Kairos Futura, a Nairobi-based collective, has won the prestigious Grand Prize at the 2025 S+T+ARTS Prize Africa for The Wild Future Lab, a visionary project that reimagines Nairobi in 2045 as an ecologically rewilded city.
With a €15,000 award presented by Ars Electronica, the honor recognizes their bold integration of fashion, sustainability, and speculative design.
At its core, The Wild Future Lab envisions a future where native plants reclaim abandoned greenhouses and fashion plays a key role in restoring balance between nature and city life. The team blended traditional Kenyan crafts with modern technology to create open-source textile machines. They also revived linen production in Kenya, dormant since World War II, using banana fiber, pineapple leaves, nettle, vegan silk, and flax.
Through community workshops, they collaborated with Nairobi-based designers to explore how clothing can tell stories about resilience, culture, and also climate. They photographed garments in overgrown, decaying industrial spaces, merging imagined futures with visible, present-day transformations. The result is a striking visual narrative that uses fashion as a tool for environmental storytelling.
Now in its second edition, the S+T+ARTS Africa Prize saw 537 submissions this year. This is a 33% rise from 2024. After reviewing 80 shortlisted entries, the jury noted a growing interest in AI-generated art, immersive environments, as well as works tackling environmental issues like unregulated mining and resource exploitation.
According to the jury, Kairos Futura stood out for its fresh, context-rooted vision. While many speculative projects recycle Eurocentric ideas, The Wild Future Lab offers a truly African lens on the future. It challenges the status quo and dares the continent to dream boldly and act intentionally.
In addition to the Grand Prize, five Awards of Distinction were also awarded €3,000 each:
- Black Planetarium – Uncharted: Anthologies Across the Atlantic – Kidus Hailesilassie (ET)
- Fisherchild – Traci Kwaai, Francois Knoetze, Amy Wilson, Kyle Marais (ZA)
- Sands of Time: Walls We Can Walk Through – Ala Praxis (NG)
- The Founders Pillars – Meghna Singh (IN), Simon Wood (IE), and also Lesiba Mabitsela (ZA)
- Written To Not Remain – Tewa Barnosa (LY)
S+T+ARTS Afropean Intelligence is funded by the European Union under DG CNECT’s STARTS initiative.
