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Anab Jain

Anab Jain

Title
Honorary Doctor
Person Type
Honorary
Anab Jain

Biography

Honorary Doctor

Anab Jain grew up in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India where she studied filmmaking at the National Institute of Design. On moving to London, she studied Interaction Design at the Royal College of Art, followed by working on machine intelligence at Microsoft Research.

She co-founded the award-winning studio Superflux with her partner Jon Ardern; one of the first studios to pioneer speculative design, critical foresight, design fiction and experiential futures for businesses. Clients include Google AI, the Cabinet Office, Sony, the government of UAE and the United Nations Development Program.

With 13 years' experience in contributing to the fields of speculative and futures design, Anab and her team built cautionary tales, super fictions, future archaeologies and immersive simulations. These materially-present opportunities to explore possible futures, be they living with urban floods or food shortages, allow the implementation of strategies today for this climate-altered present.

Anab, Jon and their team’s hypothetical worlds have been exhibited globally, in China, at MoMA in New York, at La Biennale di Venezia, at the Barbican and the V&A.

Her work is referenced by UAL students as a source of inspiration, she has contributed to lectures and mentorship programmes for the London College of Communication and also serves as Professor of Design Investigations at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. There her pedagogical approach is to instill a culture of radical enquiry as designers explore their changing role in a complex and uncertain world.

At a time when so much of our present day may feel dystopian, Anab and Jon, with Superflux, explore ways to navigate precarity using mythopoetic, experiential productions that take visitors into new possibilities. Companionship and respect take the form of a rescued forest or a table inviting many different species to dine together as a symbolic story that questions human exceptionalism. A philosopher for our age, her concepts of ‘design for the new normal’ and ‘more-than-human centered design’ are expanding the public’s imagination, and making possible futures tangible.