Design Emergency

In this episode, our cofounder Paola Antonelli interviews Sissel Tolaas, the Berlin-based Norwegian artist, chemist, and researcher who has dedicated her life to exploring smell in all its facets and expressions. With a background in chemistry and linguistics, Sissel has developed an interdisciplinary practice that spans the fields of art, science, and technology, with a particular focus on olfactory communication and the role of smell in human experience.Over the course of her career, Sissel has conducted extensive research on the human sense of smell, exploring everything from the molecular structure of odors to the cultural and social contexts in which they are produced and perceived. She has created a vast scent archive comprising thousands of smells from around the world, and has used these smells to create a range of olfactory installations, products, and artworks that challenge our perceptions of scent and our relationship with the world around us.Sissel's work has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, and she has collaborated with a wide range of individuals and organizations, from perfumers and fashion designers to scientists and architects. In ll her projects, she has sought to expand our understanding of the role of smell in human life and to promote the idea that smell is not just a sensory experience, but also a powerful tool for communication, memory, and identity.Thank you for joining us. You can find images of Sissel 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, Acast 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.

In this episode, our cofounder Alice Rawsthorn interviews Nifemi Marcus-Bello, the Nigerian designer who is at the forefront of the dynamic new design culture now emerging in West Africa. Nifemi describes how he draws on his research into West African design and making – past and present – to develop new objects that reflect the region’s cultural identity..Born in Nigeria, Nifemi was brought up there and in Zambia, before moving to the UK to study industrial design in Leeds. After completing his master’s degree in 2013, he returned to Lagos and worked for the architect Kunlé Adeyemi there and then for MASS Design Group in Rwanda, before opening his own studio in the city in 2017.Nifemi has since designed objects that are steeped in West Africa’s rich culture of making and improvisational design. Most are inspired by the vernacular products he sees in daily use on the streets of Nigeria and its neighbours, including Lagos water carts and Beninese bamboo blinds. His work is also influenced by historic West African artefacts, such as ancient Benin bronzes and 19 th century Igbo sculpture. Nifemi then collaborates with skilled local makers on fabricating his objects, which are smart, resonant, and engaging. At an exciting time for designers throughout Africa, when many designers from the African diaspora are moving there, Nifemi’s conversation with Alice paints a vivid and realistic picture of their impact on our youngest, most rapidly urbanising continent.You’ll find images of the projects described by Nifemi in this episode on Design Emergency's IG grid @design.emergency. And you can tune into this episode of Design Emergency and the others on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Acast, and other podcast platforms. Thank you for listening. Please join us for future episodes when we will interview other design leaders who, like Nifemi Marcus-Bello, are helping to build a better world in different fields and different parts of our planet.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.

Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi, the innovative duo behind Formafantasma, discuss their groundbreaking approach to investigative design. They explore the heavy toll of electronic waste and the timber industry's exploitation, revealing how design can expose unethical practices. With projects like Ore Streams and Cambio, they transform design into a powerful lens for understanding and dismantling harmful systems. Their work not only reshapes objects but also redefines the narrative of sustainability and responsibility in the design world.

How can design help to curb the human tragedy of the global refugee crisis? In this episode, our cofounder Alice Rawsthorn interviews Fabrizio Urettini, the Italian art director, who has devoted the last six years to designing and delivering a remarkably imaginative and effective response to one of our biggest global challenges - the escalating refugee crisis. Helped by friends and fellow designers, Fabrizio has founded and run the Talking Hands workshops in the northern Italian city of Treviso where asylum seekers and migrants living temporarily in the area can learn design and making skills.Fabrizio tells Alice how hundreds of refugees and migrants have participated in the programme since he opened Talking Hands in a derelict army barracks in 2016. They have designed and made furniture, toys, and clothing for sale online and in local craft markets, and collaborated with nearby manufacturers and artisans, while learning new skills or enhancing old ones that could eventually help them to secure paid employment. As well as enabling asylum seekers and migrants to use their time in Treviso productively, Talking Hands runs language and literacy classes for them, and has had a significant impact on changing local perceptions of refugees..At a time when more than 100 million people, a historic record, have been forced to flee their homes due to conflict or oppression to seek asylum elsewhere in the global refugee crisis, Talking Hands demonstrates how designers and other creatives can help to foster positive change by empowering them to build productive lives in their new countries.You’ll find images of the projects described by Fabrizio in this episode on Design Emergency's IG grid @design.emergency. And you can tune into this episode of Design Emergency and the others on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Acast, and other podcast platforms. Thank you for listening. Please join us for future episodes when we will interview other global design leaders in different fields and different parts of our planet.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.

The several billions of tons of agricultural waste produced each year worldwide - by raising plants and animals, and including stalks, husks, hulls, and manure - is both a problem and an opportunity. In this interview with Design Emergency's cofounder Paola Antonelli, the Ghanaian-Filipino architectural scientist, designer, and entrepreneur Mae-ling Lokko discusses the many effective and elegant ways she has devised to transform agrowaste into building materials that continue the cycle of life as opposed to interrupting it - and redistribute value along the way. Agriculture harks back to roughly 12-15,000 years ago, when our ancestors abandoned their peripatetic hunting-and-foraging life and settled down, beginning to mold the world to their needs and wants. The more sophisticated tools required to cultivate the land and the spatial planning required to establish those settlements point to design’s centrality in establishing this new era, and therefore also in unleashing the rampant colonization and exploitation of the planet which we now call the Anthropocene. Be as it may, design can now also play a central role in mitigating its negative effects, Mae-ling Lokko suggests in this episode. As the founder of Willow Technologies in Accra, Ghana, a company which upcycles agricultural waste into affordable bio-based building materials and water quality-treatment applications, she is actively demonstrating the viability of a new, wholesome model of design and entrepreneurship.You’ll find images of the projects Mae-ling describes in this interview on our Instagram feed @design.emergency. Thank you for listening!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.

One of design’s most important – and inspiring – roles throughout history has been to champion human rights. At a time when those rights are under threat in so many parts of our planet, we – Design Emergency’s co-founders, design curator Paola Antonelli and design critic Alice Rawsthorn – decided to host a special episode to discuss design’s record in helping to defend and strengthen human rights, and to prevent abuses of them. We’ve searched for design interventions in diverse areas of those rights, as defined by the United Nations as “rights inherent to all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status.” In this Design Emergency Human Rights Special, we consider design’s power to raise awareness of crucial causes, including Black Lives Matter and the protests in Iran against abuses of women’s rights. We also explore the complex politics of the design of human rights symbolism: from the Red Cross and Red Crescent; to China’s fiercely contentious reinvention of the China Aid program. And we look at the design successes and failures in one of the greatest human rights challenges of our time, the escalating refugee crisis. Why has the design of refugee camps and shelters proved so problematic? And why are new solutions developed by the architect Marina Tabassum and her team in Bangladesh and the mostly self-taught designers and builders of the Nakivale Refugee Settlement in Uganda proving so effective? Finally, we ask how, as the climate emergency deepens, design can broaden its focus from “human” rights to include those of all the other species with whom we share our planet.You can find images of the projects discussed by Alice and Paola in this episode on our Instagram at @design.emergency. Thank you for listening.Design Emergency is supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts You’ll find images of the projects we describe in this Design Emergency Human Rights Special on our Instagram @design.emergency. Thank you for listening.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re off! Our interviewee for this first episode of the Design Emergency podcast is the Ghanaian-British architect, David Adjaye. As well as designing some of the most compelling buildings of recent years, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C., David is at the forefront of the development of Africa’s dynamic architecture scene. In this interview with Design Emergency’s co-founder, Alice Rawsthorn, he discusses the challenges and opportunities of designing responsibly in the vast, complex, and intensely eclectic African continent. David – Sir David, as he is now – was born in Tanzania to Ghanian parents. The family lived in several countries during his childhood as his father was a diplomat, eventually settling in London where David studied architecture and founded his practice. Beginning by designing friends’ houses, he moved on to cultural spaces including the NMAAHC and the soon to be completed Studio Museum in Harlem. Since 2000, he has conducted a personal research project into Africa’s rich, but often ignored architectural heritage. David and his family are now based in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, where he leads a studio of over a hundred, mostly young, West African architects working on landmark commissions including the National Cathedral of Ghana and the Edo Museum of West African Art in Benin City. Tune in to hear him discussing those projects, and architecture’s role in forging positive change in Africa. You’ll find images of the projects David describes in this interview on our Instagram @design.emergency. You can also follow his research into African architecture on his Instagram @adjaye_visual_sketchbook, and find out more about his work at Adjaye Associates on its Instagram @adjayeassociates and its website www.adjaye.com. Thank you for listening.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 Emergency is a collaboration between the curator, Paola Antonelli, and writer, Alice Rawsthorn, to explore design’s potential to help us to build a better future. On this podcast, you will hear from the designers, architects, engineers, and others, who, we believe, are at the forefront of progress in using design to forge positive change. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.