The prototype aims to surface how heat is normalised by inventing a shared vocabulary of slang, myths, and contested terms that moves beyond metrics and official categories.

It takes form as a crossword, a nursery rhyme, and a cool aid kit, using educational and creative formats to explore heat distress and changing qualities of life, while gesturing toward a future where power, privilege, and survival are encoded in language itself.

The prototype emerged through a futures process that worked with urban heat signals, unpacked their direct and indirect consequences, and used world-building to explore how these shifts could reorganise everyday life, access, and survival in the city.

Heat Lexicon responds to a widening gap between how heat is experienced and how it is spoken about. As temperatures rise, heat increasingly shapes health, learning, and daily functioning, yet public language remains limited to numbers, warnings, and technical categories, leaving little space to express fatigue, distress, or disruption.

This gap is especially visible among children. In government schools with tin roofs, students skip classes during peak heat, while those who attend struggle to concentrate. Many lack the vocabulary to explain what they are feeling, making heat a silent but powerful force shaping educational outcomes. The prototype works with signals of rising thermal stress and communicative absence, exploring how new words and expressions might make lived experiences of heat visible and actionable.

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The prototype unfolds through three complementary artefacts that translate heat from an abstract metric into lived, communicable experience.

Crossword Puzzle

The crossword puzzle introduces a speculative vocabulary shaped by everyday colloquial speech and slang rather than formal terminology. Clues across and down invite participants to fill in words that reflect how heat is talked about, felt, and remembered in daily life, encouraging collective sense making around new and emerging expressions.

Nursery Rhyme

The nursery rhyme is designed as a learning tool for children. It links colours to different physiological states of heat stress, helping children recognise changes in their bodies and communicate discomfort. Inspired by the Universal Thermal Climate Index, it adapts adult centred classifications into a form that is accessible, memorable, and child focused.

Tip: Turn on subtitles for the Enlgish translation!

Cool Aid Kit

The cool aid kit functions as a practical self care artefact. It is an emergency kit intended for use during moments of heat distress, reinforcing the connection between naming heat and responding to it.