Design has played a critical role in championing, developing and defending workers’ rights throughout history. In this episode of Design Emergency podcast, cofounders Paola Antonelli and Alice Rawsthorn, describe design’s impact on workers’ rights and on the constantly changing nature of work over the years. . As well as discussing the design of the symbols and actions – from the red flag, to the valiant Bryant & May Match Girls’ Strike in East London - with which workers have campaigned...

How can design help us to address such a tragic, terrifying global emergency as the escalating refugee crisis? What are the priorities for the humanitarian design teams striving to assuage such a catastrophe? What have they learnt from their practical experience in terms of what works, and what doesn’t? In this episode of Design Emergency, Francesca Coloni, Chief of the Technical Support team in the Division of Resilience and Solutions of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees...

In this episode devoted to tradition as a source and a force to build a better future, Paola Antonelli speaks with Jordanian-Palestinian architect Abeer Seikaly, whose interdisciplinary work is centered around acts of memory––her own, her family’s, and her people’s. Her research draws from ancestral Arab knowledge––particularly the textile weaving craft of Bedouin women in the Jordanian section of the Badia desert––and wields tradition as a social technology for cultural...

Who are the Hidden Heroines of Design, the gifted and ambitious women who have achieved so much in design, yet have never been given the recognition they so richly deserved? And why, at a time when there is widespread recognition of the need to ensure that every aspect of our lives is as divers and inclusive as possible, do so many women still find it much, much tougher to realise their design ambitions than their cis-male peers or, to be specific, their white cis-male peers? . In this...

Hiro Ozaki, aka Sputniko! (her high-school nickname) is a designer / multimedia artist / musician / educator / entrepreneur whose unique and multi-pronged career exemplifies a new, promising course for design and its transformative role for society.  Hiro has gone from imagining future scenarios––richly described with stills and movies starring gifted young heroines and their fantastical objects, set to catchy J-pop music with explanatory lyrics––to launching a highly successful company that...

How can we make productive use of the unfinished buildings that litter our towns, cities and landscapes? In this episode of Design Emergency, Dominique Petit-Frère and Emil Grip, founders of Limbo Accra, a spatial design studio based in Ghana and the US, tell our cofounder Alice Rawsthorn about their mission to ensure that we make the most of the possibilities to reimagine, rebuild and reuse the thousands of concrete relics, which were abandoned before construction was completed. . Unfinished...

“Investigative visual journalism is a fairly new discipline that combines traditional investigative reporting techniques with digital forensic and spatial analysis of evidence,” says Anjali Singhvi, senior staff editor for spatial investigations at The New York Times in this Design Emergency podcast interview with our cofounder, Paola Antonelli. “It involves using a lot of open-source visual materials such as photos, videos, data, drawings, architectural plans, to explain complex stories and...

Olalekan Jeyifous’ irresistible visions of a future in which humanity makes the best out of its many mistakes and thrives within the strictures of its self-inflicted handicaps have had a remarkable effect on the architecture world––and beyond. From the Venice Architecture Biennale, where he won the Silver Lion in 2023, to the Museum of Modern Art and the Sharjah Biennial, his work never ceases to delight and puzzle. Could these really be the futures we are heading for? In this episode of the...

At a time when democracy is under threat in many places, what can design do to defend it? How can it help to reinvent our democractic systems and make them fit for purpose? In this episode, author and activist, Claudia Chwalisz tells Design Emergency’s cofounder Alice Rawsthorn why and how she is leading a global campaign to redesign democracy as founder and CEO of the international non-profit research and action institute, DemocracyNext. Born in Canada to a Polish family, Claudia has devoted...

Urban fragility arises when authorities fail to provide basic services, rupturing the social contract. Legitimacy, authority, and the capacity of institutions decline, hindering functions like security, infrastructure, and access to essentials. As more and more migrants around the world move from the country to booming cities, and as more and more refugees are displaced from their home to makeshift emergency villages that become permanent and expand uncontrollably, fragility has become a...

How can design help to heal fragile people, who have experienced abuse, poverty and oppression? In this episode, the Indian artist, activist and social designer Aqui Thami tells Design Emergency’s cofounder Alice Rawsthorn how she does this by designing new opportunities for healing and learning for vulnerable women and girls, for and trans and queer people. Aqui has personally experienced violence and bigotry as a janjati, or indigenous artist, who was born in the Himalayas. She tells Alice...

Trailblazing material scientist Veena Sahajwalla is internationally renowned for her pioneering work in uplifting waste and recycling it into valuable resources. As the founding Director of the Centre for Sustainable Materials Research & Technology (SMaRT) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia, she is leading the charge in producing a new generation of materials and products predominantly sourced from waste. In this episode of Design Emergency, Paola Antonelli...

In this episode, Paola Antonelli speaks with Mexican designer Fernando Laposse, whosepractice focuses on the culture and the materials of non-urban communities, especially in his native Mexico. A product design graduate from Central Saint Martins in London, Fernando harnesses the potential of humble plant fibers like sisal, loofah, and corn leaves that are part of the tradition of rural communities and revives it to reveal their historical and cultural significance in relation to specific...

Magdalene Odundo has made some of the greatest pots of our time. In this episode of Design Emergency, she talks to our cofounder, Alice Rawsthorn, about how she discovered the joys and challenges of making ceramics and their symbolic value in expressing our cultural identities. Born in Kenya in 1950, Magdalene spent her childhood there and in India before moving to the UK to study art in Cambridge, where she flung herself into student debates on identity politics. She then studied at what is...

Few people have more experience of disaster relief than the great Pakistani architect Yasmeen Lari. In this episode, she tells Design Emergency’s cofounder, Alice Rawsthorn, how she has dedicated nearly 40 years to helping people throughout Pakistan to rebuild their lives and communities after earthquakes, floods and other devastating disasters. Born in what is now Pakistan in 1941, Yasmeen became its first professional woman architect by starting a practice in Karachi. In 1980, she...

As the climate emergency intensifies, how can design help us to repair and revive our ecosystems? In this episode, Design Emergency’s cofounder, Alice Rawsthorn, hears how the Jordanian architect Deema Assaf is using her design skills to develop new solutions to the severe ecological threats facing her country by reviving the beautiful forests, which once flourished throughout Jordan, but disappeared centuries ago leaving most of its land as desert. Jordan is one of the world’s driest...

In this episode, Paola Antonelli speaks with French social designer Gabriel Fontana, whose practice, based in Paris and Rotterdam, focuses on sports. . Sports and society are deeply entangled. Practicing or following sports leads to occasions of socialization that can help shape better individuals, reinforce bonds, and overcome differences, and help bring to the surface many of the ills of society, offering the opportunity to address them and evolve collectively. Children get their first...

How can design protect us from violence? What can it do to identify new forms of violence, and old ones? Alert us to their dangers? Shield us from them? Repair the damage they cause? And prevent repetitions? In this episode, Design Emergency’s cofounders, curator Paola Antonelli and author Alice Rawsthorn, discuss one of design’s most important roles: defending us from violence. Paola and Alice discuss how design has done this throughout history, while noting that our vulnerability to...

Having discovered the joys of gardening while selling Christmas trees at a garden centre, Piet Oudolf has become one of the most influential plantsmen and garden designers of our time. In this episode of Design Emergency, he tells our cofounder, Alice Rawsthorn, how his years of research into plants and their behaviour and love of wild gardens have revived obscure species and transformed our expectations of gardens and landscapes. Piet spoke to Alice from Hummelo in the eastern Netherlands...

At this turbulent, often terrifying time, we urgently need to understand what is happening in our world, and what the consequences will be. How can design help us to do so? In this episode of Design Emergency, Paola Antonelli talks with Federica Fragapane, the Italian information designer who is at the forefront of using data visualization, which involves analysing huge quantities of complex data and interpreting it in digital imagery, to expose the damage caused by human rights abuses,...

What are design’s role and responsibilities in horrific wars like Vladimir Putin’s illegal. conflict in Ukraine? How can designers help their countries during – and after – such terrible tragedies? In this episode, Alice Rawsthorn talks with a designer who is confronting all those challenges – and more – the Ukrainian architect and interior designer, Slava Balbek. . As founder of Balbek Bureau in Kyiv, Slava runs one of Ukraine’s leading architecture and design groups. When Alice first...

How can we develop safe, sustainable ways of designing, making and building? In this episode, Alice Rawsthorn talks to Julia Watson, the designer, academic and activist whose years of research into the ancient nature-based technologies and sacred landscapes created by indigenous communities in remote parts of our planet promise to produce ingenious solutions to the devastating damage caused by the climate emergency. Raised in Australia and based in the US, Julia spent 20 years researching the...

Design has always been a man’s world. A white cis-man’s world to be precise. Thankfully, there have always been gifted and inspiring exceptions who have overcome the obstacles to make important contributions to design. This episode of the Design Emergency podcast celebrates some of the incredible women who have done so, as our co-founders, Paola Antonelli and Alice Rawsthorn pay tribute to the Hidden Heroines of Design. . In this episode you’ll hear the stories of seven exceptionally talented...

Paola Antonelli interviews Sissel Tolaas, the Berlin-based Norwegian artist, chemist, and researcher who has dedicated her life to exploring smell in all its facets and expressions. With a background in chemistry and linguistics, Tolaas has developed an interdisciplinary practice that spans the fields of art, science, and technology, with a particular focus on olfactory communication and the role of smell in human experience. Over the course of her career, Tolaas has conducted extensive...