BIO

Nicole Koltick is the Associate Director for the MSDes in Design Research Program and an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture, Design, & Urbanism at Drexel University. She founded the Design Futures Lab in 2012, one of the first speculative design research labs in the country, to explore the convergence of Machines, Materials, and Narratives. Her lab develops design research projects from speculative provocations into highly resolved prototypes of objects, experiences, and environments for the near and far future. Design Futures is an emerging field of design research that engages a vast array of complex, multi-disciplinary problems which fall outside the scope of traditional design practice. Recent lab projects include scent communication devices, synthetic biological interior surfaces, hybrid, bio-computational human interfaces, and a multi-year investigation into speculative ambient robotic systems. Professor Koltick’s work embodies her commitment to anti-disciplinary, operating at highly variable scales and deploying widely divergent methodologies. She is a MacDowell Fellow and her work has been widely exhibited and published internationally with editorial coverage on Dezeen, Fast Company, the creator’s project, Architizer, and other technology and design outlets. Nicole Koltick currently serves as an Associate Professor and Associate Director for the MDes in Design Research program in the Department of Architecture, Design & Urbanism. She founded the Design Futures Lab, one of the first speculative design research labs in the country in 2012, to explore the convergence of Machines, Materials and Narratives. Her lab develops design research projects from speculative provocations into highly resolved prototypes of objects, experiences and environments for the near and far future. Recent lab projects include scent communication devices, synthetic biological interior surfaces, hybrid bio-computational human interfaces and a multi-year investigation into speculative ambient robotic systems. She is a 2014 MacDowell Fellow and her work has been widely exhibited internationally with editorial coverage on Dezeen, Fast Company, the creator’s project, Architizer and other technology and design outlets.

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Humans, as a species, have dominated the atmospheres they find themselves in, and the practice of design typically reflects this outsized impact. Currently, design is primarily human-centered. However, in Professor Nicole Koltick's design research, the focus is on non-humans. In her talk, Nicole Koltick shares some of her projects which explore ways to design for non-humans, addressing challenges faced by our planet’s oceans, birds, and caves. Nicole engages the practice of speculative design or design fiction, which is a method to address complex problems by combining existing and emerging technologies with compelling narratives meant to stimulate debate and generate new design potentials for the future.