It is 2051, and everything has turned out rather well.
Ecological collapse, social fragmentation, political polarization – the defining crises of the early 21st century are now distant memories. But how did we get here? This exhibition invites visitors into speculative futures where the world has learned to care for the planet and adapt to new systems of solidarity. Through backcasting, students from the Interdisciplinary Design Project look backwards from a utopian 2051 to uncover the seeds planted in 2026 that made these futures possible.
Rather than surrendering to pessimism, dreaming is understood here as an act of rebellion. Five interdisciplinary student groups present speculative visions rooted in specific sites across Berlin: Warschauer Brücke shifts from hypercapitalist infrastructure to a degrowth-driven urban living room. Alte Försterei imagines stadiums as places where diversity emerges through agonistic democracy. Westhafen becomes a new urban model shaped by culture-nation states, where water acts as a social mediator. Das ist keine Autobahn is a symbiotic network reclaimed by the communities once displaced by the A100. At the Landwehrkanal, a small seed of knowledge survives the great Berlin flood and re-routes society toward collective memory and preservation.
At a time when imagining the future is overshadowed by forecasting catastrophe, this exhibition reflects on the political agency of hope.
The exhibition takes place in the foyer of the university, concurrently with ‘Whitecliffe in Perspective’ and ‘Let the play begin’.
