Design Shows Take On the Future. And It’s Not Pretty.

But her current collaborators, including Michelle Millar Fisher and Maite Borjabad Lopez-Pastor, pushed the show in a different direction. “It’s issue driven, not design driven,” explains Ms. Hiesinger. “It’s what this generation is interested in.”

The installation showcases 11 different categories, a dizzying variety of disciplines and practices. Visitors at the entrance are greeted with a towering mass of inflated white plastic spheres filled with water and air, created by a group of Finnish architects led by Eero Lundén for the 2018 Venice Architectural Biennial. They are constantly moving, burping like giant bubbles, reacting to subtle shifts in the environment. The designers posit that in the future, buildings will not be static but will be able to change and adapt to their surroundings — becoming symbiotic, not anthropocentric. You’ll need to read the wall text to get the point.

Similarly, a section devoted to food — packed with ideas from Orkan Telhan, an associate professor of emerging design practices at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design — offers projects that demand more information. Meat grown from human cells, with the help of engineered microbes taken from expired blood cells, is elegantly arrayed on a plate, ready for a photo shoot. Two fish are encased in plastic frames; one has been freshly caught; the other, larger and healthier looking, has been genetically modified, underscoring Mr. Telhan’s argument that G.M.O. food has been unfairly stigmatized. He writes in the show’s catalog that fear-mongering media campaigns, supported by various interest groups, have swayed the argument. Unfortunately the explanatory captions are at some remove on a wall filled with dense type.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/arts/design/philadelphia-design.html?emc=rss&partner=rss