John Thackara |

Book launch in India

By John Thackara | Published: February 9, 2017

Amid the spectacular setting created by my hosts at #PuneDesignFestival (above) my talk was miraculously summarised on a single page by the talented @ragasy

There followed a #ThackaraThrive book launch in Mumbai at the Indian School of Design & Innovation / Parsons Mumbai With many thanks to @isdimumbai @RoliBooks and @thamesandhudson

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Interview with Experimenta (Spain)

By John Thackara | Published: December 5, 2016

On the occasion of the publication of #ThackaraThrive in Spanish, I did an interview for Experimenta with Dr. Eugenio Vega Pindado. Here below is the English version.

 Q1: This is one of the first interviews with John Thackara in a Spanish magazine. What do you tell to our readers about the main motivation for your approach of the problems discussed in this book?   

A: To people who fear that there no escape from an economy that devours nature in the name of endless growth, I argue that another world is not just possible – it is already happening. I know this to be true because Read More »

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Entrevista a Experimenta (in Spanish)

By John Thackara | Published: December 5, 2016

Con motivo de la publicación en lengua castellana de su último libro, John Thackara ha concedido una entrevista a Experimenta. En ella repasa las principales ideas de su pensamiento y los motivos que le han llevado a profundizar en las relaciones entre diseño e innovación social con la mirada puesta en un mundo más sostenible.

Experimenta ha publicado Cómo prosperar en la economía sostenible, diseñar hoy el mundo del mañana la versión española de Read More »

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From Oil Age to Soil Age

By John Thackara | Published: November 21, 2016

The Design Museum in London opens at its new home this week with, as its centrepiece, an exhibition called Fear and Love curated by Justin McGuirk. I contributed the following text to the book.

(Above: Debra Solomon examines nature’s internet at Schumacher College in England)

Why we need a new story

In 1971 a geologist called Earl Cook evaluated the amount of energy ‘captured from the environment’ in different economic systems. Cook discovered then that a modern city dweller needed about 230,000 kilocalories per day to keep body and soul together. This compared starkly to a hunter-gatherer, 10,000 years earlier, who needed about 5,000 kcal per day to get by.

That gap, between simple and complex lives, has widened at an accelerating rate since Cook’s pioneering work. Once all the systems, networks and equipment of modern life are factored in – the cars, planes, factories, buildings, infrastructure, heating, cooling, lighting, food, water, hospitals, the internet of things, cloud computing – well, a New Yorker or Londoner today ‘needs’ about sixty times more energy and resources per person than a hunter-gatherer – Read More »

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On seeing with new eyes

By John Thackara | Published: November 20, 2016

“The last thing we need to see the world with new eyes is a virtual reality headset“. On a recent visit to Milan, I was interviewed for Domus by Stefania Garassini. The Italian version is online here; the English one is here.

(Domus intro) When you hear someone quote Marcel Proust – “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes” – there is a temptation to dismiss them as just another utopian, a dreamer who might have inspired ideas but cannot translate these into anything practical. Nothing could be further from the truth if the person in question is John Thackara, a philosopher, writer, event-organiser, thinker ranging across the boundaries between design and economics, and the author of numerous books – his most recent is How to Thrive in the Next Economy (Thames & Hudson). Read More »

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A roof, a skill, a market: The multiple dimensions of scale

By John Thackara | Published: October 8, 2016

“Beware the scale trap”. In a Letter To Philanthropists Parker Mitchell, a former CEO of Engineers Without Borders in Canada, advised potential donors that “scale is important, but don’t rush it. Most good ideas take time – to iron out the details, to bring down the costs, to be tested in different environments”. Organic demand-driven scale will happen in time, but it takes patience to find the right elements of a solution.

These lessons are exemplified by The Nubian Vault Association (AVN). With a mission is to serve the one hundred million people living in the Sahel region of West Africa who are either homeless, or live precariously in short-life structures, AVN has spent 16-years, on the ground, developing a multi-dimensional approach that works.

AVN’s pioneering work will be presented this week at the finals of the Place By Design competition at SXSWeco. Rather than a celebration of the past, it will share a challenge with the whole social impact community: What’s the best way to grow faster – a lot faster – without wrecking a system that has worked well so far?
Read More »

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“Let’s talk about optimism”

By John Thackara | Published: September 19, 2016

Back in November, on the eve of the US book release launch for How to Thrive in the Next Economy, I sat down with Core77’s Allan Chochinov to talk about the project.

AC: When did the book project first begin? Is it something that you’ve been working on for a while, or did it have a definite starting point?

JT: OMG, it must be five years.That’s when I did the first formal treatment, at least. I’ve re-written big chunks of it twice since then – and have added in new a stories along the way as I’ve learned about them.

The whole thing stabilised during 2014 when I had a fixed deadline to meet – and it’s been in production for most of this year so I couldn’t change it any more. I hope it’s a good sign that I’m still proud of the book a whole year after I stopped writing it!

AC: This is a very different book than In the Bubble—which was a tremendous work, but a pretty “thick” read:) Can you tell us about the transition from one to another from your point of view?

JT: I had five years of feedback to In The Bubble to learn from when I started this project – and Read More »

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What keeps you awake at night?

By John Thackara | Published: September 19, 2016

I was asked, in an interview for Resilience, what it is that inspires my work, and what keeps me going.

1. Who/what has been your greatest inspiration? And why? 

A: Rocks. And stones. I’ve always loved stones and rocky places – but it was only when I moved to south west France (where I live now) that I realised just how many other people are as inspired by rocks as I am – and have been for a long time. Some of the stone megaliths around here date back to well before the Druids. This connection with stones and stoniness is not whimsical at all; people around here volunteer to rebuild stone terraces – there are thousands of miles of them all over the Cevennes, dating back centuries. It’s incredibly hard – but meaningful – work. There’s a connectedness when stones are involved that goes beyond words.

2. Knowing what you know now about sustainability and resilience building, what piece of advice would you give your younger self if you were starting out?

A: That it’s mainly about connection between people and places – and not much about concepts or plans. It’s taken me a long time to learn respect for Read More »

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Manifesto For Utopias Are Over: Cities Are Living Systems

By John Thackara | Published: September 19, 2016

I was asked to write a provocation for DAMN magazine in Italy.

1 Change and innovation are no longer about finely crafted ‘visions’ of some future place and time. Positive change happens when people reconnect – with each other, and with the biosphere – in rich, real-world, contexts. Rather than ask about utopias, I challenge city leaders to answer two questions: “Do you know where your next lunch will come from?” and, “Do you know if that place is healthy or not?”

This approach expands the design focus beyond hard infrastructure towards a whole-system concern with the health of places that keep the city fed and watered. Within this frame of the city as a living system, the health of farm communities, their land, watersheds and biodiversity, become integral aspects of the city’s future prosperity, too. This focus acknowledges that we live among watersheds, food sheds, fibersheds and food systems – not just in cities, towns or “the countryside”.

2 The presence of good bread is a reliable indicator that a city’s food system is healthy. Good bread denotes microbial vitality. In dozens of major cities, real bread pioneers are creating shorter grain chains by connecting together a multitude of local actors in ways that reduce the distance Read More »

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