Redesigning Our Lives
A short film by Oliver Salway that imagines a future where humanity has chosen to embrace a simpler existence to avert climate catastrophe. Artist Adrian Taylor performed the narration, while the Eco-Warrior drawings were created by sisters Annabelle, Rose and Lavender Froggatt, together with their cousin Daisy Forney.
The piece was highly commended by the judges of Dezeen's Redesign the World competition powered by Twinmotion. In it, Salway imagines a future where people idolise eco-warriors instead of social media influencers, cut out long-distance travel and build simpler structures using materials such as wood and ceramics instead of concrete and steel.
The Redesign the World judges commended the film highly for its originality. "Salway's submission was unlike any other," the judges said. "He turned the competition brief on its head with a film that calls for humans to redesign the way they live rather than trying to redesign the planet."
"Despite diverging from the brief, the judges felt it was an important and well-expressed sentiment. They wish to commend it highly for taking a different approach."
Set in a future flooded corner of the Isle of Dogs, ‘Redesigning Our Lives’ explores the changes required to our patterns of behaviour and urban planning, in response to the climate emergency. The major infrastructural changes required to decarbonise may take decades to come into full effect, but the fastest thing we can change is our minds. Ask not what your planet can do for you, but what you can do for your planet.
Our home planet is changing. But rather than relying on ‘technofixes’ to the climate emergency, maybe we’re the ones that need ‘redesigning’. By reimagining our dreams and our priorities, we can adapt to live within the world’s means.
In the home, a shrine to the planet, like a Japanese ‘Kamidana’, takes pride of place. And maybe for the next generation — whose heroines are eco-warriors, not influencers — keeping track of the state of the earth via a holographic ‘Fitbit for the planet’ might prove more compelling than watching cartoons on TV.
A key adaptation is to rid ourselves of the daily commute. But to avoid the isolation of working from home, maybe we take a short walk, bus or cycle ride to a local ‘work-club’, where we can flexibly choose, day-by-day, which of our varied skills we want to offer to crowd-sourcing employers. Today you could do some anonymous data-processing, but maybe tomorrow you’ll sell your embroidery skills.
It’s clear that there isn’t any carbon budget for expressionistic architecture left. So we must just build simpler, perhaps with timber and advanced ceramics. But for those missing an outlet for all that architectural creativity, there’s always the potential that we could add decoration through augmented reality skins, overlaid on the simple shed-like buildings … if we must.
Increasing density in urban areas offers the potential to stack up land uses, allowing for agriculture that doesn’t rely on long-distance supply chains.
And we can distribute clean power generation such as vortex resonant wind-generating masts throughout the city, since they have a lower spatial impact and don’t threaten wildlife.
And learning from ancient desert cities like Yazd in Iran, bolting wind-towers onto existing buildings could eliminate the need for energy-intensive air conditioning in our warming world.
Perhaps to make up for land losses to rising tides, we might need some form of mega-structural intervention, like giant adjustable shelving, which could provide replacement areas for farming and recreation, as well as offering some shelter from the burning sun and heavy rains to the legacy city below. Maybe the ground level citizens profit from the ‘air-rights’. Penthouse living for all.
And by redesigning our lives, we might finally find a simpler existence we actually prefer.
