(Summer re-run: first published 5 February 2008)
Ever since learning about water mapping from Georg Bertsch and about watershed-based planning in Toronto from Chris Hardwick at Doors 9 on Juice last year, I’ve been aware that we talked a lot about energy but [continue …]
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.
[continue …]
(Summer re-run: first published 31 March 2008)
The chaos at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 is an excellent example of what happens when the logic of finance interacts with the logic of large complex systems.
As Will Hutton wrote at the weekend, shareholders in British Airways (its sole tenant) and BAA (which [continue …]
– – but Tana Sprague *can* sample the sounds of Caciocavallo cheese maturing. I was curious, when I first heard about it, as to the meaning of ‘’Rurality 2.0′ – the theme of the Interferenze festival in Italy last week. So [continue …]
Shopping for a snack in central London yesterday evening I counted an extraordinary 78 metres (256 feet) of chiller cabinets in one small central London branch of Marks and Spencer.
Marks and Spencer have made a laudable commitment to make all it UK and Irish operations carbon neutral within five [continue …]
(Summer re-run: first published 22 February 2009)
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 [continue …]
(Summer re-run: first published 8 October 2006)
In his review of Richard Lanham’s new book The Economics of Attention, Adrian Ellis says that “its core argument (is) that everyone is straining for distinction in a late capitalist global economy jammed with commodities and information, and that culture and creativity [continue …]
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 …]
A grim new film, The End of the Line, reveals the impact of overfishing on our oceans. It exposes the extent to which global stocks of fish are dwindling; features scientists who warn we could see the end of most seafood by [continue …]
I learn from Kris de Decker’s excellent Low Tech Magazine that an International Traditional Knowledge World Bank (ITKI)has been launched.
It’s an ambitious effort to preserve, restore and promote the re-use of traditional skills and inventions from all [continue …]
A Swedish study has found that ‘survival was 29 percent better in the donor group’. The study concerned kidney donors, it’s true – but we’re confident the principle also applies if you donate money to Doors of Perception and help us develop this site. A ‘donate’ button is on [continue …]
Three hundred people came to South Devon in England for the fourth gathering of the Transition Network. They were a modest cross section of the many thousands of people now involved in 330 official Transition initiatives (up from 170 this time last year) and many more less formal groups around [continue …]
My toughest work this year has been serving on the jury of this year’s Buckminster Fuller Challenge. Our work has been demanding because we’ve had to assess high quality entries that range from the use of social media to organize urban food systems, and transforming Chicago into a [continue …]
What issues should the next generation of design critics write about? Where and how should they do this writing? And, how will they get paid for doing so? This is the text of my keynote talk yesterday to Crossing The Line at the School for Visual Arts in New York.
“The [continue …]
If Katla (above: she’s Eyjafjallajökull’s much bigger sister) blows, and grounds flights forever, will this finally be Dr Storkey’s moment?
The blogwaves are already filled with links to Seat 61. But as I’ve Cassandra’d here repeatedly (yes, [continue …]
We added a donate button. (It’s on the left). DoorsofPerception.com has been online – and free – since 1994. We’ve waited sixteen years before seeking your support. Now, we can use it.
Could you create an earthwork of significant scale using excavated spoil? The site is in Falkirk, Scotland (56 01 20.95 N / 03 44 30.74 W).
Christian Barnes and landscape architect John Kennedy have written a thorough and [continue …]
“A thief who tells a judge he is stealing less than before will receive no leniency. So why do companies get environmental awards for polluting less – even though they are still polluting?”.
Gunther Pauli is scornful in his new book [continue …]
The stated ambition of Cornwall, in the the far south west of England, is to become a “green peninsular”. It’s an evocative concept, but people there interpret the word “green” in different ways.
For example, although Cornwall aspires to become a “knowledge economy” it is more of a tourism economy at [continue …]
If Requiem for a Species (below) is shocking at an existential level, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals hits you at the level of lunch.
It’s no less gruelling for that. Among the in-your-face statements that pepper the text: “When we [continue …]
“It’s too late to avert catastrophic change. Our politics and institutions are too dysfunctional to make elegant adaptations. We’d better prepare ourselves for surviving as best we can”.
Clive Hamilton’s new book Requiem for a Species is not for [continue …]
The organiser of a conference in Poland asked me write an introduction to the programme: what is social innvation, and why does it matter?
An underground exhibition of Polish art in Beirut looks like a specialised event, even for me – only it features the work of the Polish photographer Nicolas Grospierre which makes it definitely worth a visit. Grospierre’s modified architectural photographs were a highlight for me [continue …]
A few weeks back I was talking to Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, a partner in the Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta, when we were drowned out by the roar of a Eurofighter passing overhead. “One of those costs the same as a medium-sized [continue …]
Preparations for the ElectroSmog International Festival for Sustainable Immobility are gathering pace. An Electrosmog blog has been launched, and Doors of Perception has agreed to co-host a session on Friday 19 at deBalie, in the afternoon. Our focus will be on [continue …]
The text of my talk at the 'Lens' conference in Bangalore in 2010.
Service design for higher education (sort of)
The text of a talk about the green economy for Cumulus, the international network of design schools.
My talk at a symposium in Helsinki called "Beyond Tomorrow" about what the new Aalto University should do, and be.
Rule one in book publishing (where I worked for ten years) is: promote your own book, because nobody else will do so with as much energy and commitment. So, sorry to be brash, but please note the following:
Today I received [continue …]
Last evening I particpated remotely from my home in France in a pre-event in Amsterdam of ElectroSmog International Festival for Sustainable Immobility.
I didn’t use the fancy gadget in the photo above. My set-up yesterday was a bit, but [continue …]
Bulb-planting has started early at Doors HQ:
– We’ve posted summary descriptions of the last ten years’ Doors of Perception projects – the idea being that we plan to do more projects like these ones, only better.
– All City Eco Lab posts [continue …]
The outcome of Copenhagen is depressing if you only look at what happened at the official summit, and persist in the belief that those guys are “world leaders”. They are not: they are followers, guardians of a dying regime. So don’t look at them. Hundreds of thousand [continue …]
Government departments or ministries responsible for sustainability, or “the environment”, are too often constrained by small budgets and modest influence. Their very existence allows traditional departments – “industry”, “economic affairs”, “finance” or “transport” – to carry on their ecocidal ways as normal.
A similar problem persists in business where Corporate Social [continue …]
It has always been a point of pride at Doors of Perception events to curate the bookstore as carefully as we curate the speakers. We do this because when a conference theme cuts across disciplines – as ours do – no single bookseller is likely [continue …]
This Louis Vuitton ad features shoes which cost about 600 euros (US$700) in the shops. I don’t know how much Louis Vuitton pays for them, and I don’t know how much they will be paying Tony Blair to help [continue …]
Some people blame the Enlightenment for our present troubles.
The scientific revolution, they say, gave man ideas above his station. We frequently harm natural systems, goes the charge, because of our delusional belief that we are separate from, and have dominion over, nature.
This [continue …]
Is culture something that’s produced to be sold, or a description of the ways people live? It’s an old question, but last week’s Forum d’Avignon (see also my story below) put a new spin on it: could the culture industries lead the way out of the economic crisis?
The debate [continue …]
So on Friday I’m immoderating a panel discussion about “After GDP” at the Forum d’Avignon, a uniquely French event which brings the worlds of culture, economy and media together in the Palais des Papes. By way of throwing an advance stone into the [continue …]
The highlight of my visit to Musashino Art University’s 80th Anniversary was this stunning fashion show called epa! (Thanks, Tatsu, for the pictures). An incredible amount of fine handwork was involved in the clothes and acccessories, but what struck me most was the [continue …]
If I were a PsyOps specialist at Monsanto, I’d have invented FarmVille. More than 62 million people have signed up to play the Facebook game since it made its debut in June, with 22 million logging on at least once a [continue …]
As you may have read in this month’s newsletter, I’m a new fan of Spacing. This excellent new-paradigm magazine and multi-city blog (Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Atlantic, including Halifax) features daily dispatches from the streets of these places on “just about anything that involves the [continue …]
I’ve been reading a special issue of Innovations called “Energy for Change: Creating Climate Solutions” which claims to be “as thorough a survey of energy and climate solutions as has yet been compiled”. (I’m not putting a link here because the publisher – naughtily – has changed a contents page [continue …]
Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), told the US Congress last week that Japan’s debt path was out of control. Simon warned of “a real risk that Japan could end up in a major default”. [The IMF expects Japan’s gross public debt to reach [continue …]
When I first came to Tokyo, fashionable parts of the city would be lined with hundreds of heavy taxis sitting in queues with their engines running, for hours on end. Every powered item was always on, 24/7. Tokyo Metropolitan Government has [continue …]
I went to Poznan, in Poland, to speak at a conference called World Innovation Days. In brushing up on the history of the Wielkopolska region [of which Poznan is the capital] I was reminded that Central and Eastern countries of Europe are still called “Transition Countries” – as in, transitioning [continue …]
Few artefacts embody so much mental, but also material energy, as a high design furniture from Milan. Will this sector be viable when the true social and environmental costs of industrial production start to be charged, rather than hidden?
Well maybe, and maybe not: my lecture is followed by [continue …]
At a conference in St Etienne next month ‘Cities of Design’ including Minneapolis, Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, Seoul, Portland, Eindhoven and Dortmund will all be represented. Personally I think either that all cities should be design cities – or perhaps that none should if the [continue …]
Our good friends at Quicksand in Delhi (together with B.L.O.T. and Codesign) are curating an art event from start to finish in four days. It’s called “Pop Up Arthouse” and they invite creative people everywhere to submit works that will be shown at Mocha Arthouse, Vasant Kunj, in [continue …]
JOHNTHACKARA designing for life
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