If it isn’t November already! Dive into our latest monthly edit highlighting some of the most insightful projects we have come across, signaling future possibilities.

From the immersive world of fashion and wellbeing, how the loss of hand-writing affects future designers, inclusive air travel to Degrowth & COP26, sink your teeth into the future trend signals curated for you this month 👇🏻

WELL-BEING | The world of fashion and well-being come together in a series of digital looks, designed by Diane Wallinger. A Care of Self, Care of World is a fashion-meditation series consisting of a four-piece digital collection, a meditation series and a physical garment. The collection echoes soft, bright pastel colours to generate a sense of positivity, to enhance the individual’s well-being. ‘All those elements come together to communicate both energy, serenity and power to the individuals, inviting them to take care of themselves, to build the necessary physical and mental resilience to take care of the world.’ 

TECH | Various Associates are fusing Fashion and Technology for a new fashion boutique,(So)What fashion, in Chengdu. The team have adopted dramatic design strategies for a distinctive and intuitive experience in the space, equipped with ethereal light sources to create a visually arresting scene. The elaborate interiors are inspired by the ‘unrestrained and independent energy’ of the brand’s contemporary clients. The store integrates modern technology to form a ‘multi-sensory immersive spatial experience’ in the hopes of drawing in customers.

EDUCATION | Handwriting is Dying. What Does That Mean for Design? The goal of writing is ‘cognitive automacy’, where we do not have to think about it. Cursive is no longer a requirement in the U.S. curricula, which begs the question, should we really stop teaching handwriting in schools? It has been found that students perform better when they take notes by hand, as muscle memory is connected to handwriting, which creates better memory retention. However, the digital age is changing the relationship with hand writing and letterforms, as many individuals opt for computers and tablets. There is an artistic craft to lettering and understanding how letters are written, so what will be the impact on design if students are no longer taught to write by hand? 

DESIGN | A new innovative design by PriestmanGoode, crafts a seating system that will allow air travellers in seated positions or living with a disability to remain in their wheelchairs for the entire journey, allowing users to feel safe and comfortable during the duration of their travel journey, and have a more seamless and inviting experience. ‘The concept is designed for commercial flights and is currently being developed into a prototype.’

FASHION | Balenciaga has sparked controversy by fashion and Black history experts for cultural appropriation behind the $1,190 pair of grey dropped sweatpants sold at retail. The exposure of boxer underwear and sweatpants lowered past the waistline have been popularized in hip-hop culture, and in this case re-used as a luxury statement. "Black culture is so often sampled, but rarely ever cited. And beyond giving credit where credit is overdue, the payout for those who have created and selflessly shared their genius, creativity, risk-taking, and innovation, rarely if ever comes," - Jean creative director and co-founder of We are Made in Italy. 

PHOTOGRAPHY | Photographer, Dario Calmese,  takes on racial bias in a series of captivating photography in collaboration with Adobe’s Creative Cloud to ‘create a set of portraiture that cater to black and brown skin. Having become the first Black artist to photograph the cover of ‘Vanity Fair in its 107-year history, Dario Calmese looks to create Prenium Presets, a set of portrait tones that delivers a wide range of settings from Light, Medium and Deep, adjusted specifically for Black and Brown skin tones because of the common retouching of photos and evidence of colour bias in the mid-1950s.“Understanding the spectacle is necessary because there is a level of aesthetics and design that we as human beings respond to and should be addressed – but within that there’s much more room to play once you are in that space” – Dario Calmese

ARTICLE | ‘A mirror to the room’: Pyer Moss, Specular Strategy and Black Lives Matter explores explores the ‘historical and cultural significance of Pyer Moss’s Spring/Summer 2015 fashion show’. Artist, Kerby Jean-Raymond, utilisation of the runway to bring attention to ‘state-enforced violence against Black men and women’, was a first of its kind.

DATA | A start-up co-founded by world wide web inventor Tim Berners-Lee has revealed a new privacy platform for enterprises called Solid Server. The product is set to restore trust in data and enhance people’s lives and invites users to create their own pod that can act as personal online data stores. The platform has drawn in notable clients already, such as BBC, NatWest Bank and the NHS, as part of their pilot programmes.

THE PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS BELOW CAUGHT OUR ATTENTION AHEAD OF COP-26 TAKING PLACE IN GLASGOW NEXT WEEK:

CLIMATE SUMMIT | COP26 climate summit: A scientists’ guide to a momentous meeting, explains what actions are needed to halt global warming and what is on the line, despite 30 years of climate diplomacy. Over 20,000 people from 196 countries including world leaders, scientists and activists will come together in the most anticipated United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, UK for the two-week event. Climate researchers have been battling the increasing impacts of global warming for more than three decades, this is the final opportunity to craft a collective plan cut greenhouse-gas emissions and curb climate change.

FUTURE | Will Degrowth Replace Green Growth? ‘Degrowth is an equitable downscaling of material and energy throughput’. Degrowth is now a potential future condition that will create the knowledge base for a completely different economic model. It is for all business, including sustainable companies, to assess the future from levels of production and consumption. Businesses may need to prepare for conversations ahead, to meet the challenges of the climate and biodiversity crisis by 2030 which points to a need to ‘degree’.

PROJECT | The Trust Zone Experiment: A project by Walter Palmetshofer explores a small Austrain Village of Zwetll with a population of 2,000 people, to create a scalable, data driven plan to significantly reduce CO2 emissions by 55% before 2030. This data and knowledge would be applied to the Mühlenviertel region (population 200,000) to reduce its carbon footprint, as half of Austria’s population lives in rural areas it could be a potential model that can be replicated across the country. 

GLOBAL AGENDA | Cities are under siege from climate change and need to adapt faster as magnifying threats such as flooding, wildfires, tropical storms and drought continue to threaten cities. With climate change accelerating rapidly over the years, urban areas are taking steps to adapt. Cities worldwide are ‘pursing  a rich variety of mitigation measures, such as electrifying mass transit, cooling with green buildings and introducing low-carbon building codes.’ Reshaping cities worldwide is critical to deal with extreme weather events, however, this can be extremely expensive as the regime requires massive investment ideas, practices and skills.