Speculative Warsaw
In our dreams, it's Warsaw, but not one Warsaw.
Speculative Warsaw is a critical research and design practice that brings together embodied research, systems thinking, and speculative design to build new methods for reading, questioning, and reimagining complex urban futures.
Our focus is Warsaw: not as a case study, but as our own living context shaped by history, tension, and transformation; a city we're still learning to work with, not just design for.
In our dreams
How can speculation stay local rather than abstract?
We dream of speculation not as prediction, but as a way of staying in relationship with the places and bodies it comes from. We use speculative critical thinking-frames to build own methods of enquiry.
How can we co-create futures with the city, not just design for it?
We dream of a city that grows out of the ground it stands on, not one assembled from trends that could belong anywhere. The stories residents tell, the contexts they live inside: these aren't background material. They are the roots we build from.
How can we legitimize lived experience as a source of knowledge and imagination?
We dream of an imagination that doesn't start from nowhere. It starts from what's already been lived, already been felt: a hesitation at a crosswalk, a smell that means home, a route walked so many times it's stopped being noticed. We treat these as data.
What we do
Workshops
We design events and experiments where, together with the people who join us, we build alternative versions of the city.
Research
We conduct situated, critical research grounded in local context, lived experience, and complex systems.
Teaching
Teaching is our laboratory for the future: a space to experiment, unlearn, and build new practices.
Curious about our work?
View Projects
O nas
Beata Giermasinska
Beata Giermasinska is a design strategist and researcher (MSc, Strategic Design and Management, Parsons School of Design). In her work, lived human experience becomes a tool for understanding & re-thinking cities.
She co-founded the experience design department at UNStudio, a Dutch architecture&urban practice. She has designed the Inclusive City of the Future strategy for Penang, future-workforce experience design for NEOM, and the experience design for the LA 2028 Olympics.
She researches the city in action: visualizing urban happiness at the Media Architecture Biennale , mapping shared urban experiences at Service Design Days and researching post-pandemic urban resilience with Harvard University and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.
She is a member of the Miasto Jest Nasze (City Is Ours) urban movement in Warsaw. She teaches internationally: from Lagos to Edinburgh, at the intersection of design, cities, and futures thinking.
Julia W. Szagdaj
Julia W. Szagdaj is a writer and experimental, speculative practitioner working at the intersection of language, design, and futures research. She holds an MFA in Transdisciplinary Design from Parsons School of Design in New York, where she learned speculative design from Fiona Raby, Tony Dunne, and Eliota Montgomery.
Her research work Faraoyść: Imagining Alternative Worlds from Joy was published by Emerald Publishing. She has presented her artistic practice at the Society for Artistic Research Conference (SAR) and at "Situated Imagination and Imaginaries of Urban Futures," organized by the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge in 2026.
Speculative Warsaw
Wersja Polska
In our dreams, it's Warsaw, but not one Warsaw. Fragmentary, parallel, contradictory, layered over each other like a collage that’s never finished.
Speculative Warsaw is a practice for holding multiplicity of perspective, working with place, memory, and the many futures a city could still become. We want to expand the definiton of knowledge, and what gets to count as the future.
In our dreams
How can speculation stay local rather than abstract?
We dream of speculation not as prediction, but as a way of staying in relationship with the places and bodies it comes from. We use speculative critical thinking-frames to build own methods of enquiry.
How can we co-create futures with the city, not just design for it?
We dream of a city that grows out of the ground it stands on, not one assembled from trends that could belong anywhere. The stories residents tell, the contexts they live inside: these aren't background material. They are the roots we build from.
How can we legitimize lived experience as a source of knowledge and imagination?
We dream of an imagination that doesn't start from nowhere. It starts from what's already been lived, already been felt: a hesitation at a crosswalk, a smell that means home, a route walked so many times it's stopped being noticed. We treat these as data.
What we do
Workshops
We design events and experiments where, together with the people who join us, we build alternative versions of the city.
Research
We conduct situated, critical research grounded in our context.
Teaching
Teaching is our laboratory for the future: a space to experiment, unlearn, and build new practices.
Curious about our work?
View Projects
In our dreams, it's Warsaw, but not one Warsaw.
Speculative Warsaw is a critical research and design practice that brings together embodied research, systems thinking, and speculative design to build new methods for reading, questioning, and reimagining complex urban futures.
Our focus is Warsaw: not as a case study, but as our own living context shaped by history, tension, and transformation; a city we're still learning to work with, not just design for.
In our dreams
How can speculation stay local rather than abstract?
We dream of speculation not as prediction, but as a way of staying in relationship with the places and bodies it comes from. We use speculative critical thinking-frames to build own, embodied methods of inquiry and design.
How can we co-create futures with the city, not just design for it?
We dream of a city that grows out of the ground it stands on, not one assembled from trends that could belong anywhere. The stories residents tell, the contexts they live inside: these aren't background material. They are the roots we build from.
How can we legitimize lived experience as a source of knowledge and imagination?
We dream of an imagination that doesn't start from nowhere. It starts from what's already been lived, already been felt: a hesitation at a crosswalk, a smell that means home, a route walked so many times it's stopped being noticed. We treat these as data.
What we do
Workshops & Events
We design events and experiments where, together with the people who join us, we build alternative versions of the city.
Research
We conduct situated, critical research grounded in our context.
Teaching
Teaching is our laboratory for the future: a space to experiment, unlearn, and build new practices.
Curious about our work?
View Projects
About us
Beata Giermasinska
Beata Giermasinska is a design strategist and researcher (MSc, Strategic Design and Management, Parsons School of Design). In her work, lived human experience becomes a tool for understanding & re-thinking cities.
She co-founded the experience design department at UNStudio, a Dutch architecture&urban practice. She has designed the Inclusive City of the Future strategy for Penang, future-workforce experience design for NEOM, and the experience design for the LA 2028 Olympics.
She researches the city in action: visualizing urban happiness at the Media Architecture Biennale , mapping shared urban experiences at Service Design Days and researching post-pandemic urban resilience with Harvard University and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.
She is a member of the Miasto Jest Nasze (City Is Ours) urban movement in Warsaw. She teaches internationally: from Lagos to Edinburgh, at the intersection of design, cities, and futures thinking.
Julia W.Szagdaj
Julia W. Szagdaj is a writer and experimental, speculative practitioner working at the intersection of language, design, and futures research. She holds an MFA in Transdisciplinary Design from Parsons School of Design in New York, where she learned speculative design from Fiona Raby, Tony Dunne, and Eliota Montgomery.
Her research work Faraoyść: Imagining Alternative Worlds from Joy was published by Emerald Publishing. She has presented her artistic practice at the Society for Artistic Research Conference (SAR) and at "Situated Imagination and Imaginaries of Urban Futures," organized by the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge in 2026.