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 countries. Years of drought have left it with desert on 75% of its land and forests on just 1%. Deema, who practiced landscape architecture for ten years after graduating from the University of Jordan, was so concerned that in 2018 she founded the TAYYŪN research studio in Amman to develop ways of regenerating Jordan’s arid land by turning it back into forests of native trees.

Deema tells us how she cultivated her first forest five years ago, and how she and her colleagues are currently planting their fifth forest in Jordan. To support this work, they have embarked on a major research project to compile a database of native Jordanian trees and plants, as well as harvesting their seeds, and running community programmes to encourage more people to help their efforts to revitalise Jordan’s stricken ecology.

Thank you for joining us for Alice’s interview with Deema Assaf. You’ll find images of the projects Deema describes on our Instagram grid @design.emergency. And you can tune into this episode of Design Emergency and others on Apple, Spotify, Amazon and other podcast platforms. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from more design leaders who, like Deema, are tackling the major challenges of our time.

Design Emergency is supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

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