Public Installation
Miradouro do Futuro
A rotating public installation first developed in Lisbon, inviting people to look at familiar places through possible futures.
Using speculative storytelling, AI-generated imagery, spatial design, and digital fabrication, Miradouro do Futuro transforms future scenarios from a private screen-based experience into a shared public encounter.
Rather than viewing possible futures on a personal device, visitors encounter them through a physical structure situated in public space, creating opportunities for collective reflection, discussion, and imagination.
AI + Fabrication
Speculative design
Interactive installation
Services
Speculative design, interactive installation, AI-generated imagery, digital fabrication
Supported by
FabLab Lisboa · Albatroz Engenharia
Presented at
Gentler Futures Festival (2024) TEDx Marvila (2026) Gentler Futures Festival (2026)
Project Overview
Miradouro do Futuro is a speculative public installation that invites people to stand within a real place and look into an alternative version of it.
Participants approach a physical viewing structure, interact with its rotating head, and encounter future visual scenarios connected to the landscape around them. The experience creates a window between the city as it exists today and the possibilities people may wish to imagine for it.
Rather than presenting a single prediction, the installation creates space for conversation: What should this place become? What should we protect? Which futures feel desirable, possible, or worth resisting?
The project combines speculative design, generative AI, spatial storytelling, public participation, and digital fabrication to transform future-thinking from an abstract exercise into a tangible public experience.
From V1 to 2.0
Miradouro do Futuro combines speculative design, generative AI, computational workflows, and digital fabrication.
Future scenarios were developed through AI-assisted image generation and transformed into immersive 360° environments connected to real locations in Lisbon. High-resolution panoramic environments were captured through professional photographic surveys of each site and assembled into immersive scenes anchored to real places.
The physical installations were designed, prototyped, and fabricated at FabLab Lisboa using digital fabrication technologies including CNC machining and rapid prototyping. Multiple physical and digital iterations were tested before producing the final public installations.
The project bridges digital speculation and physical experience, allowing visitors to encounter imagined futures through a tangible public interface.
Design & Fabrication Process
Miradouro do Futuro combines speculative design, generative AI, computational workflows, and digital fabrication.
Future scenarios were developed through AI-assisted image generation and transformed into immersive 360° environments connected to real locations in Lisbon. High-resolution panoramic environments were captured through professional photographic surveys of each site and assembled into immersive scenes anchored to real places.
The physical installations were designed, prototyped, and fabricated at FabLab Lisboa using digital fabrication technologies including CNC machining and rapid prototyping. Multiple physical and digital iterations were tested before producing the final public installations.
The project bridges digital speculation and physical experience, allowing visitors to encounter imagined futures through a tangible public interface.
Adaptable by Design
Miradouro do Futuro is designed as an adaptable format for different sites, histories, and audiences.
Its physical form, viewing technology, exterior treatment, and digital content can change in response to each context. The format can be developed for unbuilt architecture, cultural heritage interpretation, historical reconstruction, future-city scenarios, museum exhibitions, public consultation, and educational programmes.
The central interaction remains constant: standing within a real place and looking into another possibility.
This makes the project particularly suited to heritage contexts, where it can connect historical research, unfinished or unrealised architecture, public memory, and contemporary questions about how a place might evolve.
Current Iterations
Miradouro do Futuro has evolved through workshops, festivals, and conference settings, exploring how people engage with possible futures when those futures are placed directly within familiar landscapes.
2024 — Gentler Futures Festival, Mouraria Creative Hub
The first public iteration combined a participatory workshop with a one-person viewing experience inspired by traditional observation towers and binocular viewers. Participants used AI tools to imagine regenerative futures for Lisbon, created immersive 360° environments, and assembled DIY VR viewers using cardboard and smartphones. The installation served as both a viewing device and a prompt for discussion about the futures people wanted to build and what it would take to get there.
2026 — TEDx Marvila
The project expanded into a public-facing experience presented at Pátio da Galé during TEDx Marvila. The installation invited visitors to encounter regenerative visions of Marvila’s Prata Riverside district from Lisbon’s historic city centre, demonstrating how the format can connect audiences to places beyond their immediate surroundings. Visitors explored alternative development scenarios and reflected on how technology, infrastructure, ecology, policy, and community decision-making could shape the district’s future. Two installations were presented simultaneously: one within the public event space and another in the sponsor and speaker area.
2026 — Gentler Futures Festival, Mouraria Creative Hub
The work evolved into a shared-format installation designed for collective viewing, conversation, and public reflection. The cork skin was removed to reveal the underlying structure, transforming the installation into a living framework where plants emerged from the base and climbed through the tower. This version foregrounded the installation as a social interface: a place where visitors could encounter, debate, and contribute to possible futures together.
Potential Applications
Miradouro do Futuro can be commissioned or adapted for cultural institutions, municipalities, museums, heritage sites, educational programmes, exhibitions, festivals, and public-realm projects.
Potential applications include:
• Unbuilt or unfinished architecture
• Historic sites and archaeological interpretation
• Museum and exhibition experiences
• Regenerative urban futures
• Community consultation and participatory planning
• Site-specific public art
• AI literacy and educational programmes
• Heritage reconstruction and historical storytelling
• Architectural archives and unrealised projects
• Climate adaptation and future scenario planning
Whether revealing a lost past, an unfinished vision, or a possible future, the format creates a bridge between place, imagination, and public participation.
The installation offers a way to bring research, storytelling, technology, and community engagement into direct conversation with the environments people inhabit.
Credits
Concept, Research, Design & Facilitation
Megan Ammari
Production Partner
FabLab Lisboa
Engineering Support
Albatroz Engenharia
Presented At
Gentler Futures Festival (2024)
TEDx Marvila (2026)
Gentler Futures Festival (2026)
Venues
Mouraria Creative Hub, Lisbon
Pátio da Galé, Praça do Comércio, Lisbon
Supported By
DGARTES
