Inspired by the design of the 2014 Serpentine Pavilion, Liam Young led a wander through speculative botany, discussing the history of imaginary plants and animals and our relationship to nature.
A series of walks in and around the Serpentine Pavilion explored themes related to its design through conversation and performative interventions.
In his project Specimen of Unnatural History Liam Young developed a collection of near-future biotech creatures made from Japanese anime robots and taxidermy specimens. For this Saturday Walk, Young imagined a series of plants around the Pavilion through narratives and passages from Leo Lionni’s 1970 encyclopaedia, Parallel Botany.
Liam Young lives and works in London as an independent designer, futurist, critic and curator. Young is a founder of TOMORROW’S THOUGHTS TODAY. His projects deploy fictional near-future scenarios as critical instruments for instigating debate about the social, architectural and political consequences of emerging biological and technological futures.
TOMORROW’S THOUGHTS TODAY (TTT) is a London-based think tank exploring the consequences of fantastic, speculative and imaginary urbanisms. Borrowing from the techniques of fiction, film and futures, TTT deploy design speculations as imaginative tools to help explore the implications and consequences of emerging trends, technologies and ecological conditions.
