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 [continue …]
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 [continue …]
“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 [continue …]
“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. [continue …]
AC: When did the book project first begin? Is it something that you’ve been working on for [continue …]
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 [continue …]
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, [continue …]
SEPTEMBER 2016 Newsletter
Since my book How To Thrive In the Next Economy was published – a year ago this week – I’ve had conversations about it at forty talks and workshops. With thanks to my diverse but always generous hosts, this email is to share the 72 [continue …]
Five years ago I obtained an extraordinary 736 page book called Lean Logic: A Dictionary For The Future and How To Survive It. Written over a thirty year period by the English ecologist David Fleming, the book had been published in a limited edition after the author’s untimely death. Now, [continue …]
I was invited to give a keynote in Milan to the general assembly of the International Biennials Association. My talk was called Life’s Work: Biennials and Regeneration. Here below is a summary:
The Belgian magazine Rekto Verso recently ran a review of my book by Mia Vaerman (in Dutch) with the title “Terug naar het wildebeest in ons” (“Back [continue …]
I was invited to write the Preface to Rethinking The Modular: Adaptable Systems in Architecture and Design edited by Burkhard [continue …]
My interview with @tbonini has ben published in Italian at Che Fare.Here is the English version:
Q Among the many case histories that [continue …]
(Pic: Being Nicely Messy, CRIT, Mumbai) In London, I did this interview with Midtown Big Ideas Exchange:
Q Do you believe cities are rational or organized and, [continue …]
Last month I gave a talk at UC Berkeley School of Public Health, as part of the Dean’s Lecture Series, with the title, From Biomedicine to Bioregion: The Geographies of a Care-Based Economy. The video of that talk is here. My interview with Peter Jarrett, for their online [continue …]
An interview with Jonny Gordon-Farleigh, the editor and publisher of STIR magazine. Current and back issues of the magazine are available in the online shop
Jonny Gordon-Farleigh: Your new book, How to Thrive in the Next Economy, explores practical innovations in [continue …]
I wrote this preface for a new book called Recoded City: Co-Creating Urban Futures by Thomas Ermacora and Lucy Bullivant.
I write these words [continue …]
“The world is in dire need of a narrative adjustment; that’s why we write” (Hamid Dabashi)
Since How To Thrive In the Next Economy was published in the autumn, my 29 conversations about the book have prompted all kinds of feedback. One question has cropped up repeatedly: In a world filled with [continue …]
Doors of Perception is helping to lead a two week course at Schumacher College which runs from 25 [continue …]
Should transport systems be designed to save time – or calories? Who should own mobility sharing platforms: private companies? cities? us? What kind of ecosystem is needed to support the sharing platforms we want? These three questions are the focus of a workshop in London on 25 November. I’ve asked a three friends [continue …]
STREE. REPORTAGE SUR LE SITE DE GAL [continue …]
I nearly failed to get here yesterday, and I want to tell you why.
The road from my house to the city passes through a spectacular gorge. Several weeks [continue …]
John, why do you think so much attention is being paid to the ideas around the notion of ’the commons’ right now?
The commons is an idea, and a practice, that generates meaning and hope. Millions of people are busy in projects [continue …]
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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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 [continue …]
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.
Ugly Indians don’t blame their fellow citizens, or politicians, or ‘the system’: They act first, and then they talk. They make it “our” problem, not “your” problem.
1. TOM MURPHY – DO THE MATH
If you suspect, but cannot prove, that modern life simply does not add up, you’ll love Tom Murphy’s work. His focus, as a physicist, is to understand whether the impossibility of indefinite physical growth – for example in energy, food, or manufacturing – means that economic [continue …]
(Above: A forest skills workshop in Big Tree Country)
Last month I spent a day in a small town of 2,000 [continue …]
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 [continue …]
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 [continue …]
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 [continue …]
Why is it that shocking stories and images fail to change things? Are there different ways of knowing the world, than merely looking?
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 [continue …]
We allowed the metabolic interaction between man and the earth to wither - but these educators are working on a cure.
Do you simply love iPhones, wind turbines, cloud computing, and electric cars? Good, because the following may be of interest:
READING SMALL SIGNALS
We’ve invested huge resources over the ages to keep the man-made world, and nature, separate – but there are signs everywhere that those those priorities are changing. Working through the consequences of that is a challenge [continue …]
I spent the last two weeks in-and-around a care home in England that looks after people with dementia and terminal illness, and their families – including, this time, mine.
In four wings, each with 12 residents, 24/7 care is provided by teams of trained professionals who work [continue …]
People go hungry not because of a shortage of production, but because the food available is too expensive, or they lack the land to grow it on. In California, the prototype of a combined social, political and technical solution has been launched which promises to unlock the food system crisis.
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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 [continue …]
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.
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 [continue …]
A new scheme in England connects office workers with living systems by means of a ‘wild mirror’: each workspace is twinned with an equivalent area of ecosystem regeneration.
On Friday 14 March I’m doing a talk and discussion in Dublin.
(Image: Richard Giblett)
To effect system-level change – in health, energy, food, or mobility [continue …]
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.
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 [continue …]
An exhibition in Belgium poses a timely challenge: When confronted by such complex issues as an ageing population, resource depletion, migration, or growing impoverishment, how are we to balance the desire to do something positive, with the need to understand the back story before we intervene?
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A big part of social innovation involves connecting people with each other in ways that are inclusive, uncomplicated, inexpensive, and joyful.
Two radically opposed models of development are being born in Ethiopia at the same time. One is small, local, socially fair, and ecologically respectful. The other takes the globalisation of fashion to a new and more destructive level.
No sooner had I posted a long [continue …]
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 [continue …]
JOHNTHACKARA designing for life
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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at john [at] thackara [d o t com], 1993-2026
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