DesignTalks 2022  - Liam Young, sci-fi architect and director

Liam Young, sci-fi architect, director and BAFTA nominated producer is speaking at DesignTalks 2022, the international conference and signature event of DesignMarch, exploring how design and architecture can help imagine and propose alternative futures and promote change.

Young operates in the spaces between design, fiction and futures. Described by the BBC as ‘the man designing our futures’, his visionary films and speculative worlds are both extraordinary images of tomorrow and urgent examinations of the environmental questions facing us today.

Young has been a pioneer and a leading figure within his field and affected a whole generation of architects. As a world builder he visualizes the cities, spaces and props of our imaginary futures for the film and television industry and with his own films he has premiered with platforms ranging from Channel 4, Apple+, SxSW, Tribeca, the New York Metropolitan Museum, The Royal Academy, Venice Biennale, the BBC and the Guardian. His films have been collected internationally by museums such as the New York Met, Art Institute of Chicago, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Gallery of Victoria and M Plus Hong Kong and has been acclaimed in both mainstream and design media including features with TED, Wired, New Scientist, Arte, Canal+, Time magazine and many more.

DesignTalks 2022 will take place in Harpa on the 4th of May and is curated by Hlin Helga Guðlaugsdóttir and this year the event will be moderated by Marcus Fairs, editor-in-chief and founder of Dezeen, connecting the conversations to a wider context, highlighting its relevance to an audience across professional fields.

The programme will be an exploration of resilient approaches, regeneration and reconnection with traditional crafts and indigenious wisdom, experiments rewiring and rethinking current systems, the design of data and information, extended realities and speculation into the future as a form of creative and critical reflection of the now.