If the global pandemic has taught us anything, it is that everything – from microscopic bodies to planetary systems, is interconnected and in continual transformation. And behind every transformation lies the hidden story of how such shifts came into being; visible in their anthropological, material, cultural and technological qualities. Of how they were conceived, distributed, used and even disposed of. This is as true for our fragile ecosystems, as it is for our deliberate, human interventions. In this year’s Design Investigations show, we unearth, explore, imagine and craft such stories and share them with you. From meditative simulations that lift our bodies engulfed in viral anxiety to inflatable armours that bear witness to enslaved labour; from provocations around altered birth rituals to clothing that enables the revelation of our multilayered identities. Such stories are ultimately the stories of ourselves. They reflect not just the tensions, but also the possibilities for flourishing in challenging times. As our projects demonstrate, our Studio at the Angewandte nurtures a desire to imagine alternatives that move us away from our current socio-political constraints. We reimagine domestic chores as communal rituals, speculate new forms of education through AI and propose the possibility of a new language for a gender fair society. From here, we speculate the lived realities of a community thriving on the moon, foreground the sociopolitical challenges of a lone surviving neighbourhood on Earth, and visualise the relationships of thriving more-than-human networks. Because as Walidah Imarisha said: “We need imaginative spaces like sci-fi if we are going to build new, just futures. We have to have space to dream the change we will build.”