Ecology

Rachel Lehrer, Lee Moreau
The Futures Archive S2E5: The Air Conditioner
On this episode of The Futures Archive Lee Moreau and Rachel Lehrer discuss the pleasures and pains of air conditioning for ourselves and the sustrainability of the planet.


Laura Scherling
A Tale of Long Island City: Between Industrialization, Innovation, and Gentrification
The multi-faceted aspects of development in Long Island City, with creative and technological development deeply ingrained in it’s rich urban identity and history.


Steven Heller
The Plastic Wars
Thoughts on the plastic wars from Steven Heller.


Andre Barnet
The Age of Wreckers and Exterminators
For many people, the sudden appearance of Carson’s and Jacobs’s brilliant and prescient books was one of those moments that seem, in retrospect, to have changed the very order of things.


Laura Tarrish
Hunter | Gatherer: Botanicals
Each of us has a connection to nature — a primal response to certain landscapes — yet we don’t always use it as raw material for our own work.



John Thackara
Food As A Commons
People go hungry not because of a shortage of production, but because the food available is too expensive, or they lack the land to grow it on. In California, the prototype of a combined social, political and technical solution has been launched which promises to unlock the food system crisis.


John Thackara
Keep Your Stuff Alive
What would fashion be like if it was more than a an act of consumption with no meaning beyond the point of sale? What kind of system would improve the quality of our fashion experience without increasing the quantity we consume?


John Thackara
A ‘Wild Mirror’ For Desk-Bound Workers
A new scheme in England connects office workers with living systems by means of a ‘wild mirror’: each workspace is twinned with an equivalent area of ecosystem regeneration.



John Thackara
Summer Xskool in Sweden
This year’s Doors of Perception Summer Xskool explores what it can mean in practice to move from a ‘do less harm’ approach to sustainability to a practice of leave things better.



John Thackara
Caloryville: The Two-Wheeled City
In China, ‘battery-bikes’ are outselling cars by four-to-one. Pedelec sales are soaring in Europe, too. Is this the start of system-wide phase-shift in transportation?


John Thackara
Ecuador, Open Knowledge, and ‘Buen Vivir’: Interview With Michel Bauwens
John Thackara interviews Michel Bauwens, founder of the P2P Foundation, is to lead a strategic policy project for Ecuador’s government called Free/Libre Open Knowledge (FLOK), also known as the social knowledge economy project.


John Thackara
John Thackara on Avatar
John Thackara is a writer, speaker and design producer, and director of Doors of Perception. In addition to this blog, he is the author of twelve books including In The Bubble: Designing In A Complex World and Wouldn't It Be Great If….



John Thackara
Between Sorrel And Supertanker
John Thackara reviews the recent Doors of Perception xskool.


John Thackara
Green Tourism: Why It Failed And How It Can Succeed
At a conference with 300 travel industry professionals, John Thackara ponders the successes, failures and potential in the Green Tourism industry.


John Thackara
Trust Is Not An Algorithm
By some accounts the world’s information is doubling every two years. This impressive if unprovable fact has got many people wondering: what to do with it?



John Thackara
A Roof, A Skill, A Market
The Nubian Vault Association has evolved a unique approach to housing in West Africa that creates three kinds of value within local economies: a roof, a skill and a market.


John Thackara
The Ecozoic City
How humans are reintegrating their endeavours into a larger ecological consciousness.


John Thackara
Healing The Metabolic Rift
John Thackara on the possibilities and issues global business leaders will face at the 2013 World Economic Forum.


John Thackara
Venice: from Gated Lagoon to Bioregion
A review of the options that Venice faces in trying to shore up the city.


John Thackara
From Autobahn to Bioregion
A review of the projects submitted to the Audi Urban Future Award.



Observed
Design Indaba Online FilmFest
Design Indaba's online film festival features 10 of the Focus Forward short films.


Rob Walker
Killing for Beautiful Objects
A report on the ivory trade reminds us of the uniquely human willingness to kill for beautiful objects.


John Thackara
How To Manage a Constellation
To solve complex and interconnected human-environment challenges, like the death of the Baltic Sea, we need to build ‘social-ecological coalitions’ or ‘constellations’.


John Thackara
Old Growth
The tale of a furniture giant and the possible ecological happy ending.


John Thackara
Top Down Nature
An overview of Bordeaux 55,000: a project to explore ‘how best to transform 55,000 hectares (136,000 acres) into natural areas’.


John Thackara
The Other Green Economy
People the world over are divided between radically different conceptions of their future: resource-intensive production on the one side, versus regenerative land-based enterprises, and mosaics of micro-enterprises, on the other.


John Thackara
Istanbul: City of Seeds
Rather than dream up exotic visions of “what could be”, an xskool looks for social and natural assets that already exist – and grows from there.


John Thackara
Oil-Powered Thinking
Why is it that countervailing facts don’t change things in our evidence-based world? And what might we do about it?


John Thackara
Zurich Eco Lab
A report on the Zurich's thriving urban eco culture.


John Thackara
Design In The Light of Dark Energy
A shortened version of a talk on why the world has to reduce energy consumption, the five per cent energy solution and some of the people around the world who are leading the way.



John Thackara
A Reading List for Mr. Mario Monti
A (mostly) online list of readings for the new Italian Prime Minister, Mr. Mario Monti, and anyone else who is ready for a cold hard look at our energy resources and options.


John Thackara
From Druids to Biorefineries: Innovation in a Small Nation
Small nations can be flexible in ways that big one cannot.



Courtney Drake, William Drenttel, and Deirdre Cerminaro
Design and the Social Sector: An Annotated Bibliography
This bibiography surveys the literature of social design — the spectrum from design process and thinking to the zones of social innovation.



Julie Lasky
MSC Greenhouse Project
On learning about science, nutrition and politics at the Manhattan School for Children.


Chappell Ellison
How Do I Know It’s Faux?
If you want to go faux, you might have to call in a fur expert.



John Thackara
Green Issues in Communication Design
Why do companies get environmental awards for polluting less, even though they are still polluting?


John Thackara
A Lesson from Cornwall
I've always loved lichen. I found this one in Cornwall’s Biodiversity Action Plan and chose it as a beautiful asset that already exists in the county.



John Thackara
Could Green Energy Kill the Desert?
Large scale wind power might not be as green as you think.



John Thackara
Whole, Whole on the Range
As a juror on the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, John Thackara reviews the highlight.



Timothy Jack Ward
Gardens and Their Designers
When I loaded up my Budget truck and moved from New York to our nation’s capital, the last thing on, and the first thing off, was my plants.



Mark Dery
Paradise Fouled
Review of Crude, Joe Berlinger's documentary film about a lawsuit filed against Chevron by denizens of the Ecuadorean Amazon.



John Thackara
Fish Systems and Design
Though gloomy predictions say we could see the end of seafood by 2048, several initiatives are rethinking the way we acquire fish.



John Thackara
Make Sense, Not Stuff
John Thackara presents a three-step plan to connect design schools to the green economy.



John Thackara
Design for (Im)mobility: Interview with Domus
John Thackera defines and explains the importance of ethnoecology.



John Thackara
Global Place — Or is it a Hat?
We must view the world with a new slant and take advantage of a huge design opportunity to create sustainable structures for the future.



John Thackara
Cities, Design and Democracy: Conversation with Sunil Abraham in Cluster
John Thackara and Sunil Abraham sit down for an in-depth interview with Cluster Magazine.



John Thackara
Interior Design at War [April 2003]
Report on design in the war in Afghanistan, the Pearl River Delta in China, the Media Lab Europe (MLE), the 50th anniversary of the German Design Council, New Mobility, and more.



Observed


Cheryl Holmes's next book documents the history of the question she has been asking for decades—where are the Black designers?— along with related questions that are urgent to the design profession: where did they originate, where have they been, and why haven't they been represented in design histories and canons? With a foreword by Crystal Williams, President of Rhode Island School of Design, HERE: Where the Black Designers Are will be published next fall by Princeton Architectural Press.

Can ballot design be deemed unconstitutional? More on the phenomenon known as "Ballot Siberia," where un-bracketed candidates often find themselves disadvantaged by being relegated to the end of the ballot.

Designing the Modern World—Lucy Johnston's new monograph celebrating the extraordinary range of British industrial designer (and Pentagram co-founder) Sir Kenneth Grange—is just out from our friends at Thames&Hudson. More here.

Good news to start your week: design jobs are in demand!

An interview with DB | BD Minisode cohost and The State of Black Design founder Omari Souza about his conference,  and another about his new book. (And a delightful conversation between Souza and Revision Path host Maurice Cherry here.) 

What happens when you let everyone have a hand in the way things should look and feel and perform—including the kids? An inspiring story about one school’s inclusive design efforts

Graphic designer Fred Troller forged a Swiss modernist path through corporate America in a career that spanned five decades. The Dutch-born, Troller—whose clients included, among others, IBM, Faber Castell, Hoffmann LaRoche, Champion International, and the New York Zoological Society—was also an educator, artist, and sculptor. Want more? Help our friends at Volume raise the funds they both need and deserve by supporting the publication of a Troller monograph here.

The Independence Institute is less a think tank than an action tank—and part of that action means rethinking how the framing of the US Constitution might benefit from some closer observation. In order to ensure election integrity for the foreseeable future, they propose a constitutional amendment restoring and reinforcing the Constitution’s original protections.

Design! Fintech! Discuss amongst yourselves!

The art (and design) of “traffic calming” is like language: it’s best when it is extremely clear and concise, eliminating the need for extra thinking on the receiving end. How bollards, arrows, and other design interventions on the street promote public safety for everyone. (If you really want to go down the design-and-traffic rabbit hole with us here, read about how speculative scenario mapping benefits from something called “digital twins”.)

Opening this week and running through next fall at Poster House in New York, a career retrospective for Dawn Baillie, whose posters for Silence of the Lambs, Little Miss Sunshine, and Dirty Dancing, among countless others, have helped shape our experience of cinema. In a field long-dominated by men, Bailie's posters span some thirty-five years, an achievement in itself. (The New York Times reviews it here.)

Can't make it to Austin for SXSW this year? In one discussion, a selection of designers, policymakers, scientists, and engineers sought identify creative solutions to bigger challenges. (The “design track” ends today, but you can catch up with all the highlights here.)

Should there be an Oscar for main title design?

Design contributes hugely to how we spend (okay, waste) time online. But does that mean that screen addiction is a moral imperative for designers? Liz Gorny weighs in, and Brazillian designer Lara Mendonça (who, and we love this, also self-identifies as a philosopher) shares some of her own pithy observations.

Oscar nominees, one poster at a time.

Ellen Mirojnick—the costume designer behind Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, and Oppenheimer, for which she is 2024 Oscar nominee—shares some career highlights from forty years in film. (Bonus content: we kicked off Season Nine of The Design of Business  | The Business of Design with this conversation.)

Erleen Hatfield, of The Hatfield Group, is the engineer behind many innovative buildings, including the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, home to the Atlanta Falcons, whose roof opens like a camera aperture to reveal the sky. Now, she's also one of the newly-minted AIA fellows, an honor awarded to architects—only 3% of their 98,000+ AIA members—who have made significant contributions to the profession.  

Anamorph, a new filmmaking and technology company co-founded by filmmaker Gary Hustwit (of Helvetica fame) and digital artist Brendan Dawes, wants to reshape the cinematic experience with a proprietary generative technology that can create films that are different every time they’re shown.

Viewers seem more concerned with Biden's rounded smartphone than with his policies. (We're not discussing the age of the man, here—just his phone!)

Claiming he is “not very good at design,” Riken Yamamoto, a 78-year old Japanese architect, wins the coveted Pritzger Prize. Notes the jury: "Yamamoto’s architecture serves both as background and foreground to everyday life, blurring boundaries between its public and private dimensions, and multiplying opportunities for people to meet spontaneously”.

Citizen outcry over Southwest's new cabin design—and in particular, it's new-and-improved-seats—may not be likely to  result in changes any time soon, but the comments (Ozempic seats!) are highly entertaining. (“Is there an option to just stand?”)

More than 50 years ago, a small group of design educators tried to decolonize design in Africa, hoping to teach African designers how to use research and design for their people and their nations by leveraging their own indigenous knowledge and local customs. While their pioneering effort was suppressed after a few short years by the colonial authorities, their approach to teaching design still resonates today: consider the story of François-X. N.I. Nsenga, an indigenous African designer who grew up in Belgian Rwanda and studied in British Kenya at Africa's first university-based design program. For more on the cultural history, design philosphy, and the "Europeanisation" of colonial Africa, you'll find a conversation with Nsenga in Gjoko Muratovski's book, Research for Designers: A Guide to Methods and Practice

At turns dystopian and delightful, the future of AI-based digital assistants seem poised to communicate through the “emotion and information display” of new constellations of hardware. (Including … orbs!) Like concept cars, they're not on the market just yet, but developmental efforts at more than a few telecoms suggest they're clearly on the horizon. More here.

Jha D Amazi, a principal and the director of the Public Memory and Memorials Lab for MASS (Model of Architecture Serving Society) Design Group, examines how spatializing memory can spark future collective action and provide a more accurate and diverse portrayal of our nation's complicated past. She gave this year’s annual Richard Saivetz ’69 Memorial Architectural Lecture at Brandeis last month, entitled, “Spatializing Memory”.

Self-proclaimed “geriatric starlet” and style icon Iris Apfel has died. She was 102.

“You know, you’ve got to try to sneak in a little bit of humanity,” observes Steve Matteson, the designer behind Aptos—Microsoft's new “default” font. “I did that by adding a little swing to the R and the double stacked g." Adds Jon Friedman, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for design: “It’s both quirky and creates a more natural feel that brings in some of the serif font ‘je ne sais quoi’ to it”. Resistant to change (or simply longing for Calibri), font geeks are not having it. Fun fact? Aptos was originally called Bierstadt. You may well imagine, as we did, that this was a nod to the 19th century German-American landscape painter, Albert Bierstadt—but the actual translation is “Beer City”. 

In Dallas, the Better Block Foundation is sponsoring a design contest called Creating Connections, aimed at addressing the growing epidemic of loneliness by exploring the impact of design on how people connect with others.

Good design is invisible, but bad design is unignorable. Elliot Vredenburg, Associate Creative Director at Mother Design, bares it all.

Arab design is a story of globalism, evidenced through collaborations with the Arab diaspora living, working, and creating abroad, and with the expatriate community in the Middle East and North Africa. More on the highlights (and insights) from Doha Design 2024 here.

Organizations that embrace diversity tend to foster innovation, challenge ingrained thought patterns, and enhance financial performance. Its true benefits emerge when leaders and employees cultivate a sense of inclusion. How architecture is reckoning with the cultural and economic challenges of—and demands for—a more inclusive workforce.



Jobs | March 18