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.

Visions of future worlds by storytellers of all kinds––filmmakers, writers, designers, and other artists––play an important role in our evolution. Whether they are utopias or dystopias, visual or verbal, they invite us to imagine what we could make of ourselves and of our planet, for good and for bad. Australian architect Liam Young is among the most respected and effective contemporary speculative designers and world-builders, focusing on the imagination of better worlds in which humankind recognizes its place and responsibility within nature––climate fiction.

The climate crisis is real, and real ideas and solutions need to be implemented with urgency. The citizens of the world need awareness to pressure the powers that be and demand action, and even engineers and scientists need inspiration. However far-off they may seem, Liam’s visions are based on current and available technologies, which he studies in depth to mine their positive attributes and attenuate their dangers.

Liam, who is based in Los Angeles and often collaborates with Hollywood productions as world-builder, discusses his personal practice, which explores the intersections of technology, culture, and the environment to create immersive narratives that envision alternative futures. By delving into two of his epic works––Planet City and The Great Endeavor––he explains how world building can shape our understanding of potential realities and inspire solutions to contemporary global challenges.

You can find images of Liam’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 Liam, 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.