assembly that is outside the box.
These winners are featured in SPACE10’s new exhibition in its Copenhagen Gallery, called Design in the Age of AI and about approaching AI tools as collaborative partners, which opens during this week’s 3daysofdesign in Copenhagen.
— It takes visitors on a journey through the future of furniture, product and architectural design — sharing how AI can support us in rethinking design archetypes and the materials we use, and reimagining how we could live in the future, Sherman explains. Challenging furniture archetypes, design agency Panter&Tourron proposes a new couch concept that is light, flexible, and entirely reconsidered. Named Couch in an Envelope, it’s a speculative design exploration that uses AI to reimagine the design of the couch as something that is light, easy to transport, adaptable, and can stand the test of time — weighing only 10 kilos. Visitors can view a prototype of the couch at the exhibition. oio studio explores the possibility for AI to assist in designing products made with local materials in a sustainable and scalable way. Focusing on abundant waste materials around the world, their project for the exhibition, Products of Place, uses AI to create a new design process where hyper-local household items emerge from a set of variables including location, function, and material. Finally, New York-based video journalist Joss Fong and designer Áron Filkey showcase a speculative line of IKEA products designed through the use of AI, drawing on the style of past IKEA furniture icons. Tomorrow, June 8, together with Material Matters and Office Kim Lenschow, we present Materials of Tomorrow. It’s an inspirational event aimed at radically rethinking material systems to design more sustainable and healthy homes. Through collective conversation, the day will address how material innovation can create new and better systems for design and architecture.
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