Frame Magazine Issue 158 is available now on loremnotipsum.com. The Autumn issue is all about designing in the age of uncertainty. How can creatives – and their projects – be receptive and resilient to (continual) change?
In her editorial for the new Autumn issue of FRAME, editor in chief Floor Kuitert argues that for creatives working in today’s complex world, the ability to design for an unpredictable future – to be receptive and responsive to change – is perhaps the most important skill of all.
As I write this editorial in mid-July, the summer holidays have just begun for schoolchildren in the Netherlands. When I was growing up, that meant most of my classmates’ families were packing up their cars and/or suitcases to head south. But with temperatures on the rise across Europe – and the heatwaves and water shortages to match – that’s no longer a given. Or is it? Judging by the Black Saturday headlines, the holiday traffic is still largely pointed in that same southward direction. Old habits die hard, especially when intertwined with people’s life experiences and memories, and school holiday schedules are restrictive in terms of timing.
But that doesn’t change the fact that there is a real and urgent need for adaptation, both when it comes to the (travel) behaviour and expectations of tourists, and to the operation – and architecture – of the hospitality and tourism sector as a whole. On a socioenvironmental level it’s important to reduce pressure on the land and local communities, while on a business level operators need to learn how to manage their climate-related vulnerabilities. In other words: the things that can’t be predicted. As our editor at large Tracey Ingram writes in her intro to this issue’s The Conversation: ‘In the climate-crisis era, the only thing we can be certain of is uncertainty,’ meaning that tourism and hospitality businesses have to assess their resilience to climate change and severe weather and adopt a more flexible mindset when it comes to what they do.
This idea of designing for uncertainty, of being receptive to change, isn’t limited to these sectors alone. On the contrary, it became the common thread of this agility-themed issue, which goes beyond the climate crisis to address other emergencies and circumstances that are generating a need for continuous change and a desire to build resilience into our environments.
For the designers featured on the pages of FRAME 158, uncertainty comes in many forms. In our Ones to Watch section, for example, Ivan Protasov explains how flexibility is crucial when dealing with the cultural and physical damage in his war-torn homeland, Ukraine. Not least because no one can be sure that a project will even be finished. You can also read about the ways in which Johanna Seelemann is conceptualizing adaptive alternatives to the exploitative systems of production and consumption that render products technically and aesthetically obsolete at an ever-increasing rate. And further on, our Insights section takes a deep dive into how learning environments can prepare for the unpredictable shifts in schooling. It also asks whether the surplus of commercial workspace could meet the urgent need for affordable housing, as rising resource costs make new building plans increasingly tenuous.
While the term ‘tenuous’ doesn’t sound positive, perhaps it could be in the context of futureproofing space. Finnish architect Kivi Sotamaa, for example, says he’s long been aware that it’s not wise to design for a specific typology. Instead, he believes the best strategy is to design what he calls ‘affordances, a very loose fit to function’. ‘You build rich atmospheric spaces that are full of opportunities, using an architectural language that avoids prescriptive instructions and typological cues,’ he says. ‘Function is as much a possibility of form as form is ever a result of function.’
For creatives working in today’s complex world, being able to design for a future they can’t predict – being receptive of and reactive to change – might be the most important skill of all.
Frame is the world’s leading interior design publication. Since its launch in 1997, the magazine has remained faithful to its mission: putting interior architecture on the map as a creative profession that’s equally important as design and architecture. In six issues per year, Frame publishes the world’s most inspiring interiors, spiced up with design, art and creative endeavours like window displays and stage sets. Sold in 77 countries, Frame is printed in English.
