About The Project
This research focuses on the use of immersive storytelling to facilitate shared visions of future cities, which have resilient communities and sustainability as core principles. How can specific media and scenarios be used to reach the general public to co-create this vision?
“The doors of the Mapping Center slide open and I am greeted by Mc Cass, our ever-friendly Mapping Center Computer Assistant. I follow it to the central mapping room, which holds a huge-scale representation of the city of New Canterbury, a combination of 3D-printed buildings, parks, and landscapes, layered with Augmented Reality representations of all sorts of data. I ask Mc Cass to show me how the city is feeling today, are we happy?”
The story excerpt is part of the story of Morvyn, a fictional city consultant living in the year 2070. This story is based on an interview with Perica Savanovic, in his position as a lecturer for the Avans Lectureship of Built Environment. He was one of eight lecturers Nina Kramer interviewed for the project "New Canterbury Tales". All interviews focus on looking ahead to 2070. Trends for specific fields are translated into characters with their own stories.
So what is this research project about?
The New Canterbury Tales' research focuses on imagining different perspectives of the built environment using everyday experiences of the future (around 2070), just like the original 'Canterbury Tales' (Chaucer, 1387-1400) which described everyday experiences in the 14th century. By immersing the audience in those experiences through immersive storytelling, we can collectively develop new visions of the future. "The New Canterbury Tales" project emphatically focuses on designing WITH people rather than designing FOR people. And in particular, dialogue about what is and is not desirable. It is not about what is desired according to the designer or policymaker, but rather about that dialogue between the user (of the future).'
The New Canterbury Tales Values
Living With Nature
Sustainability | Resilience
How can we live with nature in the future? Is it still at the service of humans or are we entering into a symbiotic relationship that benefits both parties? What if nature gets a voice of its own, and gets its own legal rights?
Compassionate Communities
Development | Structure
How can we redefine and redesign our habitat, our built environments, if we make compassion an important value? What if we take that as a starting point, both in the way we treat each other and the world around us?
How Is This Project Being Explored?
Both partners and students have been making their own prototypes for the New Canterbury Tales. Before the official start of this project Cambridge School of Art and Avans CMD Breda have been working on it since 2020. This resulted in a few prototypes already developed, such as the Minecraft project, a collaboration between students from both Universities.
Explore our prototypes here: