Global Futures Lab Receives Acclaim in Core 77 Design Awards 2020

Global Futures Lab, which RISD faculty Paolo Cardini launched during his time as the Global Faculty Fellow with RISD Global, won with “Observatory in Mexico City” the Core 77 Speculative Design Award 2020, as well a Notable Mention in the Design Education Initiative category.

The Global Futures Lab, started in 2016 by Paolo Cardini as RISD Global’s Global Faculty Fellow, is a research initiative aimed to decolonize speculative design practices and counteract the bias and stereotypes of so-called "western futures". Students from Iran, India, Peru, Ethiopia, Cuba and Mexico shared their stories about how the future looks like from their own perspectives, fostering hyper-contextual future scenarios linked to their specific geo-cultural locations. Global Futures Lab aspires to keep collecting "souvenirs from the futures" and defining what global futures could look like.

Congrats to RISD Industrial Design professor Paolo Cardini, CENTRO professor Karla Paniagua and all colleagues and students at CENTRO in Mexico City for the Core 77 Design Award 2020! Winning Project Team: Paolo Cardini, Karla Paniagua, Alan Saenz, Ana Gutman, Lizah Pesah, Edgar Flores, Lourdes Serrano, Vicente Martinez, Jose de la O, Alejandra Rosillo, Camila Anaya, Alejandra Rojo, Paulina Rios.

In celebration, RISD Global will feature various souvenirs from the future from the Global Futures Lab collection on our Instagram: @risdglobal. Full archive of projects can be found at globalfutureslab.com. Thanks again to all partner schools and students involved in the broader Global Futures Lab initiative: the Art University of Isfahan in Iran, National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad India, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Peru in Lima, Instituto Superior de Diseno in Havana, Cuba, and the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, the School of Fine Art and Design and Zoma Art Center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.