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JohnThackara

designing for life

JohnThackara

designing for life

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Homeadmin2023-08-09T18:07:42+00:00
  • March 6, 2009

    perception

    Patricia de Martelaere

    demartelaere300.jpg
    The incredibly sad news has reached us today that Patricia de Martelaere has died.
    Many readers of this blog may recall her presentation at Doors of Perception 7 on flow: “A philosophical tale about our time.” Patricia was already a rising star of European philosophy [continue …]

  • March 5, 2009

    perception

    Confused? Anxious? Need a place to think?

    ext-facadetuin-overzicht.jpg
    Some close friends of Doors have just completed 20 months work doing up Café de Tannay. It’s an authentic 16C town house two-and-a-bit hours south of Paris. It’s in the ancient center of the Middle Ages wine village of Tannay, whose name is derived [continue …]

  • March 4, 2009

    urban-rural

    Re-imagining Metropolis

    POCKOKEMISTRY.jpg
    An interesting event for our London readers: “No understanding between the brain and the hands” is a collaboration between Pocko photographers and illustrators. Inspired by Metropolis, the 1927 silent science fiction film, created by the famed director Fritz Lang, five photographers have collaborated with nine [continue …]

  • March 4, 2009

    commoning | most read

    The innovator next door

    McKinsey&co has published a book called What Matters. It contains “answers to ten big questions, whose answers will shape our collective future”. I conributed a short text called “The innovator next door” . I know the title sounds rather like A Little House On The Prairie – especially compared [continue …]

  • March 3, 2009

    perception

    The internet can be *so* useful sometimes

    MrTVlxUrDjr3u4ibOKke1PNOo1_400.jpg
    I often use pictures like this one, in my talks, to denote the crisis. But the crisis seems to be perpetual, and it becomes boring to repeat the same image. I therefore thank Matthew Ray Robison, a public-spirited person who has helpfully started The [continue …]

  • February 22, 2009

    energy | most read

    Could ‘green’ energy kill the desert?

    WindFarmPalmSpringsCA.jpg
    One of the more remarkale sights on my recent trip was this vast wind farm outside Palm Springs. Located on the San Gorgonio Mountain Pass in the San Bernadino Mountains, it contains more than 4000 separate wind turbines and provides enough electricity to power Palm [continue …]

  • February 5, 2009

    perception

    Playing chicken

    koen.jpg
    On a visit to this week to Z33, an amazing art centre in Belgium, I learned about the Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen and his Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (TCCP). It’s wide-ranging investigation of what it would take to create and manipulate scores of [continue …]

  • January 29, 2009

    civic ecology

    Off-Grid Water (Service design clinic, Stanford University, 2009)

    stanford_group.png
    Together with Banny Banerjee, the new Director of Stanford University’s ’Design For Change programme, we ran a professional design clinic on the theme of “off-grid water”. Our Stanford clinic focused on entrepreneurs in the Palo Alto region who were developing tools [continue …]

  • January 29, 2009

    energy

    Are you, or do you know, a wind catcher expert?

    Our-House.jpg
    A friend in Colombia has sent me this picture of the model of their proposed new house. She asks my advice on its wind-catching performance, how wide these have to be…etc.
    Now I’m flattered to be thought to be an expert on such an incredibly sustainable [continue …]

  • January 28, 2009

    civic ecology

    Sustainable Daily Life (Projects Clinic, The Planning Center, Southern California, 2009)

    PlanningCenter.brochure.2009.png
    “What would life in a sustainable world be like?” Together with The Planning Center, we organized this workshop in Southern California for participants from grassroots organizations. Each presented case studies in which they use resources in a creative, original way.
    Jules Dervaes is a pioneer [continue …]

  • January 27, 2009

    moving

    Travel Without Moving (Design clinic on ‘sustainability immobility’ at Pixelache Festival, Helsinki, 2009)

    Many of us are confronted by a painful dilemma: the only way to reduce our ecological footprint of flying is to stop flying – and yet we feel we need to travel for our work, and to see loved ones. Can modern transport and tourism ever be sustainable? After all, [continue …]

  • January 8, 2009

    moving

    JT West: Experiencing Sustainability

    Climate change, peak debt, peak energy: these are all stakes being driven into the body of business as usual.
    The days of acting as if infinite growth were possible within a finite system are over.
    Where does this leave (interaction) design?
    To find out you need to attend my talk on “Experiencing Sustainability” [continue …]

  • December 9, 2008

    most read

    City Eco Lab: view from the balcony – and from the net

    CEL--0verview-green.JPG
    An overview (above) of the City Eco Lab site on its second Saturday. It was snowing in St Etienne but the place was packed. (80,000 people came to the biennial two years ago but many more seem to be expected this time).

    If you scroll down from [continue …]

  • December 8, 2008

    food systems

    City Eco Lab: productive urban gardens

    Galerie_Tator.jpg
    e.louisgrand2.jpg
    One of the inspiring discoveries we made in putting City Eco Lab together was l’Ilot d’Amaranthes,a five-year-long project in which St Etienne designer Emanuel Louisgrand, in partnership with Galerie Roger Tator, has created productive gardens on abandoned sites in [continue …]

  • December 8, 2008

    food systems

    City Eco Lab: the art of food proximity

    cityecolab-kimchipot-culiblog-0968.jpg
    “Let’s keep food around us” says Debra Solomon of her presentation at City Eco Lab: Lucky Mi Fortune Cooking. It’s is a working example of how a community can optimize its food flow using design. “New (food) products are not the answer” says Solomon; [continue …]

  • December 7, 2008

    earth repair

    City Eco Lab: The river runs through us

    furan.JPG
    If perpetual, resource-intensive growth is no longer a viable model for the development of a city-region, what alternatives are available?
    In City Eco Lab, we explored the idea that St Etienne’s river, le Furan, and the natural systems of the broader region, might be a fruitful [continue …]

  • December 7, 2008

    food systems

    City Eco Lab: St Etienne’s Soupe de Ville (City Soup)

    babyplant.png
    Architects are sometimes accused of being more at home in a world of abstraction than in the here-and-now.
    Nonsense! A team from St Etienne’s architecture school disproved this vile calumny with a wonderful project called Soupe de Ville (City Soup).
    Having first done a beautiful job [continue …]

  • December 7, 2008

    moving

    City Eco Lab: de-motorisation at different scales

    courisers-verts.JPG
    A key principle of City Eco Lab was to focus on live projects and enterprises rather than on good ideas in abstract.
    The city’s dynamic new courier company, Les Coursiers Verts (The Green Courier Company), took us at our word and relocated their office to [continue …]

  • December 7, 2008

    knowing

    City Eco Lab: “hybrid reality story scripts” about creative communities

    streetB4.JPG
    Traditionally, the regeneration of a city has focused on its built fabric; architects and designers propose ways to upgrade or replace the old streets like the one above in St Etienne.
    In City Eco Lab, the focus was less on buildings, than on activities that would [continue …]

  • December 7, 2008

    energy

    City Eco Lab: neighbourhood energy dashboard

    dashboard-magalie.png
    In the central space of City Eco Lab, a variety of live projects were on show that dealt with energy, water and mobility. Two key questions emerged: What variables make a neighbourhood sustainable, or not? And how do you measure them?
    Magalie Restalo, a designer from [continue …]

  • December 6, 2008

    earth repair

    City Eco Lab: soft tools for sharing

    Cabane-Soft.JPG
    The “Soft” department (above) within the City Eco Lab’s Cabane a Outils (Tool Shed) presented a variety of soft tools such as software platforms, new economic models, and design research networks. The aim was to make visitors aware of the existence of such ‘soft’ tools [continue …]

  • December 6, 2008

    civic ecology

    City Eco Lab: open source hardware

    jean-noel+juha.JPG
    Many of the goods and services we take for granted in our daily lives depend on global flows and networks that seem to be unraveling in today’s converging crises.
    Are doomed to return to a pre-industrial, pre-technological age?
    If Jean-Noël Montagné (above, left – with Juha Huuskonen [continue …]

  • December 6, 2008

    civic ecology

    City Eco Lab: Map Room

    salledescartes.JPG
    The focus of City Eco Lab was on live projects from the city-region – but we wanted to place these in the context of the bigger picture.
    We therefore invited The Why Factory, from TU Delft in the Netherlands, to present their “Green Dreams” maps [continue …]

  • December 6, 2008

    energy

    City Eco Lab: dry loo solutions

    Many people ask, “What has design got to do with sustainable development?”.

    Well, take toilets.

    In the South, 40% of the global population lives without toilets. In most places, scarcity of water renders sewer systems impossible, while ad hoc human waste disposal spreads waterborne illnesses that prey upon millions, and cripple developing [continue …]

  • December 5, 2008

    knowing

    City Eco Lab book list

    IN THE BUBBLE: Le design pour un monde complexe
    John Thackara, Revue Azimut, 2008. It’s available from 12 December – perfect timing as a gift for all your francophone friends this holiday season….
    THE LONG DESCENT
    John Michael Greer http://www.newsociety.com/bookid/4014
    HUNGRY CITY
    Caroline Steele.

    PERMACULTURE: PRINCIPLES AND PATHWAYS BEYOND SUSTAINABILITY
    David Holmgren. Holmgren [continue …]

  • December 5, 2008

    knowing

    City Eco Lab: thing-design to-do list

    City Eco Lab asked: What would life in a sustainable St Etienne be like? and, in which ways can design help us get from here, to there?
    The discovery, mapping and documentation of a territory’s natural, cultural, human resources is a key element in building resilience.
    Designers and artists can [continue …]

  • December 5, 2008

    urban-rural

    City Eco Lab: Les Stefanois and Sugoroku: only connect

    VSE-wasteland.png
    The Sugoroku project, designed by Catherine Beaugrand for the Saint Etienne Biennial, took a fresh look at ways media games might connect people with neglected assets of a city – physical, social, biological.
    sugoroku_board.png
    In recent times, media artists have expored numerous [continue …]

  • December 5, 2008

    moving

    City Eco Lab: Velo Wala

    VeloWala_v3.jpg
    A personal treat for me at City Eco Lab was the VeloWala installation that’s being put together for us specially by Quicksand and friends in India.

    Across the hall the Velowala presentation about bicycle-enabled commerce in India was as fabulous as I knew it [continue …]

  • December 4, 2008

    energy

    City Eco Lab: Debt, Diesel and Dämmerung

    What’s the poihnt of City Eco Lab? To understand why I believe these modest experiences to be important, take a look at today’s The Automatic Earth; it reviews once again the ways that economy, energy and environment crises are converging. The jolly editors of The Automatic Earth, who describe [continue …]

  • December 3, 2008

    commoning

    from-mega-to-micro

    From mega, to micro: What You Can Do With the City

    The atmosphere at last week’s Megacities conference in Delft was subdued. I don’t suppose my own talk, which ploughed a similar path to the Debt, Diesel and Dämmerung narrative I mentioned yesterday, helped lighten the mood very much.
    Spirits were low because it is becoming clear [continue …]

  • November 24, 2008

    urban-rural

    City Eco Lab (Sustainability festival, St Etienne, France, 2008)

    CEL--0verview-green.JPG
    City Eco Lab was a two-week festival of projects that took place in November in St Etienne, France. These 50-plus projects involved productive urban gardens; low energy food storage; communal composting solutions; re-discovery of hidden rivers; neighbourhood energy dashboards; de-motorised courier services; and a [continue …]

  • November 21, 2008

    urban-rural

    City Eco Lab: Exyzt’s buildings as events

    Shown below, Exyzt’s hang-out that they built for themselves at City Eco Lab. Not very Design – but the coolest corner in the shed.
    treehouse.JPG
    exyzt-shedB.JPG
    exysties.JPG
    Exyzt next project, which is called Monumento that they’re about [continue …]

  • November 11, 2008

    urban-rural

    Land and re-localisation

    landshare_map.png
    With allotment waiting lists in the UK massively over-subscribed, and people right across the country keen to grow their own fruit and vegetables, a new project called Landshare aims to make British land more productive and fresh local produce more accessible to [continue …]

  • November 5, 2008

    development

    “Presidents are only presidents”

    Our election night here in France was febrile. As I listened to the results (and finished Sharon Astyk’s book during the dull bits on the box) a tremendous storm raged outside and the power went down several times. That has has not happened here in seven years. All [continue …]

  • October 31, 2008

    urban-rural

    City Eco Lab – the encounters

    P1030407.jpg
    P1030375.jpg
    Like all that soil? One of the key ideas in City Eco Lab is to make eco-systems, earth and water the basis of re-imagining the city – not “the economy”.
    1779637065_9570f61913_o-savethedinosaurs.thumbnail.jpg
    The lower photograph shows jonggi, or [continue …]

  • October 29, 2008

    food systems

    Unplugged – or unhinged?

    2947454683_5f298e89ca.jpg
    I’m reading reading a moving and important book by Sharon Astyk called “Depletion and Abundance: Life On The New Home Front”.
    Uniquely among recent books on life after the Peaks – energy, protein, biodiversity etc – Astyk does not write to scare us [continue …]

  • October 27, 2008

    knowing

    Moths to the flame

    westfield-ad.jpg
    I was mesmerised by last night’s tv ad for Westfield, a vast 150,000 square metre shopping mall that opens in West London next weekend. The ad features attractive and horny young people who turn into fairies. Fair enough, but they then start taking off and [continue …]

  • October 23, 2008

    green finance

    It’s mad, but it’s not complicated

    I imagine you’re having the same experience that I am? All around me, people are figuring out that the money situation may be mad, but it’s not complicated.
    As the Big Dipper of financial bloggers, Ilargi, writes today, for example: “Stocks are plummeting once more all around the world, [continue …]

  • October 22, 2008

    most read

    Alternate Reality Game?

    paulsonatmpl340.jpg
    I saw this poster outside St Etienne station. It portrays The Mongoose who is “an infamous hitman hired to carry out assassinations and other evil deeds…the cruel and cold-blooded murderer carries out his orders with eagerness and glee.” It says it’s a game, [continue …]

  • October 21, 2008

    most read

    Stuff-o-meter

    berge_stahl_pbs.jpg
    So what exactly, I wondered, is the Baltic Dry Index? And is it a good thing, or a bad thing, that it is plunging downwards at the fastest rate since records began etc etc?
    These turn out to be two good questions.
    The Baltic Dry Index (BDI), [continue …]

  • October 20, 2008

    perception

    I told you so

    market_top_quotes.gif
    “We will not have any more crashes in our time.”
    “There is nothing in the situation to be disturbed about.”
    “… the outlook is favorable…”
    I couldn’t resist reproducing this 1927-1933 Pompous Prognosticators Hall of Fame
    Someone should stand by to make a similar chart plotting, against [continue …]

  • October 20, 2008

    urban-rural

    Megacities after the meltdown

    polish-foto.jpg
    The received wisdom for a decade has been that the world will continue to urbanise, and that power and money will continue to congregate in a handful of megacity regions. The Megacities Congress in November begins to question these once-comfortable certainties. [continue …]

  • October 16, 2008

    urban-rural

    City Eco Lab: on site and building…


    [ CITY ECO LAB RUSH part 1.Envoyé par cityecolab ]

    …only we’re pouring earth not concrete See you in our little shed!

  • October 14, 2008

    green finance

    When red is green and up is down

    George Monbiot, in today’s Guardian, also links the financial crisis and the ecological crisis.”The financial crisis shows what happens when we try to make the facts fit our desires”, writes Monbiot. “The two crises have the same cause. In both cases, those who exploit the resource have demanded impossible [continue …]

  • October 13, 2008

    knowing

    Measuring what matters

    _45095061_rainforest226ap.jpg
    Totally lost amongst the financial news last week was discussion of a new report on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb).
    According to this EU-commissioned study, the global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking [continue …]

  • October 11, 2008

    green finance

    Toxic sludge machine

    I was critical last week of commentators who describe the financial crisis as “psychological”.
    Those who blame a “lack of transparency” are on stronger ground – although ignorance of the facts or the law is not a valid excuse in other domains of life.
    piramid.png
    fpml-manual-process-old.gif [continue …]

  • October 10, 2008

    commoning

    Redemption

    I’m sorry, but if I hear one more “expert” on the box describe the financial crisis as “psychological” I’m going to barf. I also heard a French commentator today blame “the redemption factor” – which sounds biblical, but apparently refers to the price being put on that huge red chunk [continue …]

  • October 8, 2008

    civic ecology

    The rain in Spain stays mainly in the Hog

    HOG houses SPARK3.jpg
    Harvesting rainwater is key for any town or city determined to use its water sustainably. Rainwater HOG is a rain rescue and storage tank designed as a water-filled building block. It was conceived and developed by an Australian architect, Sally Dominguez, who had [continue …]

  • October 7, 2008

    green finance

    Feeling peaky

    I have this image of the 19-strong Emergency Economy Committee sitting down in Number 10 Downing Street in London (as they did yesterday, for the first time) to discuss the money crisis. The economy war-room is lined with screens on which red graphs plunge downwards. The Prime Minister calls the [continue …]

  • October 2, 2008

    urban-rural

    Beyond the building: behind the website

    NAIed2.png
    This is what it looked like when three of the best critics in the Netherlands set out to write an online book in five days at the Venice Architecture Biennial (which was two weeks ago),
    Did I say concentrated?
    Inspired by the recent burning-down of the Faculty [continue …]

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Designing for life, caring for place (he/him)

johnthackara
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AmazonHeadwater avatar; Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative @AmazonHeadwater ·
22 Sep 1705272959177457799

#ClimateWeekNYC 🌎

“Nature is alive. The destruction of nature is a crime similar to genocide. We have to combine Indigenous-led protection of the land with the concept of rights of nature to make ecocide a crime globally”. @asoltani, Director of Global Strategy.

Image for the Tweet beginning: #ClimateWeekNYC 🌎

“Nature is alive. The Twitter feed image.
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greenfinanceobs avatar; Green Finance Observatory @greenfinanceobs ·
6 Sep 1699357536200056873

If you are looking for a list of the promoters of neoliberal and doomed financialisation of #nature, this is a good one.

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CarbonMrktWatch avatar; Carbon Market Watch @CarbonMrktWatch ·
20 Sep 1704439238249336973

Carbon Market Watch welcomes the deal reached by the European Parliament and Council of the EU to ban “carbon neutrality” claims. This sends a clear signal that these greenwashing practices are unacceptable.

Read our media statement: https://carbonmarketwatch.org/2023/09/20/carbon-market-watch-welcomes-eu-ban-on-carbon-neutrality-greenwashing/

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greenfinanceobs avatar; Green Finance Observatory @greenfinanceobs ·
20 Sep 1704442383708954788

New investigation finds that 78% of top 50 #carbon #offset projects are junk, 16% look problematic, whlie the efficacy of the remaining 6% cannot be determined definitively. #COP28

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Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Extent: 192pp
Size: 23.4 x 15.6cm
paperback isbn: 9780500292945
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Blog Topics

  • most read
  • biodiversity
  • bioregioning
  • care
  • civic ecology
  • commoning
  • development
  • earth repair
  • energy
  • food systems
  • green finance
  • knowing
  • moving
  • nature-connection
  • urban-rural

johnthackara

designing for life

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JOHNTHACKARA    designing for life

  • Blog
  • About
    • About my work
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