Meet the Winner: Anab Jain

‘We are entering a period that will completely upset our world as we know it. So, our ability to step outside what we already know becomes urgent,’ explains Anab Jain, speculative designer, futurist and winner of this year’s Design Innovation Medal.

She adds: ‘We see this as a structural discontinuity; climate change, geo-political conditions, the rise of AI and its implications on labour: these are all interconnected with knock-on effects. It has never been more important to consider these effects and the different levers of uncertainty and how they are acting out together.’

Designers, Jain believes, are uniquely well placed to meet these enormous challenges. In 2009, with Jon Ardern, Jain established Superflux, an award-winning design studio and artistic practice based in London. ‘We were both interested in exploring alternate futures. At the time it felt like there were no solutions, things looked very grim. Coming out of the credit crisis, our intent was to explore, to prove that other worlds are possible, to push to the edges of accepted reality. There are other possibilities if you step outside established narratives. That became the starting point for Superflux.’

For Jain, Superflux’s role was to imagine and give form to that imagination, not necessarily to shape a product, but rather to shift thinking.  ‘In that sense, we are not working to a brief and coming up with a solution to put into the market. Instead, we are using design to put ideas into the world and promote critical thinking.’ These ideas have now been exhibited internationally, including at the Barbican and V&A in London, MoMA New York, and La Biennale di Venezia. Work is also held in many permanent collections, including the European Patent Office.

Despite these accolades, Superflux is no rarefied beast most at home in museums or in purely artistic contexts. ‘That is just half of the work that we do, the other half is embedding this thinking into different organisations.’ She adds: ‘We work with anybody who has a genuine intent to change, to bring in future thinking and encourage different approaches. For those who feel stuck, we are there. We go in and we create strategic models, films, a whole range of outcomes.’ This approach, decidedly left field in 2009, is now becoming increasingly mainstream. ‘We sense that these ideas have spread and gained more popularity. People now recognise the worth of speculative design; clearly there is a need for it.’

In that sense, Jain is honoured to be awarded this particular medal. ‘I see this as recognition that this sort of design is entrepreneurial and innovative, even if we don’t sell products or services as such. There is a role for a speculative design-led path, less as a philosophical posture but as a tried and tested way to open up and consider the potential of different approaches,’ she says.

Words by Tamsin Kingswell