In April 2017, four art and design students were selected to inhabit the Futuro House on the roof of Central Saint Martins, King’s Cross. They were in continuous residence from 11am Tuesday 18 April until 5.45pm Saturday 22 April and took in all they needed to survive and make work throughout the duration of their stay.
Matti Suuronen’s Futuro House received its American launch in July 1969 the same year as the Apollo 11 space mission. 1969 was also the year of ‘The Locked Room’, a now-famous educational experiment at Saint Martin’s College of Art in which a group of Sculpture students were locked in their studio daily for 8 hours throughout a term, with restricted materials and no critical feedback from tutors.
This project was an invitation to explore a collective approach to generating ideas about the future by living differently for 4 days, 6 hours and 45 minutes; the period of time that the Apollo 11 space mission took to reach the moon.
This experience aimed to challenge individualistic behaviours, offering instead possibilities for the adoption of a dynamic, expansive and connected approach to art and design practice.
We think of the project as acting in a number of ways. In the Brechtian sense, as a situation which functions as an interruption to an established narrative. As a place where the participants can radically change established or entrenched behaviours for a period of time, opening up new possibilities for the exploration of alternative modalities. And as a collective endeavour, in so far as it offers possibilities for the participants to unite under a common goal, coming together to co-author and co-produce thought, ideas and outputs.
In interrupting familiar and comfortable attitudes to the production of ideas, explorations and outcomes, can we cultivate collectivity and connectivity as imperative modes for the art and design practitioners of the future?
