GRAND PRIX WINNER
A collaboratively imagined test site that explores speculative relationships between society, technology and the environment. Architect Michael Reynolds, who worked on the Sustainable Development Testing Sites Act in New Mexico in 2007, described his project: “Just as special racetracks are used to test automotive safety outside the public highway system, this piece of legislation allows testing of housing and living methods in a day-to-day living circumstance, with real people.
Extrapolation Factory similarly proposes to set up a futures workshop in which they work with locals in neighborhoods to envision spaces that communities could use as test grounds for new ways of living and working. This studio will work with participants to identify key aspects or issues that concern the neighborhood, and then develop ideas for how these issues could be explored and changed through development within a testing site. What physical structures, systems, mechanisms, social situations, economies, etc. could be instituted to experiment with alternative ways of living/working that could offer better alternatives than the ones that currently exist? Over the course of the workshop, Extrapolation Factory will help participants to construct prototypes that bring the ideas to life, assembled to form an immersive test site.
