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Toolkit for Designing a Sustainable Life

What could a world look like in which we have capitalized upon the powerful relationship between people and objects?
Problem

As a designer, I want to play a role in visualizing a few of the most distant or fantastical futures (still supported by science) that could be possible. This work visualizes one such possible future; a world that values objects and prioritizes the intentional curation of the information encapsulated in them to establish long-term care for the whole planet.

My hope is that the practice of visualizing such a world, will help us design a flourishing future. 

Conceptual Development
What do I want the future to look like?
DH - questions that arose.png
source img of brainfunction for mindmap -- for source!.png
human intelligence map.png
brain functionality mindmap.png
human problem-solution cycle complete.png
human - def.png
data - def.png
ideal prod life model 3d sketch 2of2.jpeg
wetware computing midndmap.png
Design & Prototyping
Mood board - Visual & Contextual Inspiration
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Painting a Picture of my Desired Future - Story & Illustrations

Forest house bedroom .jpg

Much of the content in this story revolves around things that I wish for my own life, for my own future, and that address some more pressing issues on my mind, such as waste and climate change, and constructing civilizations in an enduring and less harmful way. 

You wake up in the morning with the sun streaming through your window. You’re on the second floor of your house, in your bedroom. The frame of your house was built from two trees growing close together in your forest, since now humans have advanced to be able to direct the growing of two trees’ branches. Any dead wood in the house (on the flooring and the wall paneling) was made from construction offcut waste created when your grandparents were children. It’s mostly pine, the wood that they used at that time to build frames for buildings, engineered in a pleasing octagonal fractal pattern, which you were really into as a child. You, as do all of the children of your society, had a making class in your schedule every year, designed to help you learn how to build your dream home, piece by piece. Your parents set aside a space for you in the community when you were born, and you spend your youth learning how to build that space into what you want it to be, and how to do that without creating waste, and without using entirely new materials – especially how to use the waste from previous generations, which, they taught you, had been building up since the First Industrial Revolution (circa 1750AD), and had only been being reused and word down (get better words) starting around 2050, in an attempt to save the planet from climate change and free up land for residential life for the overgrown population. 150 years later, they were around 30% done with that process, in addition to the recycled material that was disposed of for recycling once more. So, your grandmother’s generation saw fit to modify the global culture to center the awareness of the history of the object, people, places and things that perdure, and develop ways to reduce your global impact as humans. Anyways…

​The floor was your 5th year project, which, traditionally, is a collaboration between yourself and your parents/mentors/chosen guidance. (That’s something else you never understood about humans – despite naturally being communal animals, with organically built communities of mentorship and companionship, there was a good 200 years where only the biological parents of the kids raised them…? Confusing.) At this point, you’ve changed the color and finish of the floor a million times, and finally got a screen coating onto it, to be able to project any color, pattern, finish, and material you’re feeling, at any moment in time, as you grow older. 

 

But back to this morning. Your sheer curtains, made from recycled plastic woven by the silk worms that are able to eat and digest plastic from the landfills, color the sunlight a warm yellow. It’s nothing fancy, but the curtains belonged to your grandmother, and you keep them for sentimental value and because they fit your vintage/antique aesthetic. You roll over in your bed and grab your glasses. On your nightstand, which is growing out of the wall, made up of a few custom-grown branches from your most favorite oak tree, sits a glass of water (in a reused jar, of course!). You sit up and tap the side of your glasses, which pulls up a screen projection on any given surface, and you begin to look at the news.

forest house.jpg

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Fabrication
board w frame only.png
DH model layout drawing.jpg
foam only  (1).jpg
board w layout DH.jpg
DH - n271 goods spread.jpg
DH - electronics meeting.png
DH circuit model.jpg
DH - tree roots showing wire.png
tree skeletons only.jpg
lantern in tree.png
DH - leaf switch.jpg
DH leaf switch install img4.jpg
DH rock painting setup.jpg
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20230227_213029_edited.jpg
DH leaf switch install img1.jpg
testing rock buttons.png
DH - model grey wash.png
5 naked trees - DH.jpg

Materials:

- Offcut / waste plywood
- Wood stain & seal

- Sculpture wire

- Copper Piping

- Polymer Clay

- Aluminum Foil 

- Acrylic Paint

- Painter's Tape

- XPS Insulation Foam offcuts

- Hot Glue, Mod podge, & Spray Adhesive

- Acrylic Paint

- Model foliage, mushrooms & moss

- Parchment Paper
- Popsicle Sticks

- Sticks, rocks, & other detritus from my back yard

- Electronics: 

- Wire
- Solder

- Breadboard
- LEDs

- Leaf Switches (Momentary Switch)
- Resistors

- Power Supply Board

Final Prototype

How can I invite people to imagine what they want the future to look like?
Version 1 - Written Prompts / Story
mushy DH pov - model v1.png
model and cards, 2 rows.jpg
mushy! .png
BETTER - cards and model title.jpg
Version 11 - Auditory Prompts / Story
DH _ FM_23 3.png
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IMG_6822.JPG
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DH _ fm_23 2.jpg
IMG_6821.JPG
20230321_125528.jpg
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for tree color demo - DH (1).jpg
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Model title shot.png
APF - extended instructions FM23.png
APF - extended instructions stop 1.png
DH Q1 question (1).jpg
DH q1 content (1).jpg
APF - extended instructions stop 2.png
DH q2 question.jpg
DH q2 content.jpg
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DH Q6 content.jpg
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DH Q7 question.jpg
DH Q7 content.jpg
APF - extended instructions stop 8.png
DH Q8 question.jpg
DH Q8 content.jpg
APF - extended instructions FM2313 - not needed.png
APF - extended instructions FM2313 - not needed.png
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2025,  Simoné Schwartz

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