Workhome Studies 5
RED Futures

Design distinctiveness comes from a diversity of methodologies and tools that push speculative and investigative processes to craft new outcomes. Rusha Cheng’s project ‘The RE:plica’ explores the future of the home and mobility as a highly adaptive modular dwelling system with an application that integrates home data collecting, archiving, storing, managing, deploying and systems control.

Formulated through the eyes of Nina, a persona that has been created to test future scenarios, Cheng imagines specific times, locations and behaviours which are deployed into various contexts. Nina’s timeline takes us on a journey to show us how dweller-led futures will give freedom to those living in a constantly shifting environment. Dwellers will be able to decide on the proportion and function of their spaces as well as options for how to engage with spaces. At the heart of Cheng’s proposal is the question of how can we make homes flexible, adaptable and mobile to accommodate dynamic futures.

Daria Kaftanova’s proposal explores workspaces as a set of exploded surfaces constructed through collage techniques. The need to personalise individual environments becomes a design solution for both personal and collective spaces. Workshop environments behave like giant toolkits, accommodating a variety of creative activities at once whilst providing storage to house equipment and objects.

Conceived as a set of ‘Devices’, Kaftanova produces an environment that is carefully aligned to user behaviours. These can be ordered as bespoke elements, with possibilities of creating workspaces constructed to suit user needs, ranging from Chef stations, pop-up design offices and artists’ studios to exploding writing desks as Superspace. Mobility is a key feature of these kits, allowing each environment to be stored away when not in use and to be reconfigured and layered as a multi-space device, for zoning and activating space in different contexts and scenarios.

In contrast Parsa Sarraf explores the interiority of the brain as a new space to inhabit. In this para-real space, possibilities are fluid with surfaces and spaces being driven by the body. Highly engaging as a model, spatial atmospheres are choreographed by the experiences of the individual. This offering is perhaps the most claustrophobic of the workspace proposals as we become trapped in our body and immersed in our brain. Sarraf invites us to imagine what would happen once mental health declines or deteriorates as the space becomes infected with glitches and interior chaos ensues.