Home for uncertain times, 2035:
message for a future

The Innovation Studio, PSSD, organizes an exhibition every year that shows the works created by students of Product Service System Design (PSSD). They used to organize the exhibition within the walls of the Politecnico di Milano, in 2019 they decided to go out and exhibit in another location.
Seven students of the PSSD course, including me, were selected for the realization of the exhibition and they would be responsible for designing, elaborating and realizing, as well as managing the exhibition using a limited budget made available by the University.
The theme of the workshop was “Home for uncertain times, 2035” so a hostel was chosen as the location of the exhibition, specifically Combo, in Via Ripa di Porta Ticinese, Milan.
Two neighboring rooms were made available for the exhibition, usually rented for events and installations.

After the exhibition, which took place in January 2020, during the lockdown, we presented the exhibition at Fuori Salone Tv, online experience of the Design week, and we were selected to show it in their platform the work.

Concept generation

The theme of the workshop was “Home for uncertain times, 2035”, dedicated to the theme of living in uncertain times threatened by global phenomena such as climate change. Each team was tasked with designing a perfect service object for a chosen city and attempting to solve, in part, the problems predicted for 2035 in that specific city.
In order for the team of curators to get into the combo mood, the manager invited us to stay overnight at the hostel for two consecutive days.
During the night we were able to use the common areas to work and design.
The work was divided over two days.
On the first day we compared all the projects to be exhibited,
We clustered them using keywords about their functionality and the emotions or sensations related to them and analyzed also which kind of interaction they can have with visitors.
we extrapolated four categories of belonging:

A key message emerged: the future is uncertain and threatened by the behaviors humans assume day after day. it is in the uncertainty that projects emerge, which represent the hope for a better tomorrow.
We decided that uncertainty should be the background of the exhibition, translated into the messiness of everyday life represented by everyday objects.
As projects represent hope, we decided to collect all the messages and their purpose in a manifesto that sanctioned a message we wanted to convey.

The concept of the exhibition was clear, now it was the turn of the design, proposals were developed on the third day regarding the graphics and layout of the exhibition, as well as some partnership proposals with external firms that could have supported us financially;
In the afternoon of the third day We presented our proposal to the students, discussing and improving it together.
It was also necessary to negotiate with the Combo manager to add a room to the one that was initially proposed (too small for the amount of projects to be exhibited).

Project development

Once the concept was approved by students and professors, the team split development roles.
I dedicated myself to the design of the space, the choice of materials, the arrangement of projects in space.
The manifesto was placed as the first impactful sight upon entering the exhibition, nurturing hope like the projects.
Each project was displayed in the first room adapting to a diagonal grid.
I consulted all the project groups to give me information on the type of interaction with the public they imagined for their prototype during the exhibition, consequently I designed ad hok layout solutions.
In the second room visitors could sit on some pillows on the floor and fill some designed forms with their message to the future and add it on some ropes hanging from a cobweb all around.

At the end of December a prototyping day was organized in which in the classroom, together with the students, we drew the perimeter of the main room with tape.
we asked all the students to bring a series of objects that would also be used during the January exhibition as messy objects (5 each).
Subsequently, with the prototype of platform + base, tests were made with each project to be exhibited.

The exhibition

In January everything was decided, a precise calculation of the costs and the timing of printing, transport and assembly was made.
Consequently, choices were made so that the calculation would fall within the budget made available.

The opening day, January 22, had arrived, the exhibition lasted five days during which the students, and especially the curators, organized shifts during which they postponed the event and provided information to visitors.

The exhibition was a success, with a large turnout during all the opening days!