This question began in the design studio. Architecture is inherently future-facing, yet architectural education often asks students to imagine tomorrow through the assumptions of today. I became interested in whether space could do more than represent a possible future after it had been conceived. Could space itself become a method of enquiry—capable of exposing assumptions, tracing consequences and making uncertain futures available for critique?

The first response to that question was pedagogical. Through the Near Futurists' Alliance at the University of Brighton, I developed Experimental Realism as a way of investigating futures through spatial propositions rather than predictions. Students constructed partial worlds through film, artefacts, documents and environments—not to imagine what the future would be, but to ask how it might be lived, governed and experienced.

As the question matured, so did the methodology. In 2022 it became Design Studio Vol. 5: Experimental Realism: (Design) Fictions and Futures, bringing the work into dialogue with Liam Young, Benjamin Bratton, Anab Jain, Anthony Dunne, Fiona Raby and others working across speculative design and futures. More importantly, it argued that architecture required its own speculative methodology: one grounded not in products or scenarios, but in space.

That argument continued through superFUTURES at the Royal College of Art. Projects including meetCUTE, Nature's Depot and Ficta Ordo progressively expanded the enquiry—from media and digital culture, to ecological governance, to more-than-human systems of organisation. The projects differ, but the underlying question remains the same: how can spatial propositions help us investigate futures before they become reality?

Along the way, the question became larger than the methodology itself. Part of my contribution has been to help define and legitimise Speculative Spatial Design as a distinct field of enquiry, with its own methods, pedagogies and research agenda. Rather than borrowing speculative design into architecture, I argue that spatial practice contributes something distinctive: environments become evidence; interiors become arguments; worldbuilding becomes a form of research. Space is no longer simply the outcome of futures thinking—it becomes the method through which futures are explored.

As the question evolved, so too did its contexts. Experimental Realism moved beyond studio teaching into international education, public engagement and professional practice. It informed my appointment as Global Community Professor at Universidad de Monterrey, the Association of Architectural Educators keynote, Pedagogies of the Not-Yet: In Defence of Speculation, and lectures, workshops and masterclasses at CEPT University, Politecnico di Milano, Domus Academy, Parsons Paris, Sapienza University of Rome, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Northeastern University and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The enquiry also entered professional and cultural practice. At Harvard Graduate School of Design, it informed my contribution to Allen Sayegh's SYNTHIA exhibition, exploring uncertainty and collaboration as emergent design methodologies. Through my residency with Perkins&Will, it became The Futures We Build and its accompanying playbook for long-term thinking, translating speculative spatial enquiry into provocations for architectural practice. The same methods have since informed collaborations with Defra and strategic futures work with the UK Ministry of Justice.

More recently, the question has begun to travel independently of my own work. Maria Fedorchenko's peer-reviewed article, Cities of Specters, Transfers and Atopia, positions Experimental Realism within a fifteen-year research-design studio lineage. Satu Miettinen and colleagues' peer-reviewed conference paper, Strategic Foresight and Worldbuilding with Companies, draws directly on my chapter "Equitable and Desirable Futures" to frame worldbuilding and protopian filmmaking within organisational foresight. Together, these citations suggest that what began as a question about studio pedagogy is now contributing to wider conversations across architectural education, futures research, design methodology and organisational strategy.

Fedorchenko, M. (2025). “Cities of Specters, Transfers and Atopia: The Research-Design Studio Experiment.” Architecture and Culture, 13(1–2), 243–264. DOI: 10.1080/20507828.2026.2652717. Peer-reviewed journal article; United Kingdom.Article record.

Miettinen, S., Sarantou, M., Björn, E., Uusitalo, T., & Kontio, T. (2024). “Strategic Foresight and Worldbuilding with Companies.” In L. Imbesi & A. Perlatti (Eds.), Design Across Borders—United in Creativity 1 (pp. 282–302). Cumulus Conference Proceedings, No. 13. Peer-reviewed conference paper; Finland/Japan, presented in Mexico.Repository record and PDF.

Mingo Escuredo, M. (2024). Análisis de la prospección de futuros aplicable a un proceso de diseño. Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. Undergraduate dissertation; Spain.Repository record and PDF.