REVERSE LAB, SONG Yue

Urban Nature and Fiction: Speculative Design on Experience Exchange between Urban Nature and Citizen

As a major component of urban nature, urban forests are measured in the field of urban ecology research in terms of ecosystem services to the environment and their contribution to human well-being. Since the development of industrial society, along with globalization and urbanization, the dichotomy between humans and nature has become more and more intense.

From the perspective of interaction design, this project provides users with a human-tree exchanged space by replacing the ratio of pro-human/pro-nature materials on the surface of the furniture as well as an urban forest empathy experience in major cities around the world. Facts show that the larger the urban forest covering area is in a city, the more proportion of the corresponding urban furniture surfaces will be left to pro-human material, which is also a tribute to the naturalness of the city. In the home experience where the living space of human beings is occupied, the emotions of progressive levels range from doubt, and annoyance to deep reflection: why can’t pro-human and pro-nature be the same thing?

Through the fictitious REVERSE LAB® company of this graduation project, the action of hacking and transforming various furniture items that have accumulated commercial reputations around the world and providing service of non-user-centred experiences, dispels the originally progressed globalization and commercial authority of branded products and proposes the questioning of the anthropocentrism towards the relating subjects in the project.