Museum of the Future

Experiential Producer
Tellart

#Installation
#Architecture
#Interactive
#Software-Development
#Data-Visualization
#Application
#Content-Creation

Climate Change Reimagined

The Museum of the Future: Climate Change Reimagined marked the fourth year Tellart, in partnership with the Dubai Future Foundation, have opened the exhibition at the annual World Government Summit in Dubai. The latest edition addressed the growing concerns and inevitability of climate change. It presented a future where we have not only survived the challenges of climate change in the mid-21st century, but have thrived. The exhibit underlined the inevitability of major environmental change and the importance of adapting proactively. Climate Change Reimagined proposed three new ideas for how we can deal with the consequences, unveiling imaginative approaches for how countries can adapt to and lead the future.

Climate Change Reimagined
This year, the exhibition was set in 2050 and explored a future where society reversed the devastating impacts and offered life-enhancing solutions for all of humanity. Widely-acknowledged consensus shows that global warming poses a grave and urgent threat to humanity, perhaps most clearly articulated in the disturbing level of temperature increase known by scientists as the “human extinction threshold”. During development, Tellart and the Dubai Future Foundation collaborated with climate change experts to understand and characterize the difficult challenges that lie ahead.

The resulting exhibition re-imagined the three biggest factors contributing to humanity’s ecological footprint – global industry, agriculture, and urbanism – as a means to radically innovate the way we live on Earth. By considering this innovation as an exciting economic opportunity, we might transform our future towards one of sustainability, adaptability, and resilience while at the same time addressing the three basic human needs of water, food, and shelter.

In the first section, attendees were welcomed onto a projected viewing deck of an offshore bio-desalination plant in Dubai. 360 ° video projections took guests on an immersive journey underwater to see how the facility provides a local means of filtering saltwater into clean drinking water based on natural processes. This freshwater factory they visited is the result of combining the genes of a jellyfish, a highly absorptive natural material, with mangrove roots, one of nature’s best desalinators. In this future scenario, Dubai became pioneers in biomimicry and exports these bio-desalination plants across the world, making fresh water accessible to everyone.

Exhibition attendees were then led into the “AutoFarm,” an automated food production factory that can grow fresh food indoors for an entire neighborhood. The lush space allowed guests to witness plant seeds being printed and plants, fish and insects being grown with incredible efficiency. Guests even enjoyed tasting samples created by the Food Bot: a machine that harvests produce the moment it is ripe and turns it into nutritious food items.

The final space invited guests to experience the “City Kit”: a self-building infrastructure solution that uses biotechnology and robotics to grow generative, self-sufficient cities in a matter of weeks. Research suggests that over 375 million people will be displaced because of rising sea levels if global temperatures continue to rise. The “City Kit” Sales Centre showed attendees these self-building infrastructures that will assist and remedy this future massive displacement. Summit attendees were asked to test out the Kit and see it in action using an interactive demo. The demo showed deployment from the sky and within seconds the Kit unfolding itself into a skeleton of a house. After evaluating local surroundings, it transforms local resources into building materials. As more Kits are dropped, they connect together to develop a fluid urban network that grows organically.

The Museum of the Future: Climate Change Reimagined at the 2017 World Government Summit is supported by the Dubai Future Foundation and UAE telecommunications giant du. It was led by the Foundation’s team and directed by global design firm Tellart. Support was received by an international team team of top partners including Marshmallow Laser Feast, SOFTlab, Spacehabs, Idee und Klang, LUST, Cropbox, and Shtik. The onsite build and installation was done in collaboration with Projex, Neumann & Muller, Hypsos and PublicisLive. Foresight research and workshop facilitation was performed by Scott Smith (Changeist).

For more information on Museum of the Future: Climate Change Reimagined and the full length exhibition film, click here.

Related articles/links:
"The Future Agency" - The Verge
Museum of the Future

Thanks to our partners:
Dubai Future Foundation
SOFTLab
Marshmallow Laser Feast
Idee und Klang
Lust
Cropbox

ERIC ALBA

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