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PODCAST

Design Emergency

Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli

Welcome to Design Emergency, where the design curator Paola Antonelli and design critic Alice Rawsthorn will introduce you to the inspiring and ingenious designers whose success in tackling major challenges – from the climate emergency and refugee crisis, to ensuring that new technologies affect us positively, not negatively – gives us hope for the future. Follow our Instagram @design.emergency to see images of all the design projects described in each episode.Hosted on Acast.

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All Episodes

30:56

David Chipperfield on Architecture’s Priorities

Design Emergency ·

2026/09/08

What are the most important challenges for architecture today? And what will they be in the future? One of the most influential architects of our time, David Chipperfield, talks to our cofounder, Alice Rawsthorn, about the urgent need to respond to architecture’s new priorities from an environmental and societal perspective, and the importance of securing public and political support for that process.David grew up on a farm in south-west England and worked for Britain’s architectural grandees,

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32:54

Francis Kéré on Building Stories

Design Emergency ·

2026/06/16

Francis Kéré, architect, educator, builder, and one of the most compelling advocates for architecture as a force for dignity, participation, and social transformation. Kéré’s architecture begins with people and for a building to exist, it has to traverse a process of listening, learning, and designing and fabricating together with the public it is meant for.Born in Gando, Burkina Faso, and based in Berlin, Kéré first came to international attention through a school he designed for his home village

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33:38

On Crafts

Design Emergency ·

2026/05/20

In this episode ofDesign Emergency, Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli explore how craft has evolved into a powerful force for social, cultural, and environmental change.Design, art, and craft have had a long, complex relationship. For most of human history they were inseparable: the objects people made — textiles, sculptures, tools, paintings, ceramics, furniture — belonged to the same continuum of human creativity, skill, and material knowledge. Industrialization disrupted that balance,

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46:32

Irma Boom on the Future of Book Design

Design Emergency ·

2026/04/14

What is the future of the printed book? Does it have one? And, if so what will it consist of? Who better to answer this than the woman who is inconstestably the greatest book designer of our time, the brilliant Irma Boom. In this episode of Design Emergency, Irma tells our cofounder, Alice Rawsthorn, why the printed book is too important to join all the other analogue objects that have become extinct in the digital age.Irma has designed some of the most beautiful, intriguing, original and surprising

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30:45

Paola Antonelli and Alice Rawsthorn celebrate the...

Design Emergency ·

2026/03/08

Happy International Women’s Day! One of Alice and Paola’s favourite episodes of Design Emergency every year is the International Women’s Day Special in which they celebrate some of the incredible female designers, who, despite their talent and achievements, haven’t been given the recognition they richly deserve.Among them are the five Swedish women who founded and ran a School of Women’s Citizenship in the 1920s to teach newly enfranchised Swedish female voters compatriots how to become responsible

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37:46

Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley on Biotic Architecture

Design Emergency ·

2026/02/04

Architecture has long treated bacteria as an enemy to be controlled—dangerous foreign agents to be sealed out, sterilized, or erased. In their new book,We the Bacteria: Notes Toward a Biotic Architecture, architecture historians and curatorsBeatriz ColominaandMark Wigleyturn that assumption inside out (literally,) arguing that architecture should not be bent on shielding and isolating humans from their invisible partners through hygiene protocols, ventilation, materials, light, and other forms of

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25:57

Paola Antonelli and Alice Rawsthorn celebrate Women...

Design Emergency ·

2025/10/13

Every year, the second Tuesday in October is designated as Ada Lovelace Day as a tribute to its namesake, Ada Lovelace, the 19th century mathematician and pioneering computer programmer who collaborated with Charles Babbage on the design of his remarkablemechanical computer, the Analytical Machine. To celebrate Ada Lovelace Day 2025, Alice and Paola are dedicating this special episode of Design Emergency to celebrating her achievements and those of other remarkable women who have honoured Ada’s

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25:05

Maya Bird-Murphy on Architecture and Communities

Design Emergency ·

2025/09/09

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..Maya describes how she launched Mobile Makers as a non-profit in 2017 and drove a retrofitted mail truck around

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36:34

David Gissen on the Architecture of Disability

Design Emergency ·

2025/07/22

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

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38:37

Tosin Oshinówò on Designing Africa’s Future

Design Emergency ·

2025/07/01

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..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

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35:47

Paola Antonelli and Alice Rawsthorn on Design and...

Design Emergency ·

2025/05/20

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..From Joseph Bazalgette’s epic mid-19th century sewage system for

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31:23

Hilary Cottam on Redesigning Work

Design Emergency ·

2025/04/23

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..Hilary traveled throughout the UK and US – from the post-industrial cities of Barnsley

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36:20

Sadie Red Wing on Indigenous design

Design Emergency ·

2025/04/02

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

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24:59

Hidden Heroines of Design

Design Emergency ·

2025/03/08

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?.To celebrate International Women’s Day 2025, our cofounders, Paola Antonelli and Alice Rawsthorn, have each identified three Hidden Heroines of

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41:08

Julia Watson on Design and Water

Design Emergency ·

2025/02/19

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..Julia shares examples of how natural water systems,

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27:24

Pirjo Haikola on Designing for the Ocean

Design Emergency ·

2025/01/29

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

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26:09

Paola Antonelli and Alice Rawsthorn on Design and...

Design Emergency ·

2024/12/10

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..From an emergency treatment centre for people with disabilities in Gaza and a

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39:45

Yvonne Jewkes on Design and Prisons

Design Emergency ·

2024/11/13

How can design help to make our failing prisons fit for purpose? In this episode of Design Emergency, our cofounder, Alice Rawsthorn, discusses the design deficiencies of one of the most troubled areas of many societies, our prison systems, and what can be done to make them rehabilitative rather than brutalizing, with the British criminologist, Yvonne Jewkes..Yvonne, who is Professor of Criminology at the University of Bath, where she also teaches in the School of Architecture, has visited over a

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34:06

Domestic Data Streamers on data and emotions

Design Emergency ·

2024/10/23

Why should we care about data? Not only because “data is the new oil,” as British mathematician Clive Humby famously said in 2006, but also because data sets can contain the values, culture, and future of communities and society. In other words, data is us. Domestic Data Streamers, a design studio based in Barcelona since 2013, has worked to redefine how we engage with data, moving from visualization through diagrams and other graphic tools to actual data interaction and performance. In this

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39:00

Philippe Rahm on Climatic Architecture

Design Emergency ·

2024/10/01

How can architecture help us to address the escalating climate emergency? There are many ways it can do so: from ensuring that new buildings are designed to radically reduce carbon emissions during construction, to doing the same in terms of how they will function..The Swiss architect, Philippe Rahm, is at the forefront of this process through his experiments with what he calls climatic architecture, the theme – and title - of his latest book. In this episode of Design Emergency, Philippe tells our

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