Urban lifestyle in twenty years. Forecasts from a Young Generation of Interior Designers

How young generations envision their future is the aim of a six-year research/teaching project at the School of Design of Politecnico di Milano. The project was carried out in a first-year interior design studio. Students were invited to design exemplary environments suitable for urban life on a 20-year time horizon. Burning issues such as climate change, new technologies, and social behaviours were investigated using disciplinary and extra-disciplinary methodologies – especially the speculative approach of Italian design. In six years, the design studio collected more than one hundred proposals produced by over three hundred students. They undoubtedly show naïvety and approximation of young in-training designers. Some are profession-like proposals, others visionary, paradoxical or ironic. Nevertheless, this vast effort delineates the contours of a generation deeply involved in sustainability, fascinated by nature, and focused on concrete issues – all promising traits for our future.