We are told a story of time—one where it moves forward: fast, urgent, inevitable, and irreversible. But what if that is a myth? A story imposed. One that fuels crisis-thinking, narrows imagination, and traps us in cycles of reaction. 
 
As the present trembles under the weight of the past and the pull of the future— in the long shadow of what has broken, and the bright edge of what could emerge— Urgent / Emergent is a studio for socially engaged designers to explore how stories shape the world: who tells them, who gets erased, and how they are used to uphold or dismantle systems. Students will design urgently in dialogue with unfolding events, dominant narratives, and the mythologies that drive them. At the same time, they will trace longer arcs—patterns, inheritances, and lineages that shape the deeper context of social change across generations. This studio asks: how can design operate both in the now and in the not-yet? What must we remember, reframe, and reimagine? 
 
We will design across three interwoven timelines: 
Past: generational struggle, resistance, memory, inheritance 
Present: crisis, uprising, visibility, adaptation 
Future: speculation, world-building, radical imagination 

Students will engage with abolitionist, decolonial, and speculative frameworks. We will explore the work of artists and organisers who refused the role of the neutral technician and instead became cultural agitators, witnesses, educators, caregivers, and visionaries. These include movements and makers who worked across print, public space, protest and speculative world-building. Research will include visual, archival, oral, and relational sources—recognising that knowledge lives not only in books but also in bodies, communities, and memory. 

Students will demonstrate what they’ve learned through a sustained practice of making, reflecting, and remaking. Weekly urgent pieces will offer rapid design responses to current events, systems, and symbols—revealing how students engage critically and visually with the now. The “emergent” project will be a more expansive speculative design work, rooted in research and intergenerational insight. A research folio will document each student’s trajectory across the semester, capturing sources, case studies, visual experiments, and a final reflective statement connecting their urgent and emergent practices. 

Students will take part in a rhythm of rapid design sprints, visual research, group critique, and deep listening. Some weeks will require fast-paced design responses to unfolding issues; others will focus on slow, relational inquiry—archival work, conversations, or embodied observation. Studio culture will embrace contradiction and multiplicity, allowing space for both experimentation and refinement. Feedback will come through peer-to-peer dialogue, group critiques, and self-assessment. 

Brief 1: Urgent Archive (40%) 
Ten to twelve weekly design responses that are fast, experimental, and responsive to the social, political, or environmental conditions of the moment. 
 
Brief 2: Emergent Project (40%) (SKO) 
A major speculative design project grounded in sustained research, reflection, and imaginative engagement. This work must draw from multiple timelines—for example, tracing a social issue from historical roots through to future implications 
 
Brief 3: Research Folio + Reflection (20%) 
An ongoing visual and textual research folio documenting the student’s process, sources, interviews, archival material, and creative iterations.