IED Madrid hosted an event where students from the Master’s in Digital Product Design and the Master’s in Textile Design and New Materials presented a series of speculative artefacts designed to imagine alternatives to current societal and economic models.
Events
HYPER FUTURES: Designing Beyond Capitalism Through Speculative Artefacts
Date
11 May 2026
On 8 May, IED Madrid Design District became a space for reflection and experimentation on the role of design as a tool for imagining new social, economic, technological and cultural scenarios.
Under the title HYPER FUTURES. Designing Beyond Capitalism, the event showcased the outcomes of an exploration lab jointly developed by students from the Master’s in Digital Product Design and the Master’s in Textile Design and New Materials. Throighout the process, participants worked on creating artefacts capable of materialising hypotheses about futures that move beyond the current frameworks of capitalism.
The programme opened with a futures materialisation workshop led by Stef Silva, Founder and Creative Director of Invisible and IED Madrid alumna, together with Raquel Buj, Creative Director and Founder of Buj Studio and Programme Leader of the Master’s in Textile Design and New Materials, and Atahualpa Badillo, Head of Strategic Design & Foresight and Programme Leader of the Master’s in Digital Product Design.
The workshop was followed by a roundtable discussion bringing together faculty members and participating students to share insights, methodologies and reflections emerging from the laboratory process. The conversation explored the potential of design to challenge established systems and imagine alternative forms of social and productive organisation.
The event continued with a guided tour of the exhibition, during which students introduced the artefacts created by each team. These projects operated as fragments of possible futures: partial materialisations that enabled visitors to envision how specific values, behaviours and infrastructures might emerge in alternative social contexts.
Congratulations to all of you on the great work!
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