Speculative Stuff
2023 - 2024 - 2025 - 2026 Student Works
* The intellectual property rights of each work are owned by each student.

SSS project:  Selfish Slumber Society













JUHA KIM






 Human beings inevitably cause environmental destruction. Humans constantly operate factories and consume resources for their own benefit. However, throughout history, humanity has exploited nature without concern for its destruction. The environment is deteriorating at an alarming rate, and it may soon reach a point where humans are unable to intervene. Yet, at the same time, we often fail to fully comprehend the gravity of the situation. If the environment deteriorates to the extent that Earth’s resources are insufficient to sustain all humans, can humanity make ethically correct choices? Can we consider a system that sacrifices the well-being of some individuals for the benefit of others?

In the year 2070, environmental pollution has become so severe that human life expectancy has decreased to only 20 years. The world has no choice but to acknowledge that humans are the main culprits behind environmental pollution. To reduce environmental pollution and extend human life expectancy, humanity has chosen to put half of the population into a state of slumber.

SSS project: 

“Selfish Slumber Society Project” that prevents environmental pollution by hibernating humans. This society follows the principle of greatest happiness of utilitarianism. This is because it is a society in which humans put conservation first quantitatively and choose sleep in a way that intentionally reduces the population by reducing the number of humans. The Selfish Slumber Society project proposes a society that puts a portion of the population into a prolonged sleep state to conserve the environment and its resources. By reducing human activity, this society presents a ground-breaking solution to the problems of overpopulation and environmental pollution. When individuals in this society reach the age of 20, they must choose how they will enter their sleep state. All of humanity is compelled to enter this state, known as the “Turn off” mode, and depending on their chosen method (There are 2 options in this society.), they will experience different life cycles.

In a society where the environmental degradation has reached such an uncontrollable level that not sleeping would result in the death of all, what choice would you make?

Video link



2023



Speculative Stuff



Speculative Stuff is a public archive of speculative design works developed through Yonsei University’s Integrated Design courses, 
led by Hyunjae Daniel Shin (Associate Professor) and Eun Sun Park (Lecturer).

The platform documents how undergraduate students begin with small everyday questions — discomforts, contradictions, awkward moments, and social habits we often overlook — and transform them into speculative objects, future scenarios, and critical narratives.

These works are not predictions of the future. They are invitations to look again at the present. By using comedy, exaggeration, absurdity, and preposterous worldbuilding, the projects make familiar systems feel strange and open up alternative ways of imagining technology, culture, society, and the environment.

The course has been shaped by an ongoing pedagogical exploration of Speculative Critical Design, combining futures studies, design research, interactive workshops, and public engagement. It encourages students to move beyond solution-driven design and develop more critical, imaginative, and participatory ways of engaging with alternative futures.

The methodological background of Speculative Stuff is further informed by Eun Sun Park’s doctoral research on the Preposterous Comedy Approach for Speculative Critical Design, which examines how comedy techniques, preposterous futures, and speculative artefacts can support critical thinking, public engagement, and future-oriented design education.

Read the dissertation HERE(EN) (KR)