“Very few realise the facilitating power of Stillness: the silent promise of peaceful resolve, fairness and equanimity.”- Lao Tsu 

The COVID-19 pandemic brought global living as we knew it to a halt, resulting in a sense of unity under the dystopian umbrella of uncertainty. Humanity has had a chance to reflect during this encounter with stillness. Economic stillness in the linear concept of time, and stillness as a concept, beyond temporality, as an enabling actor of creation.

 

This reading of stillness applies to human and non-human modes of being. It refers to the inherent atemporality of a moment. It is the place in which unified networks of entities move in harmony with bi-directional care and mutually beneficial action, with no external hand forcing their trajectory. Here, we position the inverse of stillness as oblivion. Oblivion is equally composed atemporally in the moment, yet it possesses precisely the opposite ontological possibilities. Namely, none. Both stillness and oblivion are rooted in nothingness; one supports an environment conducive to enabling care, leading to creation and the other facilitates an environment facilitating destructive conditions, leading toward ecological collapse.

 

This platform introduces a transition framework that places Stillness at the heart of design. The Stillness Design Framework place a novel concept of Stillness, not as an absence of movement, but as a generative space, an alternative to the relentless momentum of hyper-productivity. It is an invitation to rethink how we create, experience, and interact with designed environments, products and systems.