The Terrible Ideas Network is a centuries-old network that aims to bust these ‘terrible’ designs around us through bio-speculative un-designing. Through performing speculative fabulation, we critique and reorient our ways of being and relating to the world, inviting others into critical dialogue and a movement of collective bio-speculative un-designing.
Year- Spring 2024
Team- Parth Patel, Cherilyn Tan, Gretel Dougherty
Awards- Finalist, Science Sandbox at Bio design Challenge 2024
Skills- Generative modelling, Blender 3d modelling, Community Engagement
Satire using commercial magazine as a medium
Our project questions the human-imposed, capitalist-driven designs around us. Coming from 3 different parts of the world – India, Malaysia, the US – we see the same pattern happening across the contexts we grew up in, to the places we call home. The way humans live and relate to each other and to our world is not sustainable.
We did not aim to create solutions; we initiated dialogue and called for a profound mindset shift. By challenging norms, groupthink, and unconscious cognition, we questioned capitalism and consumerism, exploring alternatives through the lens of speculative and discursive design.
Prototype for the magazine
Human industry, driven by the flawed logic of perpetual design to counter design, had devastated ecosystems and proliferated harm across social, political, and cultural dimensions. This global pattern—from palm oil plantations to monoculture—revealed a deeper complicity in short-term, human-centered thinking that ignored the Earth’s vast timeline. Building on speculative precedents, we critiqued through satire, performed capitalism itself, and exposed the paradox of designing within a capitalist frame.
