As the global water crisis and climate emergency intensify, how can design help us to tackle the devastating food shortages, storm surges, rising sea-levels and other problems we face? On this episode of Design Emergency, the Australian designer, ecologist and activist, Julia Watson, tells our cofounder, Alice Rawsthorn how indigenous communities in remote parts of our planet have developed ancient, nature-based design solutions to these threats.

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Julia shares examples of how natural water systems, many of them designed centuries ago, are already helping us to protect and replenish our dwindling water supplies, as well as to grow urgently needed crops on floating meadows and farms, and to establish natural fishing systems.

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Many of these projects are described in Julia’s forthcoming book, Lo-TEK: Water, which will be published by Taschen in June as a follow-up to Lo-TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism, one of Design Emergency’s favourite design books of recent years. In Lo-TEK: Water, Julia also explains how these traditional design solutions are being adapted to function on the vast scale we need to tackle the global water crisis, while stressing the importance of ensuring that the rights of the local communities who conceived them are always fully respected and protected.

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We hope you’ll enjoy this episode. You can find images of the projects described Julia on our Instagram @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from inspiring global design leaders who, like Julia, are using their knowledge and skills to work to build a better future.

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Design Emergency is supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Coral are tough clients, as Pirjo Haikola knows well.

The Finnish designer is renowned for her work on coral reef conservation and ocean biodiversity. Now based at the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville, North Queensland, right by the Great Barrier Reef, Pirjo is also a skilled diver. Spending significant time observing and documenting marine life firsthand has given her a unique perspective on the delicate dynamics of ocean ecosystems, and allows her to ground her designs in the realities of the underwater environment, ensuring they are not only innovative but also ecologically sensitive and impactful.

In this episode of Design Emergency, Pirjo discusses with Paola several of her projects, which integrate scientific research with creative methodologies and advanced manufacturing techniques to develop practical, design-driven solutions to the urgent challenges posed by climate change. Whether it’s developing tools for coral propagation in Australia or Mexico, studying the sea urchin population off the coast near Melbourne, or exploring sustainable materials inspired by marine ecosystems, her work celebrates design and demostrates what it can do in service of the planet.

You can find images related to Pirjo’s work on our Instagram grid @design.emergency.

Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from other global design leaders who, like Pirjo, are at the forefront of positive change.

Design Emergency is supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How can design help to defend and strengthen our human rights? And the rights of other species with whom we share our planet? At a time when rights and freedoms are under threat all over the world, Design Emergency’s cofounders, Paola Antonelli and Alice Rawsthorn, are marking Human Rights Day 2024 with a special episode on practical ways in which design is helping to protect our rights in exceptionally vulnerable places.

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From an emergency treatment centre for people with disabilities in Gaza and a shelter for isolated elderly seniors in Ukraine, to floating sanitation systems to help Bangladeshi communities cope with severe flooding during monsoon season, and a project to help Sudanese refugees arriving in Chad to build sustainable homes in a traditional style for the region, all the projects discussed by Paola and Alice have already had positive impacts on human rights. Though they also share a cautionary tale of how-not-to-design a post-conflict reconstruction programme in a desolate area of Afghanistan haunted by years of war and poverty.

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We hope you’ll find this episode interesting. You can find images of the projects described by Paola and Alice on our Instagram @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from inspiring global design leaders whose work is at the forefront of forging positive change.

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Design Emergency is supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How can design help to make our failing prisons fit for purpose? In this episode of Design Emergency, our cofounder, Alice Rawsthorn, discusses the design deficiencies of one of the most troubled areas of many societies, our prison systems, and what can be done to make them rehabilitative rather than brutalizing, with the British criminologist, Yvonne Jewkes.

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Yvonne, who is Professor of Criminology at the University of Bath, where she also teaches in the School of Architecture, has visited over a hundred prisons worldwide to assess why they are failing, how they can be improved, and what role design can play in that process. She has also advised on the design of new correctional facilities in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.

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In her recently published book, An Architecture of Hope, Yvonne explores the challenges confronting our overcrowded, underfunded, often understaffed prisons, while drawing on her research and practical experience to assess: “What we can do to make prisoners feel like people again, rather than like prisoners?”

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We hope you’ll enjoy this episode. You can find images of Yvonne and the prisons she refers to in her interview on our Instagram @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from other inspiring global design leaders who, like Yvonne, are tackling complex challenges and forging positive change.

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Design Emergency is supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why should we care about data? Not only because “data is the new oil,” as British mathematician Clive Humby famously said in 2006, but also because data sets can contain the values, culture, and future of communities and society. In other words, data is us. Domestic Data Streamers, a design studio based in Barcelona since 2013, has worked to redefine how we engage with data, moving from visualization through diagrams and other graphic tools to actual data interaction and performance. In this episode, Paola Antonelli speaks with founding partner and director Pau Garcia and creative and research director Marta Handenawer.

With a background not only in design, but also in theater and improvisation, the founding members of DDS have set out to make complex information more human and accessible, evolving traditional data visualization into data experiences. They believe that data can move people emotionally, not just inform them, and they thus use every tool at their disposal––from analog, hands-on installations to generative AI––to make them come alive.

Among their most remarkable projects is Synthetic Memories, “a public service for reconstructing lost or undocumented memories using AI” that not only allows citizens to see their remembrances in photographs or videos that never existed, but also to file them along those of family members, neighbors, or compatriots to form a collective archive. In the case of survivors, refugees, and migrants, it can be a way to document a past life for future generations and make sure cultures are not entirely lost.

You can find images of Domestic Data Streamers’ work on our Instagram grid @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from other global design leaders who, like Pau, Marta, and their colleagues are at the forefront of positive change.

Design Emergency is supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How can architecture help us to address the escalating climate emergency? There are many ways it can do so: from ensuring that new buildings are designed to radically reduce carbon emissions during construction, to doing the same in terms of how they will function.

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The Swiss architect, Philippe Rahm, is at the forefront of this process through his experiments with what he calls climatic architecture, the theme – and title - of his latest book. In this episode of Design Emergency, Philippe tells our cofounder Alice Rawsthorn how he developed the concept of climatic architecture and is putting it into practice.

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Born in Switzerland, Philippe studied architecture there and in France, where he runs Philippe Rahm Architectes, which he founded ten years ago in Paris. His mission is to enable buildings to become more ecologically responsible by aligning them with their locations and climates to make the most of the light, humidity and other natural phenomena in order to minimise the use of fossil fuels in heating or cooling them.

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Philippe tells Alice how these principles have been applied to completed and ongoing projects including: Central Park in the Taiwanese city of Taichung, the entrance to Maison de la Radio et de la Musique in Paris, and, working in collaboration with OMA, the Scalo Farini project to redevelop two disused railway yards in Milan.

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We hope you’ll enjoy this episode. You can find images of Philippe and his work on our Instagram @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from other inspiring global design leaders who are forging positive change.

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Design Emergency is supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Things are not exactly looking up. While the climate emergency is undeniably advancing, however, a powerful cultural shift is also afoot––away from doomsday alarmism or resignation, and towards optimism.

Despite being a wide-awake scientist, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is among those who are presenting to the world the constructive, energetic, even joyful side of the fight for climate justice.

Ayana is a marine biologist; the founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank dedicated to addressing climate issues in coastal cities; a frequent advisor on environmental policy and strategy to governmental agencies, foundations, and multinational corporations; and an author. Her most recent book, What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures, is based on 30+ interviews in which she pokes scientists, designers, curators, and policy experts with that hard question, arm-wrestling them into optimism.

Ayana’s reliance on design and art, of particular relevance for Design Emergency, shows how instrumental these attitudes are if we want to imagine a better future for all, and then will it into being. In the book as well as in Climate Futurism, an exhibition she curated at Pioneer Works in New York, she paints a picture in which humanity successfully tackles climate challenges, offering actionable insights and highlighting the potential for a just and sustainable world.

You can find images related to Ayana’s work on our Instagram grid @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from other global design leaders who, like her, are at the forefront of positive change.

Design Emergency is supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As architecture and construction are two of the biggest sources of carbon emissions on our planet, what can architects do to change this? In this episode of Design Emergency, the US architect, Jeanne Gang, tells our cofounder Alice Rawsthorn how she and her colleagues at Studio Gang in Chicago are designing new ways of reusing and repurposing existing buildings, as an ecologically responsible alternative to building new ones, through a process she calls “architectural grafting”.

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Jeanne is a prolific and ingenious architect whose work at Studio Gang includes: the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts and the Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Among Jeanne’s projects currently being designed or under construction, are the new US Embassy in Brasilia and the Global Terminal at Chicago O’Hare Airport.

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She describes the defining theme of her practice as being to make “architecture that strengthens kinship among people, their communities and the natural world”. All Jeanne’s work is steeped in her research at Studio Gang, including an experimental project to protect the one billion-plus birds that die in the US each year after crashing into high-rise buildings, and as a Professor in Practice at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where her teaching focuses on the theories of reuse and resilience that she explores in her latest book, The Art of Architectural Grafting.

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We hope you’ll enjoy this episode. You can find images of Jeanne and her work on our Instagram @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from more inspiring and ambitious global design leaders at the forefront of positive change.

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Design Emergency is supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.