Design Emergency

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 curators Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley turn 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 management and control. Buildings should instead be shaped by microbes as they have been for centuries, and humans should reconsider their role as participants in a much...

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 remarkable mechanical 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 legacy in different ways, making crucial contributions to the digital age. .Some of them have designed and delivered transformational adva...

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 Chicago to deliver after-school programmes, summer camps and field trips. Mobile Makers now operates from a permanent space in...

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...

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 Alice, Tosin describes how she has combined commercial projects with humanitarian endeavours, including a collaboration with...

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 London and Massimo Vignelli’s wildly controversial diagrammatic New York subway map, to Kate...

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 and Grimsby in northern England, to Palo Alto, the tech capital of the US...

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 De...

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 Design who have either been unfairly forgotten, or never fully acknowledged for their ac...

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, many of them designed centuries ago, are already helping us to protect and replenish our dwindling water supplies, as well as...

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 i...

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 shelter for isolated elderly seniors in Ukraine, to floating sanitation systems to...

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 hundred prisons worldwide to assess why they are failing, how they can be improved...

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 episode, Paola Antonelli speaks with founding partner and director Pau Garcia and creative and research director Marta Handenawer.<...

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 cofounder Alice Rawsthorn how he developed the concept of climatic architecture and is...

Things are not exactly looking up. While the climate emergency is undeniably advancing, however, a powerful cultural shift is also afoot––away from doomsday alarmism or resignation, and towards optimism.Despite being a wide-awake scientist, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is among those who are presenting to the world the constructive, energetic, even joyful side of the fight for climate justice.Ayana is a marine biologist; the founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank dedicated to addressing climate issues in coastal cities; a frequent advisor on environmental policy and strategy to governmental agencies, foundations, and...

As architecture and construction are two of the biggest sources of carbon emissions on our planet, what can architects do to change this? In this episode of Design Emergency, the US architect, Jeanne Gang, tells our cofounder Alice Rawsthorn how she and her colleagues at Studio Gang in Chicago are designing new ways of reusing and repurposing existing buildings, as an ecologically responsible alternative to building new ones, through a process she calls “architectural grafting”..Jeanne is a prolific and ingenious architect whose work at Studio Gang includes: the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts and the...

Visions of future worlds by storytellers of all kinds––filmmakers, writers, designers, and other artists––play an important role in our evolution. Whether they are utopias or dystopias, visual or verbal, they invite us to imagine what we could make of ourselves and of our planet, for good and for bad. Australian architect Liam Young is among the most respected and effective contemporary speculative designers and world-builders, focusing on the imagination of better worlds in which humankind recognizes its place and responsibility within nature––climate fiction.The climate crisis is real, and real ideas and solutions need to be i...

How can we make our lives fully accessible and inclusive? In this episode of Design Emergency, our cofounder Alice Rawsthorn explores this challenge with Sinéad Burke, whose mission is to campaign for inclusion and accessibility for everyone, for disabled people in particular..Having started out as a teacher in her native Ireland, Sinéad became increasingly involved in disability activism, determined to help fellow little people – she is who is 3 feet 5 inches tall - and everyone else in the 15% of the global population – more than 1 billion people – who lives with some form of disability..<...

Controlling technology means controlling the world. While this statement rings painfully true today, it is as old as the idea of technology itself. In other words, as old as humanity. In this episode, Paola Antonelli interviews renowned researcher, author, and artist Kate Crawford, a leading voice on the social, ethical, and planetary implications of all technologies––artificial intelligence in particular. Kate uses art and information design to manifest histories and connections that would otherwise remain invisible because of their long time span and complexity. The interview is centered around one of Kate’s latest collaborations with artist...