Virtual Colloquium: Ivica Mitrović – “Reclaiming Futures”

We are joined by Ivica Mitrović on Thursday, 06.11.2025 for a presentation titled “Reclaiming Futures” as part of the Virtual Colloquium sessions at the Berlin University of the Arts. We are living in a time of polycrisis, when extreme catastrophic scenarios are likely to take place in the near future, reflecting the fact that the future did not turn out as bright as envisioned by the Western world in the second part of the 20th century. Historically, design and architecture, as worldmaking agents, have had the agility to explore diverse versions of the world using speculation and imagination. Today’s challenge is to revisit how design and architectural thinking and doing can contribute to reclaiming our imaginations of the future and shape new, bright, and viable future paths. The lecture will present a speculative design approach, developed as the “Mediterranean speculative approach”, which deals with the futures and implications / reflections of major global changes (technological, economic, political and environmental) in the local context. It was developed in the context of the Adriatic, away from European urban and technological centres, “on the periphery of Europe”. It resulted in a series of speculative projects, focusing on a range of global phenomena, from the “smart cities” and privacy, the future of tourism-based economies, automation at the local level, climate change and the future of the sea, to the resilience of local self-organising communities.

Ivica Mitrović is an associate professor at the Arts Academy University of Split. Since 2001 he has been dealing with critical and speculative design. Together with Oleg Šuran, he was the curator of the Croatian presentation at the La Triennale di Milano (2016). He coordinated the EU project SpeculativeEdu, which dealt with education in speculative design and related practices. He was the curator of the discursive program representing the Republic of Croatia at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2023). He is the author and editor of several books on contemporary reflexive and critical design practice. https://interakcije.net/en/

Please find below the Zoom link to join, which will be the same for all online sessions this semester:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82954605489?pwd=VP3XBDzVogeuQtLWaXbWEFpm9ObxiQ.1

Meeting-ID: 829 5460 5489
Kenncode: 079532