Future Cities Lab is an experimental design and research studio operating globally out of San Francisco. Since 2004, founding partners Jason Kelly Johnson (b. 1973, Canada) and Nataly Gattegno (b. 1977, Greece) have collaborated on a range of award-winning projects exploring the intersections of design with advanced fabrication technologies, robotics, responsive systems and public space. Future Cities Lab is at the forefront of exploring how advanced technologies, social media and the Internet will profoundly affect how we live, work, communicate and play in the future. Their approach to design and making, which has been described as “high performance craft,” is also deeply experiential, interactive and materially rich.
Most recently, Future Cities Lab’s Theater of Lost Species and Hydraspan projects were exhibited in the Dissident Futures exhibition (October 18, 2013–February 2, 2014) at YBCA. In 2012, their HYDRAMAX Port Machines project was exhibited at SFMOMA, and they exhibited their work at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. They were awarded the 2011 Architectural League of New York Young Architects Prize and the 2009 New York Prize at the Van Alen Institute in New York City.
