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JohnThackara

designing for life

JohnThackara

designing for life

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Homeadmin2023-08-09T18:07:42+00:00
  • September 30, 2008

    commoning

    Design for social impact

    bellagio.pngI was critical, at the time it was announced, of a plan by the Rockerfeller Foundation to convene a meeting about Design for Development. Their starting point was “to bring together the world’s best designers with people and organizations that work [continue …]

  • September 28, 2008

    civic ecology

    London: burning, flooding, drying ….

    LondonHaetIlsands.png
    Fifteen per cent of London is at high risk from flooding due to global warming – an area that includes 1.25 million people, almost half a million properties, more than 400 schools, 75 underground and railway stations, 10 hospitals, and an airport (London City ). [continue …]

  • September 25, 2008

    green finance

    Tribal currencies

    graph_l0001.php

    [Source: http://www.complementarycurrency.org/ccDatabase/les_public.html ]

    According to Illargi over at Automatic Earth, although today’s contested $700 billion+ plan will probably get the go-ahead, it does not even begin to address the true scale of the global problem.”Far more money than that [continue …]

  • September 21, 2008

    green finance

    The true size of the hole? $70,000,000,000,000?

    As in: “The unregulated and poorly reported credit default swaps may have actually passed $70 trillion last year, or about $5 trillion more than the GDP of the entire world”. The story that includes this number is a really excellent analysis of why and how we got [continue …]

  • September 19, 2008

    green finance

    Did this architect trigger global financial mayhem?

    0203global_1.gif
    We don’t know yet whether $85 billion dollars will be enough to save American International Group (AIG), the world’s biggest insurance firm (although some apparently insider commentators are not reassuring).
    But could an architect have been responsible for starting the panic?
    The Stern Review, when it [continue …]

  • September 19, 2008

    moving

    Pass the phugoid bag

    plane-crashing.png
    A terrific new word arrives just in time for the weekend: “phugoid”.
    I learned about phugoids from an airline pilot called Paul in his reply to John Michael Greer’s piece on “the effluent society”.
    “As a pilot (writes Paul) I like to use [continue …]

  • September 16, 2008

    care

    Work/Life balance

    image-donkey-in-air.jpg
    In January, as I do every year, I resolved to balance work and life in a more mature way. It’s now September 16th, and….well, we’re not quite there yet.

  • September 15, 2008

    urban-rural

    Beyond the building

    pawilon_polski_kobas_laksa.jpg
    I would like to think that the theme of this year’s Architecture Biennial in Venice – “Out There: Architecture Beyond Building” – was inspired by my book Beyond The Object. But as it was published back in 1987, I’m not going to demand [continue …]

  • September 11, 2008

    urban-rural

    From facades to flows: book launch in Venice

    A short final reminder that the Italian edition of In The Bubble will be launched at the Architecture Biennale in Venice this coming Saturday (13 September). The book moment on Saturday follows my lecture at the Dutch Pavilion in the Gardini which is scheduled for 15h-16h. My [continue …]

  • September 10, 2008

    perception

    Drops in the ocean – and in the sky

    drop_470x222.jpg
    Steve Messem (who led our sustainable tourism design camp at Dott 07) writes with news that his next installation – Drop – takes up residence beside Crummock Water in the Lake Distrrict, UK. You’ll find his 7 metre (20 foot) reflective raindrop near Haus [continue …]

  • September 8, 2008

    energy

    Palin’s poisonous pump and dead ducks

    2833728161_7ef1fabc4f.jpg
    A diary piece at daily Kos investigates the environmental impacts of the so-called Palin Pipeline. It points out that the pipeline is not a conduit of natural gas to US consumers, but (as the map shows) to the tar sands of Alberta, Canada [continue …]

  • September 1, 2008

    development

    Green noise: expert meeting

    The biggest challenge we face in City Eco Lab (see below) is the explosion of public events, media channels, reports, platforms, trade shows, and government initiatives, at all levels, to do with sustainability. Paul Hawken’s WiserEarth web portal, alone, alone lists over 100,000 non-profit projects and organisations. In the UK, [continue …]

  • September 1, 2008

    urban-rural

    City Eco Lab – Preview -70 days to go

    This two-week-long market of sustainability projects opens in 70 days from now in St Etienne, France. We have set out to design a scalable, reproducable event, at the level of a city-region, that will materially accelerate its transition to sustainability. As with Dott07 in North East England, citizen [continue …]

  • August 12, 2008

    urban-rural

    Liminal space

    serrakvr.jpg
    Next week the team at St Etienne City of Design returns from its vacation ready for a massive final push towards 15 November. That’s the date when when their biennial opens, and Doors of Perception has to fill its 5,000 square metre shed with a [continue …]

  • August 4, 2008

    food systems | most read

    Alternative trade networks and the coffee system

    0262524805-medium.jpg
    Every day 1.5 billion cups of coffee are drunk somewhere in the world – quite a few of them in this house – but few of us in the North know much about the 25 million families that grow and produce this valuable bean.
    After reading [continue …]

  • July 31, 2008

    most read

    How dematerialisation adds value

    designbeschuit.jpg
    Did you ever turn a packet of dried biscuits to dust trying to get them out of the packet? Me too. This brilliant solution from Bolletje, a venerable Dutch brand, adds value by de-materialising an aspect of the product. Go to the top of the [continue …]

  • July 31, 2008

    food systems

    Nill by mouth

    esl1.png
    I just wasted (sorry, invested) half an hour of a busy day scrolling through a collection of digital dashboards. The one above is made for a hedge fund; it looks to me like a virus – but then I am probably prejudiced. The [continue …]

  • July 29, 2008

    perception

    Be heard, call a fjell!

    telemegaphonedale.jpg
    Is this the next-generation telephony solution I’ve been looking for as an alternative to physical travel? Its creators, Unsworn Industries (Magnus Torstensson and Erik Sandelin) have created a sublime piece of communications landscape art, or something along those lines. Saturday 2 August is the grand [continue …]

  • July 28, 2008

    perception

    Michel Waisvisz

    michel_waisvisz.jpg
    Very sad news reaches us that Michel Waisvisz has died peacefully in his home after fighting the mean cells in his body for the last eight months. Michel was known around the world as a musician, visionary and the source of an enormous energy [continue …]

  • July 26, 2008

    newsletter

    Design per un futuro sostenible

    bubble_italian_front.jpg
    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 …]

  • July 26, 2008

    civic ecology

    Salvage design

    kalakbook04.jpg
    Bamboo scaffolding, knotted aerial lines, hand painted signs or converted plastic bags: German photographer Thomas Kalak has published a book called “Thailand – Same same, but different!” that celebrates the Thais’ exceptionally gifted art of improvisation. The strange objects and arrangements remind Kalak of art [continue …]

  • July 12, 2008

    development

    Cameron Sinclair reply

    In my text for Design Observer about design and development I questioned some aspects of a project by Architecture for Humanity. This throughtful reply to me from Cameron Sinclair has not yet been posted at Design Observer so I’m posting it here.
    “John,
    “Great post, as per usual, and [continue …]

  • July 11, 2008

    food systems

    Eating Spin

    5031.png
    The British government is in talks with supermarkets about emergency food reserves “in case the infrastructure of the country breaks down”. The exercise is being spun as a response to possible strikes by fuel tanker drivers, but the more likely explanation is that the precarious [continue …]

  • July 2, 2008

    urban-rural

    London Lido

    2627957505_9dc6658c4f.jpg
    My new mates at Exyzt have built and opened the new Southwark Lido as part of the London Architecture Festival. Exyzt and Gaelle Gabillet are the scenographer-builders of City Eco Lab with me in St Etienne in November. Do go and say [continue …]

  • June 16, 2008

    food systems

    Innovating our way to oblivion

    Out-of-control buzzwords are like locusts: you can swat handfuls of them down with a bat, but more will come to take their place.
    I’ve been swatting away for ages in this blog at all things Conceptual, Cultural, Clustered and (especially) Creative. But now we’re suffering a massive counter-attack by the [continue …]

  • June 9, 2008

    urban-rural

    Can dynamic cities be democratic?

    cluster.png
    The following is an interview with me and Sunil Abraham for this month’s Cluster magazine in a special issue published for the World Congress of Architecture which opens later this month in Torino.
    Cluster: What role does design play when it comes to creating [continue …]

  • June 6, 2008

    urban-rural

    The Endless Optimists

    DOM080607014_news.jpg
    I know it’s like standing in front of a large orange oncoming train, but may I please say something about this huge book? It’s wrong in its basic assumption. The assumption (as it says in huge letters there on the cover) is that 75% [continue …]

  • June 5, 2008

    development

    De-growth

    I am reading with nervous enjoyment a semi-samizdat French magazine called La Decroissance (De-Growth). An offshoot of the French equivalent of Adbusters, La Decroissance fills a big gap: critical discussion of the politics and economics of environmentalism. The issue I’m reading includes a sharp critique of the myth of ‘transhumanism’ [continue …]

  • May 31, 2008

    biodiversity

    Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity

    “Nature provides human society with a vast diversity of benefits such as food, fibres fuel, clean water, healthy soil, protection from floods, protection from soil erosion, medicines, storing carbon (important in the fight against climate change) and many more. Though our wellbeing is totally dependent upon these ecosystem services they [continue …]

  • May 29, 2008

    most read

    Eco ‘standards’ blitz

    “These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others”. Groucho Marx could have been talking about environmental standards. Visit any supermarket and you’ll encounter hundreds of labels and displays making claims about the environmental attributes of different products. Organic, Fairtrade, FSC Certified, “sustainable”.
    This blizzard of assertions is [continue …]

  • May 19, 2008

    moving

    Pssst: how much do you weigh?

    volvo-psst.png
    California’s strategy for sustainable mobility is to run sixteen lane traffic jams on ethanol. In Sweden, Volvo have launched this hybrid-drive trash truck which I saw in Goteborg yesterday. It’s silent at low speeds when it’s collecting bins: the all-electric drive is for moving off [continue …]

  • May 18, 2008

    development

    Emerging Economy Report

    DoorsChartX.png
    Our friends at CKS in Bangalore have published a hefty research document called Emerging Economy Report. Key regions of the world, the report states, are being transformed by the phenomenon whereby soft infrastructure – such as, especially, mobile phone networks – is installed despite [continue …]

  • April 25, 2008

    moving

    The fake-space race: Design and the future of travel

    tt_thackara_1.jpg
    My mates at Adobe found some great pix (including this one) to accompany my piece on travel and its substitutes

  • April 24, 2008

    perception

    Travel without moving: jacket from Djibouti please

    labels.project.1600x1200sculpture.jpg
    Luca Pizzaroni has been working for three years on building a sculpture which is made of garment clothing from every country in the world. For the artist, this this is a “mind travel escape” – and I know we have visitors from most countries at [continue …]

  • April 21, 2008

    knowing

    Eurotrash

    esa_spacedebris.jpg
    This chilling image, which I saw first at Core 77, is a visualization of space-junk by the European Space Agency.
    The images (there’s a series) show all the satellites and human-made debris now orbiting space as a result of 51 [continue …]

  • April 14, 2008

    knowing

    Space, time and childhood

    childhoodspace.png
    “When George Thomas was eight he walked everywhere. It was 1926 and his parents were unable to afford the fare for a tram, let alone the cost of a bike and he regularly walked six miles to his favourite fishing haunt without adult supervision. Fast [continue …]

  • April 10, 2008

    food systems

    Worship those worms

    Readers of this blog will need no introduction to the Estonian bio-semiotician Jakob von Uexkull (1864-1944). Oh, you do? Go to the back of the class. Well, Tallinn Jake saw mind, body and context as inseparable, for all animals (including human ones) and he coined the word umwelt to [continue …]

  • March 31, 2008

    moving

    Heathrow chaos: time to start digging?

    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 runs the airport) demand perpetually growing dividends. [continue …]

  • March 25, 2008

    earth repair

    From food miles to fabric miles

    Killjoy environmentalists would have us stop shopping to save the planet. What a relief, then, to find a website, shopmodify.com, that teaches us how to shop and save the planet at the same time. I especially like their green shopping tips for Spring: “buy a hot eco-friendly [continue …]

  • March 16, 2008

    most read | moving

    From MySpace to fakespace: How close are we to travel without moving?

    resonance.png
    This is my talk from yesterday in Helsinki at Pixelache University. There are pix here

    Could the biosphere be saved by six glass lamps, six speakers, 36 ultra bright leds, six diy mono amplifiers, a diy arduino-based six channel led [continue …]

  • March 15, 2008

    knowing

    Design policy as ecocide

    In the UK at least 20 local authorities have brought forward innovative answers to climate change. This roll call includes Woking, Kirklees, Barnsley, Nottingham, Braintree, and Merton. This cheering list is included in an excellent piece [continue …]

  • March 11, 2008

    moving

    Traveling without moving using zombie processes

    I’m running ths story again because the > Pixelache Uni final programme has just been publshed.
    * * *
    OK, so you know and I know that air travel is simply not sustainable. But we do it anyway because we are hypocrites (I took 78 flights last year) [continue …]

  • March 8, 2008

    commoning

    Dott 07 wrap event

    Before we close the doors at Dott 07 for the last time, the final Dott 07 Explorers Club will take place in Newcastle on Wednesday 12 March. We will look back at Dott projects and discuss: what did we learn? and what happens next? We’ll have updates [continue …]

  • February 11, 2008

    development

    Ahmad: probably not the target audience

    Emaar Properties has teamed up with Giorgio Armani to build and manage thirty Armani hotels and resorts around the world – one of which will be included in Burj Dubai, the the world’s largest skyscaper (above) that is now being built. As one of the world’s largest [continue …]

  • February 5, 2008

    earth repair | most read

    Dam Nation: Dispatches From the Water Underground

    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 not [continue …]

  • February 4, 2008

    newsletter

    Papistry

    pape-du-design.png

  • January 28, 2008

    knowing

    Should design schools be closed down?

    Neil McGuire asked me in his Wodcast interview with me whether I meant it when I said that design schools should be closed down.

  • January 22, 2008

    knowing

    Measuring what matters in France

    French President Nicolas Sarkozy has recruited two Nobel economists, Amartya Sen of India and Joseph Stiglitz of the US, to advise him on changing the way French economic growth is calculated. “We must change the way we measure growth,” said Sarkozy, adding that “the way gross national product [continue …]

  • January 15, 2008

    moving

    Thirteen million lighters and it’s still dark out there

    A gem from CryptoGram.“Surprising nobody, a new study concludes that airport security isn’t helping: A team at the Harvard School of Public Health could not find any studies showing whether the time-consuming process of X-raying carry-on luggage prevents hijackings or attacks. They also found no evidence to suggest that [continue …]

  • January 12, 2008

    energy

    Drops in the bucket

    balloonchartic8.jpg
    Further to my note yesterday on the UK going nuclear, my attention was drawn to Charlie Hall’s celebrated (in energy circles) balloon graph.

    As Kurt Cobb explains, “it is not always obvious to modern industrial people that it takes energy to get energy. The more [continue …]

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john thackara 约翰·萨卡拉 Follow 26,647 13,446

Designing for life, caring for place (he/him). Prompt Engineer for humans

johnthackara
Retweet on Twitter john thackara 约翰·萨卡拉 Retweeted
MichaelEMann avatar; Prof Michael E. Mann @MichaelEMann ·
28 Nov 1729471353416196413

Either Sultan Al Jaber steps down IMMEDIATELY as #COP28 president, or a boycott of #COP28 is in order:

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Retweet on Twitter john thackara 约翰·萨卡拉 Retweeted
GuyPeer3 avatar; Guy Pe'er @GuyPeer3 ·
28 Nov 1729595093785407746

...and yet we don't hear a single country saying they are cancelling participation, or even commenting on this.
There is no ''wow'' in there, rather grrrr, we all knew it a year ago.

The entire #COP28UAE should simply be cancelled. Everything else is merely a costly joke.

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johnthackara avatar; john thackara 约翰·萨卡拉 @johnthackara ·
28 Nov 1729591448553550181

"Barn to Yarn". "Slow the Flow". "Listening to the Land" "What is a Meadow?" "Natural Burial: A New Business for Farmers?" "Tracking Financial Flows". Reading the 33-page #ORFC24 programme is an eye-opening education in itself. https://orfc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/ORFC-2024-In-Person-Programme-FINAL.pdf @ninaimoeller

Image for the Tweet beginning: "Barn to Yarn". "Slow the Twitter feed image.
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johnthackara avatar; john thackara 约翰·萨卡拉 @johnthackara ·
28 Nov 1729580780077125798

this is embarassingly awful greenwash. @sheffielduni should be ashamed for putting its name on this nonsense

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cover pic of How To Thrive
order at Amazon
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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    • Talks & Conversations
    • Publications
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    • Meet in France
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    • Retreat (self directed)
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Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at john [at] thackara [d o t com], 1993-2023

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