How can we empower more people, particularly young people from disinvested communities, to engage with architecture, and to use it as a tool to improve their daily lives and future prospects? Maya Bird-Murphy, the Chicago-based architect and educator, tells Alice Rawsthorn how she is addressing this through the Mobile Makers programme of youth workshops and community engagement projects.

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Maya describes how she launched Mobile Makers as a non-profit in 2017 and drove a retrofitted mail truck around Chicago to deliver after-school programmes, summer camps and field trips. Mobile Makers now operates from a permanent space in Humboldt Park, Chicago, and has launched programmes in Boston, Massachusetts and Aspen, Colorado. At a time of growing interest in socially engaged architecture and design, particularly among young designers, Maya describes the pros and cons of running a non-profit, and her plans to create a network of architects and social designers who are committed to developing radically new ways of working.

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We hope you’ll enjoy this episode . You can find images of the projects Maya describes on our Instagram @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from inspiring global design leaders who are in the forefront of forging positive change.

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Architecture’s traditional approach to disability revolves around “fixing problems” by securing adaptations that will allow disabled people to access the ideal world of full biocapacity. Architect and scholar David Gissen wants to “shift the conversation about disability away from a focus on the problems of a disabled user and their problems engaging with rooms and bathrooms and sidewalks,” he explains, and toward the acknowledgment that weakness and impairment are woven into human and natural history.

In his 2023 book The Architecture of Disability and in this conversation with Paola, David explores how disability can be seen as a lens through which to reinterpret architecture itself. Access is not enough. Gissen doesn’t ask how we can include disabled people in the built environment; he asks how the built environment might be reimagined entirely if we began with disability as a starting point and used it as a generative lens for a better future––for all bodies.

You can find images related to this interview on our Instagram grid @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from other global design leaders who, like David, are at the forefront of positive change.

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Design Emergency podcast, the Nigerian architect, Tosin Oshinówò, tells our cofounder, Alice Rawsthorn, how design and architecture can help to forge a fairer, safer, more sustainable future for Africa.

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One of the gifted young architects at the forefront of forging radical change in across the African continent, Tosin was born in Lagos and returned there after studying architecture and design in London and Madrid, to establish her practice, Oshinówò Studio. In her interview with Alice, Tosin describes how she has combined commercial projects with humanitarian endeavours, including a collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to design a resettlement village for displaced people returning to the Borno region after being forced to leave there by the Boko Haram insurgency.

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As chief curator of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial in 2023 and as a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University for the past year, Tosin has shared her vision of Africa’s future. She recently won a Special Mention at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennal for an installation based on her Loeb Fellowship research into the flourishing informal economy of markets in Lagos, which, she believes, could be scaled up to provide a sustainable local solution to Nigeria’s need for design and architectural innovation. 

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We hope you’ll enjoy this episode. You can find images of the projects Tosin describes on our Instagram @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from inspiring global design leaders whose work is at the forefront of forging positive change. 

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

Recording and editing by Spiritland Creative.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Infrastructure is one of the most important areas of design, but is mostly ignored – until it goes horribly wrong. At a time when global investment in developing new forms of infrastructure is soaring, Alice and Paola discuss why it is so important to improve the design quality of the data networks, energy and water supplies, transport and sanitation systems and other aspects of infrastructure, which have a huge impact on our lives. 

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From Joseph Bazalgette’s epic mid-19th century sewage system for London and Massimo Vignelli’s wildly controversial diagrammatic New York subway map, to Kate Crawford’s pioneering work in charting the social and environmental damage caused by the new genre of gigantic data centres and the Sponge City natural flood defence strategy designed by Turenscape in China, Alice and Paola debate the pros and cons of infrastructure design at different times and in very different places.

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We hope you’ll enjoy this episode. You can find images of the projects Alice and Paola describe on our Instagram @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from inspiring global design leaders whose work is at the forefront of forging positive change. 

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What is a good working life in the 21st century? And how do we get there? In the latest episode of Design Emergency, our cofounder, Alice Rawsthorn, explores these issues with the pioneering social designer and social activist Hilary Cottam, who conducted five years of intensive research into how we could – and should – redesign all aspects of work, for her new book, The Work We Need: A 21st Century Reimagining.

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Hilary traveled throughout the UK and US – from the post-industrial cities of Barnsley and Grimsby in northern England, to Palo Alto, the tech capital of the US – to discover what workers and their employers thought of the logistics of their working lives, and how they can be redesigned to make them fit for purpose. Hilary also tells Alice how the “new industrialists”, the new generation of business leaders who recognise the urgent need for radical change, are already making progress..

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We hope you’ll enjoy this episode. You can find images of the projects Hilary describes on our Instagram @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from inspiring global design leaders whose work is at the forefront of forging positive change. 

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One of the deepest, most often overlooked emergencies in the design world is the erasure of Indigenous knowledge systems—and the continued exclusion of Indigenous voices from the platforms where futures are imagined. Why is it an emergency? Because plurality, intended as the active celebration of diversity, is not just a matter of common sense and respect, but also a matter of survival. Native cultures that have developed deep wisdom about the environment over centuries can offer powerful suggestions on how to deal with the climate crisis that global ignorance has precipitated.

In this episode of Design Emergency, we speak with Sadie Red Wing, a Dakota Lakota graphic designer, researcher, and educator and a citizen of the Spirit Lake Nation from the Great Plains in the United States. Her work bridges graphic design, advocacy––especially related to visual sovereignty––information systems, and cultural preservation. She reminds us that typography, layout, and even color theory are not neutral, but carry deep histories—and that these visual systems can either perpetuate colonization or become tools of liberation.

You can find images related to Sadie’s work on our Instagram grid @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from other global design leaders who, like Sadie, are at the forefront of positive change.

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who are the Hidden Heroines of Design, the gifted, resourceful and determined women who have achieved so much in design, yet have never been given the recognition they so richly deserve? And why, do so many women, and people who are queer, trans or of colour, still find it so much harder to fulfil their design ambitions than their white cis-male peers?

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To celebrate International Women’s Day 2025, our cofounders, Paola Antonelli and Alice Rawsthorn, have each identified three Hidden Heroines of Design who have either been unfairly forgotten, or never fully acknowledged for their achievements. They include: a ceramicist who explored her cultural identity as a Chinese immigrant through her pots; a pioneering designer of social housing; the most influential female architect in 20th century India; and the woman who co-designed the first official US rape kit.

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We hope you will enjoy hearing their stories. You can find images of the work of our Hidden Heroines of Design on our Instagram grid @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from other global design leaders who, like these remarkable women, are forging positive change.

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the global water crisis and climate emergency intensify, how can design help us to tackle the devastating food shortages, storm surges, rising sea-levels and other problems we face? On this episode of Design Emergency, the Australian designer, ecologist and activist, Julia Watson, tells our cofounder, Alice Rawsthorn how indigenous communities in remote parts of our planet have developed ancient, nature-based design solutions to these threats.

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Julia shares examples of how natural water systems, many of them designed centuries ago, are already helping us to protect and replenish our dwindling water supplies, as well as to grow urgently needed crops on floating meadows and farms, and to establish natural fishing systems.

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Many of these projects are described in Julia’s forthcoming book, Lo-TEK: Water, which will be published by Taschen in June as a follow-up to Lo-TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism, one of Design Emergency’s favourite design books of recent years. In Lo-TEK: Water, Julia also explains how these traditional design solutions are being adapted to function on the vast scale we need to tackle the global water crisis, while stressing the importance of ensuring that the rights of the local communities who conceived them are always fully respected and protected.

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We hope you’ll enjoy this episode. You can find images of the projects described Julia on our Instagram @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from inspiring global design leaders who, like Julia, are using their knowledge and skills to work to build a better future.

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Coral are tough clients, as Pirjo Haikola knows well.

The Finnish designer is renowned for her work on coral reef conservation and ocean biodiversity. Now based at the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville, North Queensland, right by the Great Barrier Reef, Pirjo is also a skilled diver. Spending significant time observing and documenting marine life firsthand has given her a unique perspective on the delicate dynamics of ocean ecosystems, and allows her to ground her designs in the realities of the underwater environment, ensuring they are not only innovative but also ecologically sensitive and impactful.

In this episode of Design Emergency, Pirjo discusses with Paola several of her projects, which integrate scientific research with creative methodologies and advanced manufacturing techniques to develop practical, design-driven solutions to the urgent challenges posed by climate change. Whether it’s developing tools for coral propagation in Australia or Mexico, studying the sea urchin population off the coast near Melbourne, or exploring sustainable materials inspired by marine ecosystems, her work celebrates design and demostrates what it can do in service of the planet.

You can find images related to Pirjo’s work on our Instagram grid @design.emergency.

Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from other global design leaders who, like Pirjo, are at the forefront of positive change.

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How can design help to defend and strengthen our human rights? And the rights of other species with whom we share our planet? At a time when rights and freedoms are under threat all over the world, Design Emergency’s cofounders, Paola Antonelli and Alice Rawsthorn, are marking Human Rights Day 2024 with a special episode on practical ways in which design is helping to protect our rights in exceptionally vulnerable places.

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From an emergency treatment centre for people with disabilities in Gaza and a shelter for isolated elderly seniors in Ukraine, to floating sanitation systems to help Bangladeshi communities cope with severe flooding during monsoon season, and a project to help Sudanese refugees arriving in Chad to build sustainable homes in a traditional style for the region, all the projects discussed by Paola and Alice have already had positive impacts on human rights. Though they also share a cautionary tale of how-not-to-design a post-conflict reconstruction programme in a desolate area of Afghanistan haunted by years of war and poverty.

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We hope you’ll find this episode interesting. You can find images of the projects described by Paola and Alice on our Instagram @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from inspiring global design leaders whose work is at the forefront of forging positive change.

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.