Written by Yao Chen   Hikikomori, a Japanese neologism, signifies a portion of Japanese population, mainly young men aged from 15 to 35, who withdraw into their homes or ‘willfully’ shut themselves off from the social sphere (Overell 2018, 206). A governmental survey shows that the “first-generation hikikomori,” the oldest among them, have isolated themselves…

Written by Lilian Karr   Sociotechnological Imaginaries shape how we see the world and influence our decision-making. Those imaginaries happen on different planes. For example, there are national sociotechnical imaginaries: “collectively imagined forms of social life and social order reflected in the design and fulfillment of nation-specific scientific and/or technological projects.” When reading what Sheila…

Written by Leroy Roncken   People dream of cities of tomorrow where problems of today are solved. These imagined utopias seem to get a step closer to reality in the recurring world expos, where people, visions, and technologies meet. The world expo of 2025 was recently announced to take place in Osaka Kansai, and the…

Written by Melisse Vroegindeweij   Sheila Jasanoff (2015) introduces the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries in Dreamscapes of Modernity as “collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology” (4). These imaginaries…

In this workshop, students from different programs and academies collaborate on an interdisciplinary urban design assignment. The specific focus of the workshop is to develop creative design for more-than-human cities. This deals with the question of how our cities can become more sustainable – both socially and ecologically – by taking into account the diverse…