Department of Attention
2026 Design Commissions

1. Devices of Attention Open
2. Sites of Attention Pending

   OPEN CALL FOR DESIGN PROPOSALS        DEVICES OF ATTENTION        DEADLINE NOV. 6      WHAT IS AT STAKE FOR OUR CAPACITY TO ATTEND TO THAT WHICH IS LARGER THAN US?        OPEN CALL FOR DESIGN PROPOSALS        DEVICES OF ATTENTION       DEADLINE NOV. 6        WHAT IS AT STAKE FOR OUR CAPACITY TO ATTEND TO THAT WHICH IS LARGER THAN US?      OPEN CALL FOR DESIGN PROPOSALS        DEVICES OF ATTENTION        DEADLINE NOV. 6        WHAT IS AT STAKE FOR OUR CAPACITY TO ATTEND TO THAT WHICH IS LARGER THAN US?    

  1. Introduction 
  2. Context 
  3. The Call
  4. Engaging the Cosmos
  5. Defining the Device
  6. Deliverables
  7. Schedule
  8. Evaluation

Devices of AttentionCommission I
Opens: Tuesday October 13, 2026
Closes: Friday November 6, 2026
The Ministry of Cosmic Affairs invites proposals for a body-scale device that places a person in relation with something larger than themselves.

For much of human history, the cosmos was encountered through instruments, architectures, calendars, paintings, rituals, and cultural narratives. These shaped attention and helped people orient themselves toward realities that exceeded any single individual. Many still exist, although their place in everyday life - and the ways we understand and engage with them - have changed.

For our contemporary condition, we are asking:

What kind of cosmological device does our moment need?

We are seeking proposals for a speculative object or instrument that a body can hold, wear, enter, operate, or stand within, and through which an otherwise overlooked, inaccessible, or unfamiliar relationship with a larger reality becomes perceptible, legible, or felt.

That reality may be physical, environmental, technological, social, temporal, or otherwise exceed the scale of the individual.

Successful proposals will not simply explain or represent the cosmos. They will arrange the conditions for an encounter with it.

Context: What is At Stake
For this commission, “cosmos” does not mean outer space alone. It refers to the larger realities within which individual life is already entangled - realities that exceed us in scale, duration, reach, or complexity. It includes the stars and sky, but also the atmosphere, the biosphere, a watershed, gravity, migration, the metabolism of a city, technological infrastructures, invisible forces and fields, and deep time.

Our present relationship to these realities is increasingly strange. We know more about them than any humans before us, yet we rarely feel ourselves inside them. Daily life can tend to run flat and instrumental, while encounters with the “cosmos” are set aside for special occasions: the wilderness trip, the eclipse viewing, the festival, the planetarium show.

At the Ministry of Cosmic Affairs, the Department of Attention is concerned with what may be lost when cosmic relation becomes something we occasionally visit rather than something we practice within everyday life.
We therefore ask:

What is at stake for our capacity to cultivate attention toward that which is larger than us?

The stakes might be ecological, ethical, psychological, civic, spiritual, or political. They might concern grief, scale, time, dependence, humility, or care.

The Ministry does not expect a solution to these conditions. We are asking you to take a position on why another quality of attention might matter now - and to let that position give purpose to the device you propose. Your position should identify not only what concerns you about contemporary life, but what we might discover, recognize, or reconsider by attending differently.

The Call
Design a speculative body-scale device that engages a larger reality and situates that encounter within contemporary life.

Your device must do three things at once:

1. Engage something larger and real. The device must establish a credible relationship with something larger than the individual - a physical phenomenon, environmental force, technological system, social dynamic, temporal rhythm, or other condition. It should register, respond to, translate, or otherwise make an aspect of that reality sensible. The relationship must be grounded in how that reality actually operates, even where the proposed device or its effects remain speculative. Simply illustrating or symbolizing the relationship is not enough.

2. Implicate a body. Someone must hold, wear, operate, occupy, carry, or orient themselves through it. The body is not simply the audience; it is part of the encounter.

3. Shape attention. Through its use, the device must cultivate a particular quality of attention. You should be able to show what kind of attention it asks for, why that matters now, and how the design conditions it.  Consider what the device asks a person to do differently: slow down, wait, compare, align, listen, follow, return, notice change, or become aware of something they ordinarily overlook.
    Your proposal may be speculative, but its relationships should be grounded in reality. 

    • Research how your chosen reality actually operates or manifests, then speculate on how a device might bring someone into a meaningful encounter with it. 

    • Prototype and test the device's central interaction: what it does, how a body participates, and how the intended relationship becomes perceptible.

    • Where the larger phenomenon cannot be reproduced directly, use a convincing simulation or analogue to test the design principle.

    Engaging the Cosmos
    1. Define the Relationship Begin with what you believe is at stake. Then ask:

    What relationship between ourselves and something larger than ourselves might be worth experiencing differently because of it?

    Do not look for something that simply symbolizes your contemporary concern. Identify a larger reality that another quality of attention might allow us to encounter differently.

    2. Investigate How It Operates Before imagining a device, investigate the reality you seek to engage.

    How does it operate? What causes it to change? Where and when does it manifest? What can be measured, observed, compared, collected, or experienced? What remains inaccessible to ordinary perception?

    Use research and direct investigation to identify a specific behaviour, property, or relationship that could become the basis for a design operation.

    3. Make it Sensible How might a device register, translate, amplify, reveal, or otherwise mediate some aspect of that reality? What would a person actually perceive or experience? What might they come to notice, question, or understand differently?

    Your device might engage a physical phenomenon, environmental force, technological system, social dynamic, temporal rhythm, or other condition that extends beyond the individual. What matters is that the relationship can become real through an encounter - not remain only an idea.

    Test your choice:

    • Larger? Does it exceed the individual in scale, duration, reach, or complexity?

    • Real? Is it actually present or operative in the world the device inhabits?

    • Sensible? Can some aspect of it become perceptible through the body and the device?

    • At stake? Does attending to it meaningfully connect to what you believe is at stake?

    • Operative? Can you identify a specific behaviour, property, or process that the device can engage or translate?


    Defining the Device
    ScaleThe device must operate at the scale of the body, not the scale of a building. It may be held, worn, carried, mounted, occupied, or temporarily enclose a person. It may use an existing surface or structure for support, but its primary design proposition must remain a discrete instrument rather than an architectural intervention.

    Context of Use Identify where, when, and by whom the device is encountered. Situate it within contemporary life through a credible setting, circumstance, practice, or ritual. Its use might be ordinary, occasional, cyclical, or dependent upon particular conditions. What matters is that the encounter has a meaningful reason to occur, rather than existing only as a novelty or spectacle.

    Participation, not representation The device should place the body in an active relationship with what it engages, rather than simply presenting information about it. Whenever possible, allow the larger reality - or one of its real manifestations - to influence how the device behaves or is experienced. Screens, sensors, data, and other forms of mediation are permitted, provided they meaningfully shape the encounter rather than simply deliver information about the subject.

    Design Operations What does the device DO? What must the device actually do to make the relationship sensible? Consider how it might collect, register, filter, amplify, translate, distort, compare, delay, reveal, or otherwise transform some aspect of the larger reality. These operations should inform the device's form, material, mechanism, and interaction. Every significant design decision should serve the relationship you are trying to establish and the quality of attention you hope to cultivate.

    Duration What temporal conditions belong to the phenomenon or relationship? Consider the rhythms and timescales involved. Some encounters may happen in a moment; others may require waiting, repetition, return, or change over days or seasons. Design for the duration the relationship demands.

    Protocol of Attention What actions does the participant undertake within those conditions? Every device must establish a deliberate sequence or set of conditions through which the encounter unfolds. What must someone do to initiate, sustain, and complete the encounter? What must they attend to, and how might that attention change through use? The protocol might involve waiting, aligning, adjusting, comparing, repeating, cooperating, or returning. It may be brief or extended, intuitive or ritualized. The important question is how the sequence of actions and conditions cultivates the intended quality of attention.

    Avoid:

    • Aestheticized nostalgia: borrowing the appearance of historical instruments without the logic or purpose that made them meaningful.

    • Grandiosity: promising transcendence, awe, or awakening that the device cannot credibly produce at its scale. Modest and true beats sublime and false.

    • Empty symbolism: Using an object or image as a metaphor for a larger reality without establishing a convincing operative relationship with it.

    **Resist deciding what your device will look like before investigating what it might do. Let research, material experiments, and tests of interaction inform the development of its form and operation.


    Deliverables

    Submit four bodies of work: a physical device, a set of hybrid drawings, record of process, and presentation slide deck.

    1. Physical model or prototype

    Produce a physical prototype at 1:1 scale wherever feasible, or a carefully constructed scale model supported by tests or demonstrations of its central operating principle.

    The prototype or model should demonstrate how the device engages a larger reality, how that relationship becomes sensible, and how a body participates. It need not reproduce every aspect of the proposed experience, but its design and intended operation must be convincing.

    Rough materials are welcome; resolved thinking is required. Test the device's central interaction and document what those tests reveal, including limitations, failures, and subsequent design changes.

    Photograph and document your model/prototype and include in your digital submission. 

    2. Hybrid drawings (minimum of 3)

    Produce a minimum of three hybrid drawings (A2 or larger) that investigate and communicate the proposal across scales, systems, bodies, and time. Combine appropriate forms of architectural representation - plans, sections, elevations, details, diagrams, sequences, or measured projections - with speculative, experiential, and narrative forms of drawing.

    These are research and design drawings, not simply illustrations of a completed device. They should reveal how the proposal works, how the encounter unfolds, and what relationships cannot be understood through the physical prototype alone.

    Together, the drawings should investigate three relationships:

    • Device + larger reality: how the device engages, responds to, or makes some aspect of that reality perceptible across the relevant scales or durations.
    • Device + body: how the body encounters the device through posture, gesture, movement, sequence, and sensation.
    • Device + protocol of attention in context: where and when the device belongs in contemporary life, how the device is used through a sequence of actions, conditions, or events, including any relevant duration, repetition, or change over time, and what it asks someone to notice differently.

    At least one drawing must establish a legible relationship between the body-scale encounter and the larger reality it engages, making visible connections across otherwise disconnected scales, systems, or durations.

    3. Process documentation

    A digital record (pdf) showing how you got there. Include:
    • your written answer to what is at stake (300 words maximum)
    • research documenting how your chosen reality operates, supported by relevant sources, direct observation, and investigation of material or mechanical precedents. 
    • concise diagrams that decode your own device to reveal the design principles it deploys and what has been physically tested, simulated, or remains speculative.
    • evidence of experimentation and iteration, including sketches, study models, tests, failures, discoveries, and the design decisions that followed.


    4. Presentation Slide Deck

    Develop a digital slide deck that highlights the key aspects of your proposal and guides your presentation. Slides should be concise, visually compelling, and carefully composed to complement the aesthetic and graphic language of your physical model/prototype and hybrid drawings. Use the presentation to communicate your design intentions, research, process, and discoveries without simply repeating what is already conveyed through the other deliverables.



    Design proposals will be presented to a jury selected by the Ministry on November 6. Each team must bring its physical model/prototype, printed hybrid drawings, and digital presentation slide deck.

    Submit a digital copy of all proposal deliverables via D2L by November 6 at 11:59 p.m.

    Schedule
    The following workflow outlines minimum expectations, not a fixed sequence. 
    Adapt the order and emphasis to suit your design process.



    Week 1
    Focus: Stakes + Relationships
    Research the larger reality and establish your position on what is at stake; investigate relevant phenomena and precedents; generate at least three device concepts through sketches and exploratory diagrams.    Week 2
    Focus: Operations + Experimentation

    Investigate how the chosen phenomena operate; test material and mechanical translations through rapid prototypes, diagrams, and bodily experiments; evaluate alternatives and commit to a provisional design direction. Begin exploring hybrid drawings.
    Week 3
    Focus: Device & Body

    Develop and test iterative study models with the body; refine the device's operations, mechanisms, and protocol of attention; advance the physical prototype and hybrid drawings.
    Week 4
    Focus: Resolution

    Refine and resolve the device prototype and hybrid drawings; document the design process, tests, and discoveries; assemble process documentation and prepare the jury presentation.
    Nov. 6 Review
    Jury Presentation

    Each team will have a maximum of 15 minutes to present their proposal, using the physical prototype/model, hybrid drawings, and digital slide deck to communicate the design's intentions, operations, bodily interactions, and key discoveries.

    Evaluation
      CriterionThe jury will be looking to see:

      Position + Purpose


      Does the proposal establish a clear and considered position on what is at stake, and does that position meaningfully inform the design rather than simply illustrating it?

      Cosmological EngagementDoes the device establish a credible and operative relationship with a larger reality, grounded in research rather than symbolism alone?
      Body + Attention
      Is bodily participation essential to the encounter, and does the design convincingly cultivate a particular quality of attention?

      Design Logic

      		Are the device's form, materials, operations, mechanisms, and temporal conditions purposefully developed?

      Context + Protocol

      		Does the proposed encounter have a credible place in contemporary life, with a clearly considered sequence or condition of use?

      Drawing + Communication

      		Do the hybrid drawings investigate, reveal, and communicate relationships that extend beyond what the physical prototype alone can demonstrate?

      Process + Iteration

      		Is there convincing evidence of research, experimentation, testing, reflection, and meaningful development?

      Craft + ResolutionAre the prototype and drawings sufficiently careful, precise, and developed to demonstrate and communicate the proposal?

      Evaluation considers both the strength of the proposed device and the quality of design inquiry demonstrated through the work. A convincing proposal is not simply a resolved object, but evidence of purposeful research, experimentation, critical decisions, and the capacity to learn through making.

      1. Introduction
      2. Context
      3. The Call
      4. Engaging the Cosmos
      5. Defining the Device
      6. Deliverables
      7. Schedule
      8. Evaluation
      The Ministry of Cosmic Affair’s 2026 Design Commissions are a partnership with the University of Calgary, The School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape, and the Bachelor of Design in City Innovation program.
      © Joshua ClarkeTop