cyrto_dactylus

  The Project Toolkit The purpose of the projects To encourage the participants to create something as an output from the seminar. There is going to be a lot of information coming their way, and the projects can be a way of consolidating it into something substantial. The projects are also a great opportunity to actually do interdisciplinary work, to encourage crosstalk and see if people will come together in teams to create something together, which is probably the only way we have to get to unknown unknowns.   The exercise Build a community space. The only two criteria that it must meet are that 1. It must be scientifically possible, and 2. There must be a path to go from where we are today to where we are in the scenario. You can write about it or sketch out the basic details of it. Or you could sing a song about it. Any way you can imagine of communicating about this space will work. One way is to start with 5km 2 and 50 households, say a population of about 2...

The design of everyday objects and the spaces that we inhabit leave much to be desired. The reason behind the drastic decline in House Sparrow population, for instance, can be seen as a design failure. House Sparrows nest in and around human dwellings: above the girder, along a wooden beam, under an overhanging eave or in a gap in the stone wall. Our houses once had space from them, until they came to be designed with just the human occupants in mind. Our design, be it for houses, communities, or cities, is limited by our awareness, our aesthetics and at a deeper level, by our ethics. Our designs are a reflection of what we find beautiful, what we are aware of, and what we think is right.   We are our aesthetics We strive to change our world in ways that align with our aesthetics. Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film, Inception, that blew our minds with its ingenious plot also left many of us feeling let down when it came to background design, especially in the finale. If you could ...