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.

How can we make our lives fully accessible and inclusive? In this episode of Design Emergency, our cofounder Alice Rawsthorn explores this challenge with Sinéad Burke, whose mission is to campaign for inclusion and accessibility for everyone, for disabled people in particular.

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Having started out as a teacher in her native Ireland, Sinéad became increasingly involved in disability activism, determined to help fellow little people – she is who is 3 feet 5 inches tall - and everyone else in the 15% of the global population – more than 1 billion people – who lives with some form of disability.

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She does so as founder of Tilting the Lens, a consultancy with an all-disabled team, which advises organisations including Chanel, Gucci, Microsoft, NASA, Netflix and the V&A on how to embrace inclusivity. Sinéad herself champions the urgent need to make society fair and accessible through her roles as a member of the Irish Council of State; a former Miss Alternative Ireland; and as the cover star of not one, but two issues of British Vogue.

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We hope you’ll enjoy this episode. You can find images of Sinéad 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 who are changing our lives for the better.

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

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

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

Controlling technology means controlling the world. While this statement rings painfully true today, it is as old as the idea of technology itself. In other words, as old as humanity. In this episode, Paola Antonelli interviews renowned researcher, author, and artist Kate Crawford, a leading voice on the social, ethical, and planetary implications of all technologies––artificial intelligence in particular. Kate uses art and information design to manifest histories and connections that would otherwise remain invisible because of their long time span and complexity.

The interview is centered around one of Kate’s latest collaborations with artist-researcher Vladan Joler, “Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power, 1500-2025,” an ambitious 24-m (ca. 79 ft) long fresco that was conceived during the Covid pandemic, perfected in the isolation of a monastery in Montenegro, and is now traveling around the world, after an inauguration at the Prada Foundation in Milan in 2023.

Kate describes Calculating Empires as a visual history of the present––after French philosopher Michel Foucault’s theory––and shows how the dangerous intersection of technology and power we witness today has happened many times before. If we abandon our tendency towards short-termism, she believes, there is a lot we can learn from past experiences.

You can find images of Calculating Empire on Design Emergency’s Instagram platform, @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from other important voices who, like Kate, 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.

Design has played a critical role in championing, developing and defending workers’ rights throughout history. In this episode of Design Emergency podcast, cofounders Paola Antonelli and Alice Rawsthorn, describe design’s impact on workers’ rights and on the constantly changing nature of work over the years.

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As well as discussing the design of the symbols and actions – from the red flag, to the valiant Bryant & May Match Girls’ Strike in East London - with which workers have campaigned for fair pay and decent working conditions, Alice and Paola will describe model workplaces, like that of the French fashion designer, Madeleine Vionnet in early 20th century Paris, and an innovative digital design and skills workshop for young people in rural Kenya. They will also show how design can help to improve the plight of care workers and the “invisible workers” whose contributions to our lives are unfairly overlooked.

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We hope you’ll enjoy this episode. You can find images of the projects described by Alice and Paola on our Instagram grid @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from more inspiring and ambitious global design leaders who are changing our lives for the better.

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

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

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

How can design help us to address such a tragic, terrifying global emergency as the escalating refugee crisis? What are the priorities for the humanitarian design teams striving to assuage such a catastrophe? What have they learnt from their practical experience in terms of what works, and what doesn’t? In this episode of Design Emergency, Francesca Coloni, Chief of the Technical Support team in the Division of Resilience and Solutions of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)shares her experience of 20 years working on the frontline of the refugee crisis with our co-founder, Alice Rawsthorn.

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Francesca explains how she and her UNHCR colleagues are determined to address the refugee crisis sensitively and flexibly by applying human-centred design solutions to meet the diverse needs of the millions of people forced to flee their homes in different places, while being as ecologically sustainable as possible. She also describes how UNHCR has developed bespoke strategies to best support refugees in the recent crises in Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sudan, Ukraine and elsewhere, and how it hopes to empower refugees to fulfil their potential, economically and culturally, to benefit their host countries in the future.

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Thank you for joining us. You can find images of the impact of the refugee crisis 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 the remarkable Francesca Coloni, 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.

In this episode devoted to tradition as a source and a force to build a better future, Paola Antonelli speaks with Jordanian-Palestinian architect Abeer Seikaly, whose interdisciplinary work is centered around acts of memory––her own, her family’s, and her people’s. Her research draws from ancestral Arab knowledge––particularly the textile weaving craft of Bedouin women in the Jordanian section of the Badia desert––and wields tradition as a social technology for cultural empowerment.

Abeer discusses with Paola the lessons she has learned and how she has translated them in her design work and in the cultural landscape of Jordan, where she co-founded the biennial Amman Design Week. An avid diarist and archivist, Abeer continues to “read backwards while writing forwards” (her words) to explore and interrogate cultural narratives and themes in her work and teaching, underscoring her commitment to memory, resilience, and empowerment through design.

You can find images of Abeer’s work on Design Emergency’s Instagram platform, @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from other global design leaders who, like Abeer, 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.