The name of the exhibition refers to GM’s “Futurama” exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair, which was the first to lay out a comprehensive vision of a future redesigned for motor vehicles. Such bold, mobility-based utopian visions of the past are both sources of inspiration and cautionary tales, as they succeeded in uniting politicians, industry, and the general public while failing to consider the long-term impossibility of their proposed solutions.
For [r+d] post-carbon Vienna, urban planners, transport planners & scientists, sociologists, climate scientists, energy specialists, and others were consulted and their expertise incorporated into the exhibition, which focuses on how a post-carbon urban mobility system might change our ways of moving, living, and thinking.
“Futurama Redux: Urban Mobility After Cars + Oil” asks how a transition to post-carbon urban mobility might foster sustainability, resilience, and security while improving quality of life. What role will design play and what must urban designers know to meet these challenges effectively? How can post-carbon urban mobility paradigms be communicated so as to gain the popular support necessary to make them politically feasible?
And, ultimately, how can research + design help make tomorrow better than today?
until October 4, 2015
Future Urban Mobility
[r+d] post-carbon Vienna
Futurama Redux: Urban Mobility After Cars + Oil
curated by Joshua Grigsby and Florian Lorenz (Smarter Than Car)
Vienna Design Week 2015
Festivalzentrale Objekt 42
Absberggasse 27, Wien