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 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.. 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. .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. .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.
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Paola Antonelli and Alice Rawsthorn on Design and Infrastructure
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 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..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. .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.
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Hilary Cottam on Redesigning Work
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 – 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...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. .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.
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Sadie Red Wing on Indigenous design
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.
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Hidden Heroines of Design
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 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..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..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.
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. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
México