Designing Radical Futures:


a design research practice about collaboratively imagining transformed social systems



We use participatory and speculative design practices to explore collaborative ways of imagining transformed social systems: futures without capitalism, and without policing. We look at large-scale systemic change through the lens of interpersonal interactions and tangible artifacts. What might alternative futures look and feel like? What do we want, and what don’t we want, from future systems?


Currently: Assistant Director at the Design Thinking Initiative at Smith College

Recent publications:

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Follow us on Instagram at @designradicalfutures or get in touch at designradicalfutures@gmail.com


Alix Gerber began this practice in 2015 as a graduate student in Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons School of Design in New York City. Since then, she has facilitated imaginative workshops and projects about futures without policing with residents of Harlem, New York and Ferguson, Missouri, and developed speculative design courses where students make artifacts from futures with different social systems. Alix has taught at Washington University in St. Louis, Parsons at the New School, and Smith College. She is currently Assistant Director of the Design Thinking Initiative at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Collaborators include:

  • Talia Blanchard, Millie Howard, Maggie Huang, Oriana Taylor, and Laura Torraco (Making Radical Futures Lab, August 2023-December 2024)
  • Millie Howard, Mirriam Nzunda, Phoebe Kolbert, Amy Putnam, Emily Norton, Javier Puente, Kathy Guo, and Megan Lyster (Making Radical Futures Lab, summer 2023)
  • Eleni Andris (Lemonade 50¢)
  • and many more!
Running on Cargo