The Tending and Grooming Station (below) is a wondrous collection of combs, brushes and other obscure (to me) gadgets. They are used to primp and revive pre-loved sweaters and cardigans that have been disfigured by bobbles and pilling – those unattractive fuzz balls that appear when short fibers misbehave on woolen garments. Every object has a dark […]
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Cloud Commuting
A two-year project in Belgium proposes new relationships between people, goods, energy, equipment, spaces, and value. Its design objective: a networked mobility ecosystem The signs on the small van describe the services it supports: Taxi; Pick-up; Delivery; Assistance; Vendor; Security; Rental. Seven functions, one vehicle. As imagined in a project in Belgium called Mobilotoop the van, when […]
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Energy: Thriving On Five Percent?
In Sharing Energy In The City, EDF and the the French National Research Agency (ANR) have challenged designers to rethink the production, harvesting, distribution, use, exchange and consumption of energy in our everyday life. They asked me to submit this text as fuel for the discussion. The modern city has been shaped by the availability […]
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Caloryville: The Two-Wheeled City
In China, ‘battery-bikes’ are outselling cars by four-to-one. Pedelec sales are soaring in Europe, too. Is this the start of system-wide phase-shift in transportation? At a workshop in Delhi last year, during the UnBox Festival, I posed the following question to a group of 20 design, transport, and city development professionals: What new products, services or […]
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A Whole New Cloth: Politics and the Fashion System
In fashion, despite more than 400 eco labels, an incremental ‘do less harm’ approach has addressed the symptoms, but not the principal cause, of our difficulties: an economy based on perpetual growth in a finite world. A new and global ‘leave things better’ politics affirms our co-dependency with living systems and the biosphere. The Commons, and […]
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Design Grammars for Health and Care
Health and wellbeing are properties of social-ecological systems – so how you design in those?
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Design and Energy: Thirteen Great Writers
Including a physicist, a mathematician, an actuary, an ecologist, a stoic, and a Druid.
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Design for Good: Eight Rules of Engagement
So you want to do good? Here’s how to avoid the sloppy assumptions that can underly ‘design for development’.
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How We Meet Is As Important As Why
This is the text of my talk at the OuiShare Festival in Paris today. Did any of you wander around in a group last night – trying to agree on a place to eat? Welcome to the sharing economy! Sharing is hard! And that’s just about one meal. Think about the food systems of a […]