A speculative design project envisioning a car-free Paris shaped by play, movement, and collective well-being.

The Soft Machines explores a future in which the disappearance of the automobile fundamentally alters how we inhabit and move through the city. Set against an imagined Paris of 2067, the project proposes alternative forms of mobility that prioritize pleasure, slowness, and embodied experience over speed and efficiency.

Developed through theoretical research fieldwork and material experimentation the project draws on Constant Nieuwenhuys’ New Babylon and Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens. In this speculative scenario commuter traffic has dissolved and the city is reconfigured as a space for play. The Soft Machines function as adaptive and responsive companions facilitating movement while enhancing happiness and well being and reframing mobility as a cultural and social practice rather than a logistical system.

Materiality plays a central role in articulating this vision. The Soft Machines are developed through experiments with rope and silicone, materials chosen for their tactile and responsive qualities. Rope structures create an animal like surface that invites pulling tearing and grasping while silicone functions as a skin like membrane. Together these materials encourage direct physical interaction allowing the objects to be activated through touch movement and bodily engagement rather than instruction or control.