Review - Design Futures by Bradley Quinn

Olzweg project from R&Sie(n)

Design Futures by textile and design expert, Bradley Quinn was released in April.  The 240 page hard cover books features lush illustrations and interviews with some forward-looking designers and practitioners including:

• Mathias Bengtsson
• Winka Dubbeldam
• Freedom of Creation
• Jane Harris
• Toyo Ito
• Suzanne Lee
• Mathieu Lehanneur
• Daniel Libeskind
• Karim Rashid
• David Shah
• Helen Storey
• Moritz Waldemeyer
• Tokujin Yoshioka, and
• Li Edelkoort

Throughout the book the author is relatively indiscriminate when it comes to design disciplines and keeps a broad approach making many of the lessons and influences very much applicable to industrial designers. When it comes to forecasting future technologies and trends, Design Futures plays it extremely safe; don’t expect too many sci-fi of fantasy ideas.The book is split up into the following chapters:

• Urban Utopias
• Interactive Interiors
• Mega Materials
• Dynamic Design
• Hyper-surfaces, and
• Future Frontiers

Bradley Quinn is a London-based writer and journalist who regularly contributes to such magazines and newspapers as Wallpaper*, Elle Decoration, Blueprint and the Evening Standard, as well as to trend-forecasting guides. His books include Ultra Materials: How Materials Innovation is Changing the World (2007) and Textile Designers at the Cutting Edge (2009)




Urban Utopias
Urban Utopias takes a look at the future of buildings and architecture. Quinn talks about how buildings and their external environments will be tightly fused together in the future. The chapter examines how buildings can be used to exploit the natural environment and are reactive, almost living creatures, that respond to the seasons and weather patterns to make our heating, cooling and health better controlled. Some interesting concepts like ‘hygroscopes’ (i.e. floating metropolises) are explored (somewhat related to the man-made islands of Dubai but more mechanical). Also, massive biospheres that can eradicate dust, radiation and chemicals harmful to humans are explored.


Interactive Interiors
Quinn believes interior landscapes will follow a similar fate as building exteriors by being more intelligent and responsive. Rooms will know where you are located to save energy, rooms will know how you’re feeling, and rooms will give you directions and help when necessary. Quinn makes some mega trend observations here, by not just mentioning what will influence the future, but more importantly why this will happen.  Here Quinn also discusses how robots will increasingly become part of our living and work spaces.

Interior by Karim Rashid

Mega Materials
This chapter highlights how recent scientific discoveries in material science are used to forecast new use cases for materials and their potential applications. Utilizing the keywords, stronger, brighter, lighter, smarter, softer and greener as his cues, Quinn shows how our everyday objects may be transformed by innovations in materials.  Use cases include aiding people with disabilities, making sports equipment more competitive and making buildings and structures stronger and lighter. Much of this section is based on current research in nanotechnology, carbon extraction and exploitation, and strong molecular structures. Quinn sees a future where these expensive and niche materials now will be disseminated to the masses and designers will discover exciting new contexts and scenarios where these materials can be utilised.

GKD Media Mesh

Dynamic Design
Dynamic design focuses on user ergonomics and user interfaces. Objects that can be empathetic to our needs and how new relationships will be forged between humans and objects where we are symbiotic to one another rather than being a relationship based on need and exploitation. Dynamic Design is probably the most relevant to the working industrial designer as it focuses on interfaces of consumer devices and looks at the ergonomics of furniture and interiors.

LED Jackets by Moritz Waldermeyer

Hyper-surfaces
The chapter on hyper-surfaces is definitely Design Futures most abstract and definiately weakest part of the book. It is difficult to piece together what on earth is going on in augmented reality and hyper-surfaces and how it relates and differs from the previous chapters. The chapter attempts to talk about surfaces, like screens and touch interfaces but due to the varied nature of these technologies, it seems as though Quinn assimilated these topics into a slightly ambiguous chapter. Potentially the author has diluted the ubiquity of screens and interfaces that will be a part of our future.

Augmented Reality

Future Frontiers
Future Frontiers acts almost as a conclusion to all the previous chapters linking them all together by mentioning the key mega trends that will affect the future design industries. Quinn makes some good insights here linking the present with the future.  The megatrends section contains many topics that will familiar to 33rd Square readers, including AI and the technological singularity.  For those not familiar with these topics, Design Futures might be a good introduction.

Kunstaus Graz in Austria

“The future of design rests on the objects we live with now, and many of the products, structures and environments surrounding us today are shaping things to come.”

As with most design books, the photographs are the star of the show. The photographs work very well alongside the main paragraphs and really help illustrate the designs and technologies around today that are in their infancy that mimic these future concepts. These photos make the concepts thrown around seem more believable, and for designers it makes the concepts seem more achievable to produce and pursue. It really is a tremendous achievement to document and collate all these photos, they are such rarities. Some of the designs appear to be not from this world at all and I was truly captivated and inspired by them.


The interviews in Design Futures are the strength of the book as they tend to be more pertinent and direct than the chapter outlines which are at times more free-flowing in their structure.  The text often lacks depth about hypothesising which specific technologies/manufacturing methodologies will power these ideas. The book never aims to achieve this endeavour though so Design Futures is best suited to a creative-driven mind rather than a mathematical/engineering mind. Despite not being specific, a skilled practitioner could be really empowered with the knowledge outlined in Design Futures. For students, Design Futures becomes a really exciting foundation of where to study and where to invest ones time as the book picks up cleverly these mega-trends, those subtleties that we experience blindly in our current world.

It would also be nice if Design Futures was a bit more forward-looking. For example, if our homes are going to see the efficiencies of business offices, why not go into why this will occur. Asking why these events will occur and getting into the more psychological and social reasons behind these changes could suddenly open up a whole new dimension and get to the real drivers of these design challenges. The book never bypasses some of these social/environmental factors like the global financial crisis and global warming, but even more of this content could have really excelled the title.

Many of the topics are not outlandish and many creative professionals today would probably be keenly aware of many of the topics brought up in Design Futures. But the great thing about the book is that it aggregates all these snippets of ideas and broadcasts them to designers who might be stuck in their own industry or workplace bubble.  Design Futures is an exhilarating ride into the potential future and beyond and is a subject matter than many authors would be too scared to touch.

Get Design Futures on Amazon.