
Crafting
Futures
Workshop
PROJECT
SPECULATIVE DESIGN WORKSHOP
SECTOR
DESIGN & FUTURING
ORGANISATION
IN COLLABORATION WITH KAIROS FUTURA
ROLE
DESIGNING WORKSHOP | WORKSHOP FACILITATION
WORKSHOP DURATION
1 WEEK
SPECULATIVE DESIGN WORKSHOP
SECTOR
DESIGN & FUTURING
ORGANISATION
IN COLLABORATION WITH KAIROS FUTURA
ROLE
DESIGNING WORKSHOP | WORKSHOP FACILITATION
WORKSHOP DURATION
1 WEEK
The Crafting Futures Workshop hosted by Kairos Futura brought together artists and designers to explore potential futures. Using speculative design and design fiction as primary tools, we dove deep into experimental material crafting techniques and innovative pattern cutting to unlock new ways of articulating future narratives, reimagining how garments might tell stories of environmental, social, and technological change.
KEY METHODOLOGIES & TOOLS
SPECULATIVE DESIGN
STEEP FRAMEWORK
CRAFTING MATERIALS
GARMENT PRODUCTION
01.
What is Speculative Design?
Designers were introduced to speculative design as a powerful tool for envisioning possible futures and exploring their potential implications. This foundational step established understanding of speculative design methodology and its role in exploring alternative futures rather than just solving current problems.
02.
Mapping Nairobi 2050
Using the STEEP framework (Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political), participants explored four distinctive environmental scenarios for Nairobi in 2050. This exercise created concrete, multi-dimensional future contexts that would serve as the foundation for design exploration, ensuring designs respond to realistic complex challenges.





03.
Reimagining Materials
Inspired by the scenarios, designers developed their own speculative landscapes and began pushing beyond conventional boundaries by exploring how materials could be manipulated, transformed, and re-imagined. This phase expanded creative thinking about material possibilities and encouraged designers to move beyond existing material constraints and conventions.04.
Rebuilding Patterns
Designers took simple patterns and radically modified them to create entirely new designs aligned with their speculative concepts. This step translated abstract speculative concepts into tangible design elements, bridging the gap between conceptual thinking and practical application.
05.
Bringing Futures to Life
Participants merged their speculative scenarios, material explorations, and pattern innovations into refined concepts and prototypes. This final phase synthesized all previous explorations into coherent design proposals that demonstrate how speculative thinking can lead to innovative, future-oriented solutions.







06.
Workshop Outcomes
The process resulted in innovative concepts including reflective safety wear, solar panel jackets for personal energy generation, a Gikomba City economy based on material manipulation skills, armor-like protective jackets, adaptive garments for visually impaired users, water-harvesting jackets, and Seed Pirates' garments for transporting botanical diversity.
︎
Nomadic
Futures
2299

Nomadic Futures is part of the Nairobi Space Station Project, where designers, artists and scientists collaborate to envision plausible future scenarios. The Escapist Pack is a speculative design artefact that functions as a protective jacket during the day and transforms into a temporary tent shelter at night, designed for nomadic communities navigating climate-related challenges.
PROJECT
NOMADIC FUTURES
SECTOR
FUTURING & DESIGN
ORGANISATION
IN COLLABORATION WITH NAIROBI SPACE STATION
ROLE
DESIGNING FUTURE ARTEFACT
PROJECT DURATION
2 MONTHS
KEY METHODOLOGIES & TOOLS
SPECULATIVE DESIGN
DESIGNING & MAKING ARTEFACT
NOMADIC FUTURES
SECTOR
FUTURING & DESIGN
ORGANISATION
IN COLLABORATION WITH NAIROBI SPACE STATION
ROLE
DESIGNING FUTURE ARTEFACT
PROJECT DURATION
2 MONTHS
KEY METHODOLOGIES & TOOLS
SPECULATIVE DESIGN
DESIGNING & MAKING ARTEFACT



Nairobi in the year 2299
The project responds to a dystopian vision of Nairobi in the year 2299. The city has transformed into a harsh landscape where towering concrete structures from an earlier era cast shadows over parched, dusty terrain. Former rivers have become toxic sludge channels threading through the urban landscape. The population has adapted to a nomadic lifestyle, constantly moving through the sprawling metropolis in search of basic necessities—food, water, and nightly shelter.Nomadic Futures
The Escapist Pack addresses the fundamental challenge of survival in this mobile future.It's a transformative garment that serves dual purposes: functioning as weather-protective outerwear during daily wandering, then converting into temporary shelter for nighttime rest. This dual-function design embodies the principle of maximum utility with minimum weight—essential for a population that must carry everything they need.






Mobile Solutions
Drawing from survival gear principles, the pack prioritizes functionality and portability above all else. It represents a design response to radical mobility, where traditional concepts of home and permanence have dissolved into a more fluid relationship between clothing, shelter, and survival. The project demonstrates how everyday objects might evolve to meet the extreme demands of climate change and urban transformation.This speculative artifact serves as both a practical design exercise and a provocative meditation on resilience, adaptation, and the future of human habitation in challenging environments.
︎
Exploring wild cards
Wild cards are events with low probability and extremely high impact, often resulting in seismic shifts, and broad implications on human society. We explored using wild cards as a tool to test complex infrastructure systems that can potentially help us strategize, plan and structure future decisions, promoting sustainable change and building resilience in the face of uncertainty.








