Andrea Santi, independent design, Barcelona

MDEFest 2026, “Myths of Tomorrow”, is the 6th edition of the festival organised by the Master in Design for Emergent Futures (@iaacbcn @fablabbcn), celebrating the projects of the MDEF students. The event takes place on the 18th of June 2026, at Elisava School.

The festival’s activities, ranging from workshops and panels to interactive installations, aim to promote future literacy, empower the collective force of creatives, and raise greater consciousness about the pressing urgency of the climate and social crisis.

In March 2026, as part of my MDEF programme, I joined a research trip to Senegal called Buum, pont, mort: “rope, nail, hammer.”

We travelled from cities like Dakar and Saint-Louis to rural Casamance, meeting artisans and collectives to see how communities make, repair, and sustain everyday life through craft, reuse, and cooperation.

For me it was a chance to rethink design as something situated and relational, rooted in real resourcefulness rather than innovation for its own sake.

The company Luxtravoid Robotics turns a quiet corner of Poblenou into a working excavation site.

A robot descends into the city’s buried pipes, crawling through the underground systems that feed the flickering light above. The side we see every day.

An artistic residency for Contorno Urbano: a participatory design process built to create a network, and some awareness, between the shops around Plaza de la Libertad.

What came out of it is a series of portable shelves whose job is to bring more green space into the plaza. The whole thing grew out of conversations with the owners of those shops.

We were BORN FROM THE SEA, the sea that has raised and shaped the daughters and sons of the Capitanata for generations, never asking for anything in return.

More and more often, though, we forget what it means to LIVE FOR THE SEA: to tell its story, to respect it, to protect it, to love it.

From this, Marenére Fest is born: an event open to the whole community that, through musical performances, art installations, and activities for learning and awareness, seeks to restore dignity to our origins, celebrating the history of the sea and its traditions.

A collective action in the Fossolo neighbourhood, Bologna. Where a newsstand once stood, a table with four chairs was installed. Designed as a tribute to newspaper culture and built entirely from waste found in the neighbourhood.

This practice was never meant to be violent or vandalistic, but just an act carried out by friends to create spaces of community in a neighbourhood strangled by gentrification.