Reimagining city life through speculative Design
Discover how speculative design reimagines urban life through empathy, learning, and civic participation. Our exhibition Urban Tempo explored future cities shaped by seniors, students, and collaborative technologies today together.
Eight students from Domus Academy Master of Arts in Design Innovation explored a provocative question: what if cities could adapt to their citizens’ needs in real time? This question drove the entire project.
Urban Tempo
Urban Tempo is a speculative design exploration that envisions a future where technology creates a more empathetic, collaborative urban environment. This research-led project examines contemporary urban reality and experiments with possible futures through three innovative artifacts that were prototyped and brought to life in an exhibition held in the Hall of Domus Academy.
Urban Tempo merges two transformative urban models:
- The Learning City reimagines urban spaces as collaborative learning environments, bridging the gap between education and real-world needs. Through partnerships between municipalities, universities, private organisations, and local communities, underutilised spaces become hubs for knowledge exchange and skill development
- The Longevity City places elderly citizens at the heart of civic life, using intuitive technology to adapt the urban environment to their comfort. Here, “Silver Hours” flourish, and empathy becomes the new measure of urban progress, redefining what it means to age in the city.
Three speculative artifacts demonstrate how this future might work, each addressing a specific aspect of urban cohabitation and cooperation:
AURA: a smart wristband designed for senior citizens that effectively slows down the city by adapting urban services to their needs. Through vibrations, lights, and audio assistance, AURA communicates real-time information and transforms the urban environment into an invisible, empathetic space that responds to its most vulnerable citizens.
CIVI: a personal civic wallet that reimagines community engagement as social value. Citizens earn Civic Credits through volunteering, community projects, or learning activities. These credits function as alternative currency for local products and services or can be exchanged for formative credits recognised by universities – creating a tangible connection between civic participation and personal growth.
artaim: a wearable learning device that combines soft robotics with tactile feedback to teach manual and crafting skills. By guiding hand movements and creating muscle memory, artaim accelerates mastery of complex activities, revealing technology’s potential to reconnect humans with body-dependent learning experiences.
Urban Tempo demonstrates how speculative design can address real urban challenges: disconnected education systems, underused public spaces and aging populations. By prototyping tangible artifacts that embody these ideas, the project moves beyond theory to show what a more responsive, human-centered city could look like.
FAQ – Frequent questions
1. What is Urban Tempo?
A speculative design project imagining cities that adapt in real time to citizens’ needs, developed by eight Design Innovation MA’s students.
2. What are the three project artifacts?
AURA (smart wristband for seniors), CIVI (civic wallet turning participation into credits), and artaim (wearable device for learning manual skills).
3. What are the Learning City and Longevity City?
Two transformative urban models: the first turns spaces into learning hubs, the second places elderly citizens at the heart of civic life with intuitive technology.
4. Where was the project exhibited?
In Domus Academy’s Hall, where visitors experienced the prototyped artifacts firsthand.
5. What urban challenges does it address?
Disconnected education systems, underused public spaces, and aging populations.