We follow up on a prominent line of work in which principles of embodied cognition are employed to not only account for skilled coping but also for more intellectual activities such as remembering and imagination. Imagination then, is not a reflective activity an individual does by herself, but a shared and embodied activity scaffolded by tangible design. We present a case study in which we designed a toolkit to facilitate imagining the Netherlands in 2050. We wrote speculative stories of people living in 2050 and designed an assortment of objects. We held several workshops to use the toolkit for shared imagination for our client, Rijkswaterstaat. We analyze how, in the context of the workshops, the stories and objects provided affordances for shared imagination. We thereby hope to have demonstrated that it is possible to design for more intellectual activities in a tangible and embodied way.

In this commentary on Rietveld’s inaugural lecture, we exemplify with one of our design cases for project Expedition RWS 2050, how Rietveld’s and our method are complementary. Within this project, RWS invited us to contribute our design skills and make relevant future scenarios experienceable. To scaffold imaginative discussions about everyday life in 2050 with a cross-section of the Dutch population, we wrote seven short speculative stories and designed a set of physical discussion tools. When looking at this design case and the cases Rietveld describes in his inaugural lecture, one can see that we both are guided by and contributing to the development of ecological and enactive philosophy, which rejects the dichotomy between sensorimotor and higher cognition. In his approach, Rietveld pushes the boundaries of the affordances of the material during the making process, whereas we predominantly investigate the affordances of the things and practices which we have designed. Despite these differences, we are both pursuing engagement with philosophical practice through non-discursive means while imagining new sociomaterial practices.

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