Case: A travel in time
With a newly developed time machine you are travelling to the year 2040 and this happens:
‘You wake up in 2040. After a two week holiday on the moon, you have to go to school again today. The house robot serves your breakfast and then you step on your magnetic bike to go to school. Maybe it’s the last day you can use your bike, since the world is likely to have a year without electricity, because of the depleted fossil fuels.
The sun is shining, but that of course you knew already. The earth’s increasing temperature has caused a year round sunshine in nearly every country.
You received your corrected homework in you inbox, you already packed your laser guns and light sabers, you’ll use during the sports hours and your self-baking-roll is in your bag. You are ready for school now. Let’s hope you can still survive in school tomorrow without airco.’
Or would it be like this?
‘You wake up in 2040. You eat a couple of fresh rolls from the next-door bakery and then you go to school, downstairs in de building, where you live on the 16th floor. You live in Simcity, what used to be a number of cities, but has eventually become one. Nowadays, the living areas are a lot smaller than they used to be, because most people live in sky scrapers. On every third floor of these buildings there is common floor with some shops, a nursery, an activity centre, a pub and a greenery area, where people can grow their own flowers and herbs. The majority of fruits and vegetables is cultivated between the sky scrapers. Furthermore there is a lot of nature.
Most of the public transport is located underground. Many people work in small farms and there is a lot of time for leisure, which can be spent in one of the numerous leisure centres and nature areas between the scrapers.
This summer you made a fantastic trip: you went to the North pole in a Zeppelin. It was the first time you got to see snow.’
In 2040 your country will be whatever you can imagine. Today we heard that an international fund will reward 40 million dollars for the development of a sustainable design.
Maybe you have a brilliant idea and can contribute to a future sustainable society or change the sustainable footprint to some extent.
Inspired by these texts you will try to imagine your own future and a design that can make this future more sustainable..