the urgency to slow down imagines transportation as giant green planters


Designboom_as a creative response to both the COVID-19 pandemic and the continuous destruction of the planet’s natural resources, nicolas abdelkader presents a series of photo montages that question our relationship with mobility. by turning planes, ships and trucks into huge green planters, ‘the urgency to slow down’ imagines an alternative future after lockdown, one in which these symbols of excessive energy consumption have been left behind, only to become something beneficial for the environment.

abdelkader explains the reason behind the series: ‘I don’t know about you but I ‘naively’ thought that COVID-19 would allow us to glimpse a new world. however, in view of the planes in the sky at the time of writing, the number of engine’s covering the song of birds, the sending of rockets into space, and the governmental recommendations of these last days across the planet (particularly in france), one can affirm that the frenetic rhythm of yesterday is ‘naturally’ reclaiming its place to the detriment of biodiversity and our health.’

‘like many of us, for long weeks I fantasized about a more reasonable, calmer, and more harmonious world where our means of transport would literally become ‘augmented planters’. a world where to move an 80kg body thanks to a 2-ton car would only be a distant bad memory… continues abdelkader.‘like many of us, for long weeks I fantasized about a more reasonable, calmer, and more harmonious world where our means of transport would literally become ‘augmented planters’. a world where to move an 80kg body thanks to a 2-ton car would only be a distant bad memory… continues abdelkader.

‘like many of us, for long weeks I fantasized about a more reasonable, calmer, and more harmonious world where our means of transport would literally become ‘augmented planters’. a world where to move an 80kg body thanks to a 2-ton car would only be a distant bad memory… continues abdelkader.