A wheat field arrives in the middle of a Perth office
This installation fills a Perth CBD office floor with a soundscape and Wheatbelt-inspired landscape under fluorescent light.
Future Thinking
Plant Life: plant-based design comes to the NGV
The National Gallery of Victoria is bringing plant-based design to the public with Plant Life: The Nature of Design, a new exhibition opening free at the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia on 28 August and running until 7 February 2027.
Comfort is the most basic test of a sustainable home
Juhani Pallasmaa’s The Eyes of the Skin argues for the whole-body experience of a building – and, read one way, for comfort as the most basic measure of a sustainable home.
Three Japanese words that describe sustainable design better than ‘sustainability’
Three Japanese aesthetic concepts – wabi-sabi, shibui and ma – offer a different perspective on “sustainability.”
VIDEO: Could a rise in mass timber and CLT cause deforestation? New research says yes
A 2025 paper in Nature Communications makes the strongest quantified case yet for building with mass timber at scale. But it also highlights the potential for deforestation.
Designed for decay: A 3D printable yeast-based biomaterial
A team at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, has worked out how to turn baker’s yeast into an architectural surface.
The Melbourne Design Week 2026 hitlist
With thirty-plus events on bio-materials, repair and circularity, this year’s design week highlights that sustainability concepts have beyond the fringe.
Traceability is the key to unlocking true circular design
Traceability is at the heart of the circular design. You can’t keep materials in play if you don’t know exactly what they are, where they came from, or how they behave over time.
Why systems thinking matters more than ever
When we talk about sustainability in design – whether furniture, buildings, materials or communities – the instinct is often to narrow our view: pick a green material, specify energy-efficient appliances, reduce waste. These are worthwhile efforts. But if we don’t widen our frame, we risk treating symptoms rather than shifting the system itself.
7 non-extractive mining innovations
These pioneering ideas are a glimpse at how “mining” can mean recovering, recirculating and even creating new minerals in place, rather than carving scars into the landscape.
About Futures is an independent magazine documenting the homes, ideas and conversations shaping a new era of sustainable design.
The most exciting architecture being built right now is sustainable. About Futures covers the groundbreaking materials, the alternative building processes, and the people reimagining what home can look like when it’s designed for the future.
