Supervised by ARUP's foresight team in London, our team studied the site of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, London, and identified 5 trends that are likely to affect the development of the city within the next 10 years.
THE TRENDS:
Inequality:
StratSmart’s status system has created a class divide in Stratford. The citizens of the city have chips embedded in their index fingers, that glow a certain colour indicative of their status in Stratford.
Quantified Self:
StratSmart’s point-class system quantifies each person based on 5 categories: Expenditure, Income, Property Ownership, Pavegen, and Urban Farming.
Identity:
Identity is key for StratSmart. The systems are implemented to control and maintain the identity of Stratford.
Green Infrastructure:
In order to be the cleanest, greenest hub of London, Stratford has strict green infrastructure regulations and building standards.
Privately Owned Public Space:
StratSmart owned public spaces are trending in Stratford. Usage depends on the status of the person, thus maintaining an image of the public spaces.
THE FUTURE SCENARIO:
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogUWX6jE77w
We aimed to explore a scenario where the commodification of the life in Stratford affects the health and wellbeing of its citizens. We imagined a 2025 when everything and everyone in the metaphorical bubble of Stratford is highly controlled by StratSmart, in order to maintain the city’s identity as the smartest hub in the UK. The perfect bubble is then shaken by a financial crash, which exposes the deeply rooted class system within this technocratic capitalist city. The stratification extends to the private ownership of public spaces which restricts their usage by the people based on status.
In order to protest against the commodification of a healthy lifestyle which should be freely available to everyone, the citizens collectively protest by walking and marching on the only available free spaces- the pedestrian walkways that are paved with energy harvesting tiles.
The protest is two-fold:
- Walking against privately owned public spaces.
- Generating points by walking on the tiles to turn the system against itself.
THE FUTURE ARTEFACT:
A cover for the chip-embedded index finger, made out of FabriCan, a sprayable, non-woven fabric that is patented and being developed by FabriCan at the London Bioscience Innovation Centre. The cover is sprayed on, then can be removed and reused.
*For presentation purposes, the prototype has been made out of latex.
Their aim is create a mockery of the capitalist system, by using the most basic and effective medium of a healthy lifestyle: walking.
Collaborators: Sachiko Osawa, Prachi Joshi, Vishanka Gandhi, Yiman Huang.
Background/setting illustration: Yasmeen Ayyashi
Character Illustration: Yiman Huang