Meet DSI Fall 2023
DSI Designers in Residence:
Grey Area Collective

Sahar Ghaheri: Experience Design / Strategy
Nicole Feliz:  Content Strategy / Process Design / Facilitation

Grey Area Collective integrates art, activism, and technology to drive change and spark conversation. Besides collaborations with human rights groups, the Action Lab regularly hosts multidisciplinary designers to conceptualize and build site-specific interventions in cities around the world.. They use speculative design and design fiction to provoke discussion around the complex global challenges we face, ranging from climate change to bodily autonomy.

Introducing Amazonia

“We cannot protect something we do not love, we cannot love what we do not know, and we cannot know what we do not see. And touch. And hear.” – Richard Louv

In Fall 2023, as a part of their DSI residency, Grey Area Collective joins forces with our DSI students to design a place based campaign, Amazonia. Amazonia is a glimpse into a climate-ravaged future — one where the systems that provide food, water, shelter, safety, power, and communications to New Yorkers are all teetering on the verge of collapse. Amazonia attempts to make the size and complexity of climate change tangible, relatable, and specific through the lens of everyday objects, and invites us to imagine futures that currently seem impossible.

Amazonia 3.0 comes to life on April 14, 2024 as part of the Earth Day Initiative Festival in NYC. The immersive experience includes speculative products, a pop-up truck, a toolkit, a microsite,  the Amazonia film ), and community-building events. It’s all aimed at reminding viewers of the stark realities we face if we keep turning a blind eye to the tyranny of billionaires (like Jeff Bezos) who are wreaking havoc on the planet, undermining workers’ rights, and distorting democracy everywhere.