My new book: How To Thrive In The Next Economy

By John Thackara | Published: August 20, 2015

Today I’m proud to announce that my new book, How To Thrive In The Next Economy: Designing Tomorrow’s World Today will be published by Thames & Hudson on 7 September; (the US edition comes out in December). Sample extracts from each of the ten chapters are here.
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It would be terrific if you would help spread the word about the book using the hashtag #ThackaraThrive and this url: http://doorsofperception.com/thackarathrive/ Read More »

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Bioregions: Notes On A Design Agenda

By John Thackara | Published: April 23, 2015

Michelle Cockiing

Photo: Michelle Cocking

In myriad projects around the world, a new economy is emerging whose core value is stewardship, not extraction. Growth, in this new story, means soils, biodiversity and watersheds getting healthier, and communities more resilient. These seedlings are cheering, but when it comes to binding diverse groups together around a common agenda, something more is needed. We need a compelling story, and a shared purpose, that people can relate to, and support, whatever their other differences. 

For me, a strong candidate for that connective idea is the bioregion. Beginning with a short reflection on the power of such a story, and what’s already out there, this text describes what the elements of a design agenda for bioregions might be. As a work-in-progress, it will evolve in forthcoming conferences and Doors of Perception Xskools. If staging an xskool could be of interest in your bioregion, do get in touch. 

1. A story that connects
2. Scope of a bioregion
3. Learning and design agenda
4. New skills and partnerships
5. Getting started

1. A story that connects

In myriad projects around the world, a new economy is emerging whose core value is Read More »

Posted in city & bioregion, most read | 2 Responses

Laboratory for Microclimates

By John Thackara | Published: February 26, 2015

Under what circumstances would we become mindful stewards of living systems, not just their expoiters? The Dutch artist Annechien Meier re-connects us – viscerally, and emotionally – with our social and ecological surroundings.

LAB 01

[Above: De-paving begins in Arnhem. Photo: Laboratory for Microclimates]

Human beings are clever in many ways, but our attention is easily distracted from the support systems that our lives depend on – food, water, soil, and climate. Paved surfaces, and pervasive media, amplify our tendency to leave living systems out of sight, and out of mind. This prompts a question: Under what circumstances would we connect with, and look after, the living systems we depend on? Read More »

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Socially Smart Sanitation

By John Thackara | Published: January 19, 2015

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Above: Build it and they will come? In the world of toilets, it’s not so simple.  (Photo: Quicksand)

What if sanitation is not just about the kit? If sanitation solutions cannot be mass-produced at will, like a box of software, what, then, is the alternative? 

Nearly half the world’s population lacks access to a toilet, so the desire for scale is understandable. By some accounts, eighty percent of the world’s illnesses can be traced to untreated fecal matter, and the health consequences of open defection are especially dire for poor people forced to live in densely packed urban communities. Nobody disputes that something major must be done.

Given the scale of the challenge, large-scale solutions that will improve life for large numbers of people sound like good news. India’s government, in this spirit, has proclaimed that ‘toilets are more important than temples’ and is committed Read More »

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How to be a rock

By John Thackara | Published: November 29, 2014

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(Above: A forest skills workshop in Big Tree Country)

Last month I spent a day in a small town of 2,000 people in Perthshire, Scotland, with the following group of people: a blacksmith; a book maker; a soldier turned master mead maker; an artist whose work explores how we interact with the ecology of the earth; a student of the ecosystems to be found in dry stone walls; a curator of artist-led walks; a man who helps youth hostels reinvent themselves; a botanist who specialises in sphagnum moss; another artist who makes outfits that disguise you as a rock; a public arts funder; someone from a field studies centre where one can see the Clouded Drab (a rare moth); a fiddler who organises traditional music festivals; a nurse who leads healing walks; a designer of natural golf courses; a raspberry farmer; an outdoor education provider; the tutor at a forest school; a felter and knitter; a man who ”hated going to the potatoes”; a breeder if ill-disciplined Hebridean sheep; a man who studies lumps and bumps in the landscape; a digital arts producer; a bare foot walker; a designer of water cleaning systems; a book festival organiser; and a countryside steward.

Our task was to imagine new ways for residents and visitors to connect with the ecological and cultural assets of The Cateran Trail. This 64 mile (103 km) circular track, in the heart of ‘Big Tree Country’ in central Scotland, Read More »

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Leathershed lab

By John Thackara | Published: November 23, 2014

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On Saturday 12 December, together with Mansi Gupta, I’m running a workshop at the UnBox Festival in Delhi.

We will develop the programme of a Lab, to be situated at the heart of India’s largest leather-producing region, that will develop products and services that combine clean forms of leather making with direct connections between between producers and customers. Read More »

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Shelter Without A Concrete Roof

By John Thackara | Published: October 18, 2014

Public performance in Kisangani. Image © Studios Kabako
Public performance in Kisangani. Image © Studios Kabako

Studios Kabako, a dance company from Africa, is the winner of this year’s 2014 Curry Stone Design Prize, an important international award. Using dance, theater, and music, Studios Kabako help local communities envision positive alternatives in a city that has known devastating armed conflict over many years. The company has pioneered a form of development that is based on social creativity rather than real estate plays.

Based in Kinsangani, the Congolese performance and theater studio was founded by Faustin Linyekula in 2001 to address social memory, fear, and hope in the aftermath of civil war. During a decade of urban interventions and cultural activities, the studio has enabled a flourishing an ecosystem of dance activities. Studios Kabako are pioneers of a new way to practice ‘rebuilding’ that ‘s based far more on human energy than on pouring concrete.

“Many world regions face terrible fratricidal wars” explained Emiliano Gandolfi, director of the Curry Stone Prize. “We must learn to envisage an alternative to the culture of destruction”. Faustin Linyekula’s work demonstrates the remarkable results that can happen when the transformative power of art is applied to the ways we practically create a sustainable future.

When Linyekula founded the studio young Congolese people, especially, were living without hope –  too preoccupied by daily survival to imagine an alternative. As recounted by the renowned theater and opera director, Peter Sellars,“Faustin is training a generation of kids to challenge everything about their surroundings. He has created an energy among youth in Kisangani that insists on moving forward. His work is never self-pitying, there’s always this alertness, this awakeness, that has the spirit of challenge in it. It refuses to say ‘Oh, poor Africa.’ It says, ‘OK, pull your life together. Lift your own game’.”

As a platform, Studios Kabako is light and mobile. Although the studio maintains studios in the city centre, it takes its work to the rural fringes and to vacant areas of Kisangani in the form mobile performances. Studio Kabako is currently working on plans for more facilities within the city that combine environmentally friendly technologies, communal living systems and new educational models, all of which are unprecedented in this region.

“Culture is one of the most powerful means of providing a shelter for a community. That shelter doesn’t have to be a concrete roof.” Synthetized Suad Amiry, founder of RIWAQ, winner of the CSDP award in 2012, and member of this year’s jury.

(The author, John Thackara, was also a member of the jury).

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Housing Without Building

By John Thackara | Published: October 2, 2014

The family of swallows that spent the summer in the eaves behind my office here in France have headed south for the winter. Soon, as Christmas beckons, they’ll reach their destinations: Botswana, Namibia or South Africa. After just two months gorging on insects, they’ll begin the epic journey back. The strongest among them will make it back in just five weeks, traveling 200 miles a day.

And I thought my air travel was profligate.

As an artefact, the swallows’ nest is not exactly the Taj Mahal. It’s a ramshackle structure, made of mud pellets and straw, stuck crookedly to the wall. But it seems to suit them well – or rather, the surrounding habitat does. Their physical abode is a safe enough place to park their young – but it’s not a gated community. What brings the swallows back every year is not their house but the surrounding environment as whole: open air for easy flight; fresh water from the river; flying insects to feed their ravenous young. I have come to envy how lightly they manage to live. We humans burn through billions of tons of resources, to support our our own structures and lifestyles. Swallows throw their nests together from found materials.

Preoccupied by swallows, I posed the following question last month to a meeting of Nordic Housing Association managers: Do we really need to build more boxes? Read More »

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How Does This Forest Think?

By John Thackara | Published: September 1, 2014

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AUTUMN NEWSLETTER
Xskool on Grinda
UnBox in India
Forthcoming events

XSKOOL ON GRINDA

Fifty designers, artists and architects spent a week at our Xskool on Grinda last month to explore two questions: What does this food system taste like? and, How does this forest think?

One team invented the Soil Tasting Ceremony shown above. They made infusions from ten different berries on the island and displayed them next to soil samples taken from each plant’s location; the soils were displayed in wine glasses. We were then invited to compare the tastes of the teas and soils in silence. It was a powerful moment. (There are more images here).

Ahead of the event I thought soil health would be hard to sell to a cerebral group of (mostly) grad students. Today’s designers think far more about connecting with each other, I assumed, than about connecting with the soil. Why would they? Fewer than half of us ever see or touch the stuff.

My concern that living soil would not engage designers proved unfounded. It was like pushing at an open door. Xskoolers went scrabbling around the forest of Grinda like so many voles. They found ways to catch the taste of the forest and put it in a pot. They made cookies with forest berries and bartered these with tourists. They created tactile pathways so we could we feel the forest through our feet. A Latvian designer made pine cone syrup and gave it to Teacher, who was mightily pleased.

This positive energy was welcome, but unexpected. In searching for an explanation I came across a wonderful book called Soil and Soul by Alastair McIntosh.“We yearn for connection with one another, and with the soul” McIntosh writes, “but we forget that, like the earthworm, we too are an organism of the soil. We too need grounding”.

Resilience and systems thinking, I concluded from McIntosh’s book, will never be transformational in the absence of systems feeling. But how? Asking researchers to empathise with earthworms feels like a big ask. For every designer learning how to think like a forest by tasting one, as we did on Grinda, thousands more spend most of their time in studios, online, or within the rarefied walls of the research economy.

Perhaps my search for a ‘solution’ to the ecoliteracy ‘problem’ is old-fashioned. In a post-Xskool reflection, Helen Silvander wrote: “If we truly want people to value nature and food from a sustainable point of view, maybe we should allow them to fight for it a bit. Instead of simplifying, maybe we should de-organise. Instead of widening the path, maybe we should explore what happens when we erase it, and let time be the currency of payment”.

Here is the Xskool Facebook page.  I also gave this year’s Xskoolers a Food Systems Reader. Xskool  was a partnership between Doors of Perception, Konstfack, and FuturePerfect Festival. This event builds on a series of experimental Xskool encounters over the last three years including Xskool Grinda 2013.

UNBOX FESTIVAL

For this year’s UnBox Festival in New Delhi (12-14 December) I’ll be joining Mansi Gupta for a workshop to develop the programme of the Kanpur Design Innovation Lab. The project embodies, in Mansi’s words, “a new story about the leather industry and the people who work in it”. The Lab, situated at the heart of India’s largest leather-producing region, will develop products and services that combine clean forms of leather making with direct connections between between producers and customers. If I have any say in the matter, I’ll also be re-visiting the subject of cycle commerce  and my modest proposal for the de-motorisation of Delhi. 

MY TALKS THIS AUTUMN

Reyjkjavik, 11 September, Nordic Housing Association
Reyjkjavik, 12 September, Iceland Academy of Arts, MA Design Workshop (Tel +354 552 4000)
Eindhoven, 15 September, Plaza Futura at Club Natlab
Växjö, Sweden, 24 September, Linnaeus University
Oslo 15 October System Oriented Design Conference
Dundee, 22 October Chiasma, Sustaining Rural Scotland
Buenos Aires, 28 October, International Design Festival
Amsterdam, 20 November, Pakhuis de Zwijger, De energieke samenleving

CONTACT

Contact me by email at  john (at) doorsofperception (dot) com
Blog  doorsofperception.com
Twitter @johnthackara  https://twitter.com/johnthackara
LinkedIn  http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=139933&trk=tab_pro

 

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