Today for Tomorrow Federica Sala

TODAY FOR TOMORROW

22 Frederica Sala, curator and designer TUNNEL

A human being always projects himself into the future, be it far or near. A temporal dimension into which he places his hopes and anguish in equal measure. Only children in their early years live in the ongoing present, their horizons never extending into tomorrow.

If this is our starting-point assumption, then humankind has been trying, since time immemorial, on the one hand to see beyond our mortality, and on the other to “read”, or better interpret, the future. Glory, descent, succession are concepts conceived by humankind to hold on to the future, and religion, philosophy and astrology are just some of the disciplines with which we have tried to anticipate and accept it.

Thus, when it came to deciding our future humankind was left to the mercy of higher forces that acted on our behalf, which is why our focus always lay on the present moment, until at the onset of humanism and the Renaissance the concept of fate gave way to the concept of homo faber fortunae suae (every The arrival of the concept of individual talent, on the other hand, was the seed that begot what was to become the philosophy of capitalism as captured in the concept of the self-made man. This being said, the remarkable scientific progress of the last century led to the development of a certain kind of scientific aristocracy that is associated with the very concept of knowledge.

Since the end of World War II we have witnessed the overpowering adoration of humankind’s capacity to build the present, with blind faith in our individual capabilities. When Clash frontman Joe Strummer famously wrote: “The future is unwritten,” he wanted to stress, in the midst of the mass antiThatcher protests that swarmed over Great Britain in the 1980s, that anyone can be an agent of change. “The future is unwritten” meant no less than “anything is possible” – if only because of man’s passionate effort, enthusiasm and courage. This sentence captured a sense of absolute faith in humanity,

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both in an individual and society, faith in one’s ability to ask for what they are owed and to rebel.

But today, more than ever, phrases like this sound out of tune and out of time. Today, the future is written and what we read there is a bleak promise for future generations. After decades of overwhelming human hubris against nature, scientific research and its authoritative and charismatic spokespersons predict a catastrophic and apocalyptic future. If until now man has been trying to build a better future, from now on one has to build the present in order to change the future that has already been written.

The action/time axis is therefore two-fold, weaving the thread of our day-to-day behaviour with the thread that will be the tomorrow of future generations. From this perspective, our present must be defined by values such as responsibility, awareness and respect. Contemporary designers are asked to abandon the artistic, the intuitive and the passionate to make way for a radical change in consumerism and behaviour in general.

When the MAO, Museum of Architecture and Design, launched the “Design for the Future” exhibition nobody could foresee the way things were soon to unfold, the apocalyptic scenario that we are now living globally. It’s interesting to see how perfectly the previously selected projects respond to the many questions pressing on us all in this period of global lockdown and quarantine.

The opportunity to go back to local production and materials (such as the scrap wood used by Studio Moste or the concrete in Tina Rugelj’s lamps from the Concrete Garden collection, or the chairs by Grupo H).

The need for design to simplify the production process, like in Matej Štefanac’s lights, Dan Adlešič’s radiator, Nikolaj Salaj’s Folds or Monochrome studio’s furniture: all these projects use minimal materials, as a rule those that are easy to handle and form, such as aluminium.

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The importance of being surrounded with multifunctional objects. In a world that offers increasingly smaller living spaces we need objects that can be transformed, such as the Pitstop stool by ADDiD Plus, and even more so the Non-Stop Interior Landscape by Arne Vehovar and Urša Vrhunc – a modular architectural system of wooden boxes that can transfigure spaces and serve as furniture.

A return to the age-old mentality that allowed objects and materials several life cycles before discarding them. A good example is Eva Garibaldi’s Paper+Bioplastic project, which offers DIY recipes for new materials, Nina Mršnik and Nuša Jelenec’s Toasted Furniture, or the 3D-printed recycled silver jewellery collection by Tina Košak Koren.

The importance of taking care of others before we take care of ourselves. Taking care means listening and passing on stories, which is what Oloop’s Textile Stories of Women is all about, or making a better life for vulnerable groups of people, such as Kofein’s app for the elderly and people with Alzheimer’s, which facilitates their communication with loved ones. A far-sighted project indeed, keeping in mind the many difficult situations in which the most vulnerable groups find themselves living today.

Knowing how to impart a human value to artificial intelligence, like in the Serendipity Searcher project designed by the “Library” team for BIO26. The team conceived it as a visual atlas that gives meaning to chance encounters created through interactions between a physical gesture and a machine.

The return to nature, a closer connection with its cycles and fruits. Fabijan’s henhouse takes us there, as does the invasive plant furniture collection by the Trajna collective.

The newly found joy of making things by hand, which takes back the spotlight from the production aspect and puts it on the creative process, like Darja Malešič’s Wicker Vision and Tanja Pak’s glass cups.

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The designers of the new age, the pioneers of the new era, must therefore take on the roles of scientists, artisans, farmers and visionaries in order to shape their processes rather than their products, designing

Here are the rules:

1 Back to the local. 2 Think simple. 3 Buy multifunctional. 4 DIY attitude: recycle. 5 Take care. 6 Human A. I. 7 A new rural era. 8 Go craft.

the future by changing the instruments of the present. We must now lead together an unheard collective design action.

Who better to design changes than them?

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