Utopian Imagery of Urban Peripheries in the Context of the Anthropocene´s Cultural Concept Cooperative image production as design method

Can a dialogical and reflexive image production of utopian (speculative) urban peripheries contribute to conveying the Anthropocene´s cultural concept?

The Anthropocene’s cultural concept serves as sociological methodology for this Design Driven Research while assemblage theory and iconography serve as design methodologies.

As a design-driven method, cooperative image production is identified. The two authors work closely in iterative, reciprocal evaluation cycles (including sketches, diagrams, site plans, perspectives, etc.) which are methodologically (as a personal, multi-perspective entanglement) interesting for the topic as such.

The media used include illustration and CAD programs, hand sketches, 3D modeling as well as visualization programs. Structure, distribution and layering, are applied as techniques on the two-dimensional level, while staging (light, colors, atmospheres, etc.) and image composition (viewpoints, image elements, etc.) are predominant on the three-dimensional level.

As artefact (or product) large format imagery is produced to show the specific content with its many levels of details, narratives and networks (in the means of showing the “bigger picture”) but also to establish a closer, interactive relationship between the viewer and the image itself.

The relevance of the research lies in the image-based method because it adds to the discourse between the explicit knowledge of science and humanities implicit knowledge. It fills a research gap in the thematic discourse and the artefacts are transferable to other research areas.