Design Emergency

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.. 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. .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..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.

Architect Abeer Seikaly discusses drawing inspiration from ancestral Arab knowledge, weaving tradition into design work, and co-founding Amman Design Week. She emphasizes memory, resilience, and empowerment through design, reflecting on childhood experiences and emotional connections in traditional desert traditions. The podcast explores her unique approach to archiving and crafting cultural connections with Bedouin women, highlighting the importance of preserving cultural heritage in modern design challenges.

Who are the Hidden Heroines of Design, the gifted and ambitious women who have achieved so much in design, yet have never been given the recognition they so richly deserved? And why, at a time when there is widespread recognition of the need to ensure that every aspect of our lives is as divers and inclusive as possible, do so many women still find it much, much tougher to realise their design ambitions than their cis-male peers or, to be specific, their white cis-male peers?.In this episode of Design Emergency podcast, our cofounders, Paola Antonelli and Alice Rawsthorn, each identify three talented women designers who have either been unfairly forgotten, or never fully acknowledged for their achivements. Among them are the designers of one of the world’s most popular board games and the first car specifically designed for women; the woman who transformed Chinese consumer culture in the 1980s; a legendary trans pioneer of video game design; a network of Palestinian women who are sustaining their rich artisanal history through their embroidery; and the dynamic editor-in-chief of Vogue Philippines, who is using the magazine to articulate her vision of her country’s new Philippine identity..We hope you will enjoy hearing their stories. You can find images of the work of our Hidden Heroines of Design 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 those remarkable women, are forging 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.

Hiro Ozaki, known as Sputniko!, is a visionary designer and multimedia artist blending art and technology. She discusses her evolution from a math and computer science student to a leader in speculative design. Hiro introduces her provocative works like the Menstruation Machine, aimed at sparking dialogue on women's health. She shares insights on founding Cradle, an innovative platform for women's health in Japan, and presents her vision for a future where diverse voices shape science and technology. Her compelling characters and projects illustrate a creative journey that challenges norms.

How can we make productive use of the unfinished buildings that litter our towns, cities and landscapes? In this episode of Design Emergency, Dominique Petit-Frère and Emil Grip, founders of Limbo Accra, a spatial design studio based in Ghana and the US, tell our cofounder Alice Rawsthorn about their mission to ensure that we make the most of the possibilities to reimagine, rebuild and reuse the thousands of concrete relics, which were abandoned before construction was completed..Unfinished buildings are a largely ignored, yet wasteful and damaging aspect of architecture and construction. Dominique, who was born in the US and is of Ghanaian and Haitian heritage, and Emil, who is Danish, recognised the scale of the problem after moving to Ghana in 2018 to open a studio in the capital, Accra. They explain to Alice how, having noticed the large number of abandoned, incomplete buildings in the city they have focused Limbo Accra on designing new ways to reinvent them. .Having started by transforming an abandoned site into a Ghana’s first public skatepark, Limbo Accra began a long term research project to identify unfinished buildings throughout Ghana, and to compile a digital archive of them and the possibilities of completing their construction. This research is now being extended across West Africa and, eventually, to the rest of the continent..Thank you for listening. You can find images of Dominique, Emil and their work at Limbo Accra on our Instagram grid @design.emergency and https://www.limboaccra.online/. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from other global design leaders who, like them, are forging 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.

“Investigative visual journalism is a fairly new discipline that combines traditional investigative reporting techniques with digital forensic and spatial analysis of evidence,” says Anjali Singhvi, senior staff editor for spatial investigations at The New York Times in this Design Emergency podcast interview with our cofounder, Paola Antonelli. “It involves using a lot of open-source visual materials such as photos, videos, data, drawings, architectural plans, to explain complex stories and to reconstruct news events.”.In this episode, Anjali tells Paola how she has drawn on her background in architecture, and the journalistic skills she has honed at The New York Times, to pioneer its use of the rapidly expanding field of using spatial investigations to uncover the truth about tragedies, disasters and human rights abuses. She also describes how she and her colleagues communicate their findings to readers using story-boarding, 3-D modelling and data visualization techniques to present clear, precise and compelling analyses of horrific events such as the impact of the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921 and a horrific fire in a Bronx apartment building that killed 17 people. “The goal,” says Anjali, “is to hold the people in power accountable and to give our readers the greater visual understanding of a news event.”.Thank you for joining us. You can find images of Anjali and her work on our Instagram grid @design.emergency. And you can tune into this episode of Design Emergency and others on Apple, Spotify, Amazon and other podcast platforms.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.

What could - and should - our future look like? Olalekan Jeyifous is committed to designing irresistible visions of a future in which humanity makes the best out of its many mistakes and thrives within the strictures of its self-inflicted handicaps. By doing so, he has had a remarkable effect on the architecture world - and beyond.From the Venice Architecture Biennale, where he won the Silver Lion in 2023, to the Museum of Modern Art, his work always delights and puzzles. Could these really be our futures? In this episode of the Design Emergency podcast, Olalekan tells our cofounder, Paola Antonelli, his idea of utopia and the role of speculation in guiding us towards positive change.Nigerian-born and Brooklyn-based, Olalekan puts his architectural training to good use and imagines our old cities reframed on new systems of communication, transportation, occupation, and exchange. He describes them all in rich visual detail with immersive collages, videos, objects, and even VR experiences. The characters in his tableaus are often smiling, gregarious, in charge of their destinies, imaginary and yet familiar. His communities are strong, and his economies an enticing mix of informality and creatively structures.You can find images of Olalekan and his 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 Olalekan Jeyifous, are helping us to envisage and, to build, better futures.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.

At a time when democracy is under threat in many places, what can design do to defend it? How can it help to reinvent our democractic systems and make them fit for purpose? In this episode, author and activist, Claudia Chwalisz tells Design Emergency’s cofounder Alice Rawsthorn why and how she is leading a global campaign to redesign democracy as founder and CEO of the international non-profit research and action institute, DemocracyNext.Born in Canada to a Polish family, Claudia has devoted the last decade to re-imagining democracy, first through her work at the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris and, for the past year, with her colleagues and collaborators at DemocracyNext. Claudia explains how DemocracyNext is championing citizens assemblies as inclusive and deliberative forms of decision making, like those that debated the legalisation of abortion and same sex marriage in Ireland, and assisted dying in France. She discusses the role of sortition (randomly selecting decision-makers by lottery) to making our democratic systems fairer, and describes why design is a crucial tool in this process..Thank you for joining us. You can find images of Claudia and her work on our Instagram @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes ofDesign Emergency when we will hear from other global design leaders who, like Claudia, are forging 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.

Our world is becoming ever more fragile, as more and more migrants across the planet from the country to booming cities, and as more and more refugees are displaced from their homes to makeshift emergency villages that become permanent and expand uncontrollably. What can architecture do to address this? In this episode of Design Emergency, our cofounder Paola Antonelli interviews the Italian-born, Somali architect Omar Degan about his work in using design to support vulnerable communities. .Omar tells Paola how he and his team at DO Architecture and Design are focusing on specialize emergency architecture, and post-conflict reconstruction. Their work, in Mogadishu and beyond, reflects Omar's belief in using architecture as a tool for peace and progress in distressed areas. Following his post-graduate degree in Emergency Contexts and Developing Countries from the Polytechnic of Turin, Italy, Omar has specialized in developing culturally and historically relevant design solutions in fragile contexts. He co-founded FragilityLab in 2023 to focus on this and is currently at work on an expanded version of the United Nations guidelines for architecture in states of emergency.You can find images of Omar and his 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 Omar, are forging 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 heal fragile people, who have experienced abuse, poverty and oppression? In this episode, the Indian artist, activist and social designer Aqui Thami tells Design Emergency’s cofounder Alice Rawsthorn how she does this by designing new opportunities for healing and learning for vulnerable women and girls, for and trans and queer people.Aqui has personally experienced violence and bigotry as a janjati, or indigenous artist, who was born in the Himalayas. She tells Alice how since moving to Mumbai on her own as a teenager, she has addressed this by designing and delivering safe spaces and other urgently needed resources for people living in Dharavi, which is one of India’s biggest and most densely populated slums.As well as establishing Sister Library, South Asia’s first mobile, community-owned and run feminist library there, Aqui co-founded the Dharavi Art Room to provide art, design and craft classes for local women and children. She also pursues her activism by designing and printing zines and fly posters as part of the Bombay Underground publishing movement.At a time when India, Mumbai and Dharavi are changing at frenzied speed, Aqui explains to Alice how she plans to continue to use design as an activist tool to empower her friends, neighbors and collaborators and to help them to preserve their communities.Thank you for joining us. You can find images of Aqui and her 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 Aqui, 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.