As we continue marching towards an uncertain future, one thing can be said for certain. The world isn’t going anywhere, but we are. Exploring the possible scenarios that await us, the potential for a dystopian like development increases in chance as we continue a business-as-usual approach to our world. Without immediate changes of current strategies and methods of daily operations further unfolds the path of a future that should be avoided. Every corner of the globe will encounter the destructive results of climate change and global warming which forces us to question the wellbeing of future generations. Our duty as designers obligates us to leave behind a world better than when we had found it, addressing the damaging impacts and experience for our global audience.
Looking through the window of the not-so-distant future, the lives of our children and grandchildren will forever be determined by the worlds oldest designer: nature. Through a speculative design thinking process, radical ideas concerning their assumed lifestyles and routines during a world suffering extreme climate changes are made. The intended purpose of this is to encourage conversation and provoke critical thought of the consequences made by our current lifestyle that endangers an unborn generation.
The oxygen cigar is a concept that explores the elements of social interaction and damaging carbon air pollution. This comes as direct response to the dystopian potential that has been described by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose assessment details the extreme projections of current global emission trends. Representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5 highlights the worst possibility of human driven contribution to the climate to which we will engage in this process. This idea was brought forward in an attempt to understand and gain insight as to how current existing social behaviours will adapt to a world that threatens everyone’s wellbeing.
Observing current events, high levels of air pollution are already made apparent across the world, compromising air quality thus creating dangerously toxic populous urban environments. Using this as an indicator for future, it can be understood that the air quality will only worsen in our dystopia. when observing the grievances of today, many fail or refuse to wear masks for their own welfare during a pandemic arguing that such protests may persist in the face of other disasters. Oxygen cigars satisfy both of these requirements. These future dystopian cigars offer the opposite of what todays varieties do by emitting oxygen in substitute of current toxic chemicals. Radical ideas such as this appear to be somewhat far fetched however, this experience provides the ability for users to adopt already existing concepts in more mobile forms. By creating a fashionable breathing apparatus invites people to continue pursuing social lifestyles in the face of a lethal environment. Already as it is, a number of establishments across the world offer oxygen bars that provide an already abundantly free resource. As we continue down the path of natures destruction, the value and scarcity of oxygen becomes a more plausible thought. People of the future will surrender coastal cities to rising sea levels while retreating from inland wildfires, inspiring a future demand for sources of oxygen as natures production becomes stunted. Exposing this issue gives way to a working hypothesis that continuing this business-as-usual approach in design allows speculation as to how future behaviour is shaped.
Looking decades into the future in an imagined world where the air we breath is seen as a luxury for recreational use, we aim to demonstrate the opportunities made by the shrinking of nature’s involvement in their lifetimes. This future forecasting of destructive climate change is widely accepted today in the scientific community despite this attention, lack of motivation or thought has been made as to how the individual daily life will be affected. While the evidence is compelling, no one can know for certain the routines and future experiences made, stressing the importance of monumental changes needing to be made today to alter our fate. Proving to be prophetic, humans continue to suffer from their own success as our own creations endanger us, forcing even more radical and unorthodox solutions that provide temporary salvation. The oxygen cigar intends to inspire the people of today to avoid the arriving catastrophe while considering ethical and behavioural implications of design. Not only spreading awareness but creating an educational experience by shedding light unto a new perspective through the eyes of the individual in a world on fire.
