Tehran now! - و اینک تهران

Tehran Now! is a project for thinking about products, services, and platforms that may prevent Tehran’s apocalyptic futures. This project is a parent project that can define and accomplish a series of workshops, studios, smaller projects, and other collaborations within itself.

All activities of this project can be interpreted from the lens of Futures Studies and Speculative Design. That’s why Tehran Now! is not concerned with solving the problems that may lead to an apocalyptic future for the city. Tehran Now! uses these unpleasant futures of the city as a tool to push for change in the forms we address these unpleasant futures. All the activities of this project are intertwined with three key characteristics: innovation aspects, a Futures-oriented approach, and an effort to confront the apocalyptic futures of Tehran.

The Scenariative Collective

Tehran Now! is a brainchild of Mahan and Pouyan. They share one common interest despite working in different fields of design and innovation: Scenario. The results of their collaborations during the past few years are brought together under the name The Scenariative Collective. Scenariative seeks to create plausible futures to examine the effects of design products that have not yet been thought of, created, or developed. Scenariative incorporates Speculative Design and Design Fiction as more radical and critical approaches with Scenario Planning and Design Thinking as more pragmatic tools to narrate its design stories and push for actual change.
Pouyan and Mahan are both former members of the CAST (Center for Architecture and Situated Technologies) and graduates of architecture from the State University of New York. They are currently colleagues at the Future City Innovation Lab. Mahan focuses on the spatial organization of mixed-reality networks, along with innovation management using scenario planning and strategic planning. Pouyan seeks to speculate on the critical and provocative aspects of futures products and services in addition to his work as a storyteller.

Project Collaborators

Future City Innovation Lab is a platform for human-centered designers, design strategists, and those interested in problem-solving through design to create innovation through collaboration and experimentation. Future City plays the role of a growth partner for startups so that they can benefit the experiences and knowledge of designers and strategists. It is also an innovation consultant for larger organizations to help them make new achievements in their development path by using innovation capacities.

Established in 2016 by [Shift] Process Practice, Tehran Urban Innovation Center (TUIC) is a design-by-research, research-by-design practice, dedicated to providing innovative, feasible, and replicable solutions for urban challenges of Tehran. TUIC aims at creating value across the global network of urban innovation, through producing, exchanging and implementing knowledge within the framework of mode-2 knowledge production.

Workshop Instructors

Pouyan Bizeh, Mahan Mehrvarz, Sepehr Salehi, Kasra Ghavidel, Soheil Bagheri

Project Consultants

Hamid Reza Mousavi, Nashid Nabian, Mina Bozorgmehr, Amir Hossein Taheri, Ali Abhari, Shadi Azizi, Ali Naqavi, Raha Ashrafi, Hossein Madani, Mehdi Najafi

Workshop Participants

Alireza Davarinejad, Alireza Kalantari, Anisa Motahar, Arezoo Khamesi, Banafsheh Javan, Farnaz Farshad, Hamed Ebrahimi, Lena Vafaei, Mahsa Hazabi, Mahsa Zamani, Maliheh Vasfinejad, Mohammad Zanjanian, Narges Ghadiani, Nava Kholusi, Negar Ahmari, Niloofar Hosseini, Nima Qanei, Parisa Bizeh, Reyhaneh Zandian, Saba Sabet, Sadaf Danesh Pajouh, Sahar Asgari, Saleh Asadzadeh, Samin Eshraghi, Sara Saghafi Moghadam, Seyed Hesam Mousavi Nejad, Seyedeh Moojan Ayatollahi, Zahra Kazemi

Our Activities

Will Design Save Tehran? (WDST)

The main purpose of this workshop is to design products, services, and platforms that will be developed at a specified point in the future and can potentially prevent an apocalyptic future of the city of Tehran. The goal of this design exercise, rather than solving the problems of Tehran, is to clarify the design situations that may occur in the future. In the next step, seeing such plans can clear the way for discussions about the current state of the city and the concerns of citizens about the current situation. The outcome of this workshop is available in the form of three design projects at the link below.

Tehran’s Data Narrate (TDN)

The first step to find the apocalyptic futures of Tehran is to find the current trends of the city. Data gathering is the best way to observe the current situation and thus find patterns and trends. Therefore, in this series of workshops, participants have tried to collect and visualize data in a “designer manner.” Each group has chosen a topic and a position and collected and visualized data using tools available to them. 13 Projects from the participants’ activities are available at the link below.

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