image © London Design Biennale 2016

More’s satirical novel, which has never been out of print, has spawned a vast literary genre. As modernist architects and designers pursued social perfection with perhaps uncritical zeal, utopian ideals often degenerated into dystopian realities. Writers like H.G. Wells and Aldous Huxley illustrated the dangers inherent in utopian thinking. The regimented order in utopias, where one political model satisfies all, is shown to be totalitarian and repressive. Correspondingly, the ideological pursuit of utopia fell out of fashion. But can something be salvaged from utopian thinking, a drive that the philosopher Ernst Bloch referred to as 'the principle of hope'?

The utopian impulse allows us to escape the blinkers of the present and dream, telling stories about alternative futures that provoke important questions about the world in which we live. Architects and designers possess such critical, optimistic imaginations. They identify problems, however small, and draw up plans that suggest how they might be different. Indeed, in highlighting a flaw in the fabric of the world, and wondering how this might be improved, the designer is already halfway to a solution. Such creative interventions inevitably carry a sense of social expectation.

At the London Design Biennale, participating countries are encouraged to interrogate the history of the utopian idea and engage with some of the fundamental issues faced by humanity, suggesting solutions to them that use design and engineering. Their responses will not only show design’s innate power to strike up and inform debate, but also as a catalyst: provoking real change by suggesting inspiring or cautionary futures. These visions might be big or small, practical or hypothetical, but together they will represent a laboratory of ambitious ideas that might, in their way, contribute to making the world a better place. And what other objective is there to good design?

image © London Design Biennale 2016