Some people come to reflect on what designing for life might mean for them. Others are working on a live project, thesis, course, or book. We also welcome those who want to transform their professional situation, and only do good work. They use a time-out here to figure out how to do that.
I was amazed and delighted to be awarded the Frontier Design Prize in October 2025. An initiative of the city of Shanghai, the Prize was for my “exceptional and far-reaching contribution to the field of regenerative design and social innovation”. That was my own highlight of 2025 - but what comes next?
John Thackara Newsletter August 2025
“Balancing proximity and modernity” is the informal theme for our last MeetUp of the year which starts on 28 August (until 4 September).
I’m borrowing the words from Frédéric Bosqué who’s developing a rural transition neighborhood called Tera in the Aquitaine region of France. [continue …]
Thackara Meetups In France
People come to reflect on what designing for life [continue …]
The uniqueness of place is hard for systems thinking to cope with. Systems thinking aspires to be – well, systematic. But blueprints, canvases and method cards are thin on the ground – literally – among place-caring practitioners. How can this mismatch be fixed?
The ecological turn is about reconnection with living systems, and each other, through the unique places where we live. For design, signals of this transformation take many forms - as I learned last month in Shanghai.
“How do I finish a book on design that I began before the pandemic?”
“How can I do meaningful work if my job is just about tech?”
“With so many crises converging, what does it mean to do foresight work?”
“Where can my skills be socially useful?”.
“Should I quit my job? Academic research [continue …]
Our Meetup of July 2023 is sold out - but we're thinking of hosting another one later in the year
“Two thirds of employees want to have a positive impact on the world”. (click to read the report)
Is this research finding a surprise? Probably not. But, for most people I know, wanting to change, and actually doing so, remain miles apart.
Most, but not all.
I just posted [continue …]
CONTENTS: Website upgrade | Where to meet post-Twitter? | Meetups & Residences | Designing for Life Case Studies | Edible Food Forests | Bioregioning in India | Nature Reconnection Podcast | Moth-friendly Fashion | Designing for Interdependence | Chinese ‘In The Bubble’ |
These are curious times. Even as the world burns, sustainable finance and green capitalism are booming: Sustainability Reporting. Net Zero. Climate Finance. ESG. Green New Deal. By some estimates, assets invested with environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria now top £35 trillion. Why would investors put money into an asset [continue …]
I was stupefied when I read this text in 2020: “CEO Anne Rigail announces that Air France will offset all carbon emissions from the 450 domestic flights it runs daily. It will do so by funding projects to plant trees, protect forests, transition to sustainable energy, or protect biodiversity” A [continue …]
Microbes and Social Equity | Tools for Changemakers | Multi-Species Cities | Design for Planet School for Village Hosts | Meetups/Retreats | Offsites for Teams |
Dates for my Meetups/Retreats in 2022 | YouTube Channel | Nature Reconnection: Hour of Ecology | Project Regenerative Design in China | School for Village Hosts in Europe | Back To The Land Summer School in Sweden | Recent Publications |
Tree-consciousness | Cotton Capitalism in India | 32 Case Study Collections | Learning journeys | Water museums | Social fermentation | Shanghai’s BIOfarm | Bioregional fiber economies
Rewilding AI | Bioregional design | Social Food Atlas | Back to the Land Reader | Meetups and Residencies chez nous
My research agenda in China: Care. Value. Place | Rewilding the Bauhaus | Social Food Forum takeaways | "Making as Connecting" - text for Atelier Luma book
The Greek physician Hippocrates described the effects of “airs, waters, and places” on the health of individuals and communities. The industrial age distracted us from this whole-systems understanding of the world - but we are now learning again to think of cities as habitats, and as ecosystems, that co-exist on a single living planet. (Chapter for a new Cite du Design book)
Learning the phrase "Whatever Makes Your Dough Rise" was one of many gifts I brought back from a Fellows' retreat at the Good Work Institute in the US. What makes my dough rise is helping people reconnect with the land at the scale of the bioregion. Here are some examples of that work.
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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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 …]
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 …]
CONTENTS
On Getting Out Of The Tent
Xskool in Sweden: Design Within Living Systems
How To Use A Fringe-Dwelling Change Agent
Most-Read Stories
Recent Publications
Doors at 20: On getting out of the tent
Nearly twenty years ago, in November 1993, the year the web was invented, the first Doors of [continue …]
The May edition of Doors of Perception Report (our monthly email newsletter) is now available
here
To cap three days of high-energy conversation at Changing The Change in Torino at the weekend – it’s already been very well reviewed and signposted by Mark Vanderbeeken at Core 77 – and here by David Stairs – my dynamic editor at [continue …]
JOHNTHACKARA designing for life
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