Willfully conflicted

I’m Rachel, associate editor at Design Observer and proud co-editor of our incredible contributor network, comprising design writers and leaders from around the globe. (Want in? Pitch us here. Or nominate a rad design collab for this year’s Design Observer 20 — read on for details.)

One such big thinker is Rebecca Billi, whose new piece on urban conflict the world over has got me thinking hyperlocal.

I grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis, where it was common for students at my school to have never set foot downtown — only 30 minutes from most of our houses. St. Louis has a difficult past marked by redlining and segregated housing, and stark economic disparities are still apparent from one block to the next. Because of this, many families in my mostly white neighborhood wrote off downtown St. Louis as dangerous and nothing more.

In the 10th grade, my history teacher polled us on who’d ever been downtown, exposing a number of teenagers in the room who had barely left their suburban bubble. “But you’re missing so much!” he exclaimed, and I agreed, thanks to parents and grandparents completely in love with the vibrant culture of our city.

It’s this tension — the kind that so many flinch away from — that we should turn toward, Billi argues.

“Though it’s often easier to condemn conflict than question why it arose in the first place, we need to fight this impulse to bring about a better future,” she writes. “It all amounts to segregation and battened down borders that toxify our cities and contemporary social infrastructure.”

In sidestepping friction, so many of my peers had missed so much. Yes, local theatre, an always-free zoo, art museum block parties, quirky restaurants — but also, encounters with people who were different from them, and a feeling that our urban spaces belong to all of us.

Using our infrastructure for what we truly need can sometimes look surprising, says DO’s managing producer Alexis Haut, who wrote me today about seeing her own home reflected in Billi’s piece:

“It’s got me thinking about a site of a spontaneous mash-up of capital, conflict, and community in my own city: the plaza in front of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the arena where the New York Liberty and Brooklyn Nets play. In the summer of 2020, this once-maligned symbol of destructive gentrification became the epicenter of Brooklyn’s Black Lives Matter protests.
 
Though the plaza was intentionally designed to be used by the community, I’m not sure that its designers foresaw that it could become a central node in one of the largest protest movements in American history. There was an obvious dissonance in seeing a multiracial coalition of protestors holding cardboard signs scrawled with the names of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, chanting for justice under the logo of one of the largest financial institutions in the world. But that’s what made it so special: the community using a space designed for us in the way we knew we needed it most.”

(More from Alexis below.)

Are there any areas of work or life where you’re embracing conflict? Let me know. And if your weekend isn’t one of those areas, I hope you enjoy it!

Rachel Paese
Associate Editor
[email protected]
LinkedIn

This edition of The Observatory was edited by Delaney Rebernik. 

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The big think

In 2021, following protests over the murder of George Floyd, hundreds of acres outside of Atlanta were earmarked for law enforcement agencies to build a new training center. Baptized “Cop City,” the site became a blueprint for a future fueled by unconditional, police-enforced control. But soon, this authoritarian vision gave rise to mass protests that swept the country and transcended physical bounds altogether. From websites and rallies, to theater and community education, protesters established diffuse infrastructure to counter a repressive display of state power.

The result? A landscape of dissent that was both meta and physical, able to produce spaces for opposition at different scales. The protesters’ acts of solidarity and care, amplified by contemporary media, became the true site of contestation, creating drag on Cop City, if not halting construction outright. (The training center opened in April.)

Keep reading.

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ISO rad collabs

Seeking nominations! Submit here.

The Design Observer 20 highlights the remarkable people, projects, and big ideas that bringing a more just, beautiful world into being.

This year, we’re shining a light on the Radical Collaborators — those who are breaking silos, thinking across disciplines, engaging diverse stakeholders, and redefining how design works and who it works for. 

Is this you? Someone you know (or know of)?

Name your nominee by 9/5 for a chance a chance at fame and glory.

(Past honorees include AI truthteller Timnit Gebru, cultural changemaker Henry Timms, and global design community Games for Change.)

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Some fine print

Here’s a sampling of our latest and greatest from the Design Observer editorial and contributor network.

What’s money for: A new column about wealth, power, and purpose After two decades of making the wealthy wealthier, Tom Haslett left Wall Street to discover what money could really accomplish. In his inaugural column, he reflects on investments that matter. By Tom Haslett.

Rest as reparations: reimagining how we invest in Black women entrepreneurs Black women entrepreneurs, who are outpacing other minority business owners, belong at the center of a bold new blueprint for reparations where rest — not production — prevails. By Courtney L. McCluney, PhD.

Dispirited Away: In the wrong hands, ‘Ghiblified’ genAI images erode ethos, empathy, and our very humanity An art historian who grew up inside Pixar Studios reflects on what we lose when art once rendered through deliberate labor and deep care can be reproduced in seconds — and weaponized just as quickly. By Sigourney Schultz.

What does AI understand about fine art? An experiment with ChatGPT reveals unsettling truths about how AI interprets artists from diverse backgrounds. By Xintian Tina Wang.

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A pinny for your thoughts?

Okay, it’s more of a tee. And it could be yours if you fill out this short survey to help us develop reportage and resources to help you (re)design a better, more beautiful world. Click here to share your insight by 8/31 and enter our drawing.

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Observed

What are you observing?Tell us.

Ben Blumenfeld, investor and co-founder of Designer Fund, is hosting a free webinar for startups (and others, I imagine) looking to hire designers. Startup Playbook: How to Hire a Top Designer is a virtual session offering tips like how to find a designer to meet your needs, where to find overlooked talent, and what designers really want. Thursday, August 28 from 11am to noon PDT. Register here.

Apple announced this week that it will spend an additional $100 billion on companies and suppliers in the US, as well as $2.5 billion to fund a major expansion with Corning in Kentucky, which manufactures iPhone glass. Apple CEO Tim Cook conducted a “master class in realpolitik,” by doing an end run around Trump’s tariff rhetoric, says Barron’s. “The iPhone maker is setting the blueprint for how US companies can avoid the threat of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, but it might only be a temporary reprieve.”

Figma’s debut last week signaled a public market that has become more welcoming to tech IPOs. (Here’s a list of all the IPOs in 2025.) While its momentum has cooled a bit (and the armchair quarterbacking has begun), the offering appears to be the most extensive in the history of design software.

Meet the last original owner of a Frank Lloyd Wright home. Roland Reisley, 100, became a client of the famed architect when Wright was the supervising architect of Usonia, now the Usonia Historic District, in Pleasantville, NY, in the 1950s. Reisley credits his longevity to living in the home and the community, which is designed to be inextricably linked to the land. “I realize that there was not a day of my life when I didn’t see something beautiful here,” he says.

Former NYC Governor Andrew Cuomo and (current) Mayor Eric Adams are rebranding following Zohran Mamdani’s surprising mayoral primary win, and design experts have things to say. Award-winning artist and designer Mike Perry didn’t hold back when he observed, “They all look like they were designed by someone using Microsoft Word.” Oof.

Where the small games are. The latest Nintendo Direct kickoff features small, indie games heading to Switch 2 and Switch consoles. Come for the adorable fluffy beasts, stay for the creepy crow that will give you nightmares.

London-based photographer Zed Nelson believes that human-centered everything means that humans have lost sight of their true place in nature. His latest award-winning project “The Anthropocene Illusion” reveals the folly of the Romantic era. “The Romantic movement in painting began with the human divorce from the natural world,” he told CNN. “As we removed ourselves from nature, and it receded from our imagination.”

Trump’s higher tariffs are here. Now what?  More than 90 countries are now dealing with the sky-high rates. (The New York Times has a country-by-country tariff tracker.) Switzerland is still under the gun, chipmakers are looking for a loophole, and the spice trade is likely to take a hit. 

Speaking of the spice trade, the DBBD podcast recently caught up with Sana Javeri Kadri, founder of Diaspora Co., a single-origin spice company revolutionizing the 500-year-old $5 billion spice industry. She’s expecting to take a hit. “What is not being realized is that anybody who is an importer into America, it’s a tariff directly on our business because we can’t ask a turmeric farmer in India to front a 10% tariff. So we’re fronting that cost, which is debilitating.”

New evidence suggests that people returned to post-volcano Pompeii and lived among the ruins. Why didn’t we think of this? We should do that now.

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Working for a living

The London-based OOA Creative is hiring for a Creative Internship.(Onsite or Remote)

OOA Creative is a multidisciplinary creative agency, specializing in brand identity systems, visual production, and digital experiences.
 

VCNY is looking for a Decorative Pillow Designer. (Onsite)

This Designer is responsible for the creative design of Home textile products for a variety of retailers, ranging from the Mass Market to the Fashion Market.

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Yesterday and today

Rebecca Billi’s smart, timely essay “Cop cities and covert communes” has been living rent-free in my head for the past week. I use “rent-free” in the internet speak type of way, but also to mean something more literal. Billi reaffirms design’s capacity to create urban landscapes that are more than means to collect capital.

This reflection led me back to a 2020 episode of our flagship podcastDesign of Business|Business of Design featuring Deanna Van Buren, an architect, activist, and co-founder and design director of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces. 

Van Buren and her team are working to end mass incarceration by building alternative care infrastructure that supports community, healing, and justice. On DB|BD, Van Buren asks listeners to imagine a world that, instead of prisons, builds centers for equity. “People can drop off their kids for daycare. They can get some food, meet with a lawyer, look at record expungement,” she says. “You can go for a restorative justice process if you need to.”

Imagine that.

— Alexis Haut, Managing Producer

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