22 September 2023

In September 2023, Mahdi Naim Design Lab was invited to participate in the 40th anniversary of APCI — the Agence pour la Promotion de la Création Industrielle — in Lyon. This landmark event brought together institutional actors, designers, researchers and professionals around a collective reflection on the future of design and its practices.

This anniversary edition gave central place to Design Fiction as a tool for projection, analysis and the construction of possible futures.

Design Fiction as a Strategic Tool

Design Fiction is not simply a speculative or narrative approach. It constitutes a genuine research and foresight device, enabling interrogation of technological, social and cultural trajectories through concrete, embodied and debatable scenarios.

In this framework, my intervention was positioned within an approach using fiction as a critical and projective instrument, capable of revealing latent tensions in the design field — between innovation and heritage, between global and local, between the acceleration of technological change and the permanence of human needs.

APCI: An Institutional Context for Design

The APCI is one of France’s principal institutions for the promotion of industrial creation. Its 40th anniversary was not a simple institutional celebration. It was an opportunity to take stock: where has design come from in 40 years? Where is it going in the next 40? What has changed in the relationship between design, industry, territory and society?

These questions are not abstract. They are directly operational for any designer working today — including from Morocco, in dialogue with both Moroccan craft traditions and European industrial design practice.

Prospective Design: Thinking Beyond the Immediate

Prospective design is not futurism. It does not predict. It prepares. By constructing plausible future scenarios — even dystopian or uncomfortable ones — it allows identification of the design decisions being made today that will determine tomorrow’s possibilities. This preparatory work is a form of strategic intelligence applicable at multiple scales: studio, company, territory, nation.

Participation in the 40th Anniversary of APCI — Design Fiction and design futures, Lyon, September 2023.