Design luminaries discuss materials and circularity at London Design Festival 2020

Material innovation and its potential for eliminating waste and pollution are the core themes of a digital panel discussion next Tuesday, as part of the London Design Festival’s Global Design Forum.

The panel features design leaders across multiple disciplines: offering her curatorial perspective is Paola Antonelli, senior curator at the department of architecture and design at MoMA, winner of this year’s London Design Medal, and joint guest editor (as co-founder of Design Emergency, alongside Alice Rawsthorn) of the October 2020 issue of Wallpaper*. Antonelli brings expertise from her longstanding investigations into restorative design, which culminated in the ‘Broken Nature’ exhibition at the XXII Triennale di Milano last year.

Also at the forefront of material innovation is designer Neri Oxman, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Mediated Matter Group. Oxman has dedicated her career to harnessing, hacking and augmenting nature in speculative projects such as silkworm architecture and 3D-printed glass. Her ‘material ecology’ approach, which brings together organic design, material science and digital fabrication technology, was the subject of a mid-career retrospective at MoMA earlier this year, curated by Antonelli.

As founding partner of architecture practice Snøhetta, Kjetil Trædal Thorsen is an important voice in social and environmental sustainability. Beyond their commitment to energy-positive buildings that embrace material innovation, Snøhetta has also taken on notable research projects, starting with Plast (which aims to shift the public’s attitude towards used plastic, from regarding it as a waste to seeing it as a valuable resource) and now expanding into clay. His participation in the panel reflects the role that a new material philosophy can play in the built environment.

Joining them is Ivy Ross, vice president of hardware design at Google. Having pledged to incorporate recycled materials into all ‘Made by Google’ hardware products by 2022, Ross is a key advocate for Silicon Valley’s transition to a more circular economy, a shining example for corporate leaders as they contemplate the consequences of our current material-driven culture.

Moderated by Wallpaper* Editor-in-Chief Sarah Douglas, the conversation will touch on the shift from degenerative to regenerative design; the ways in which different materials can be made ‘circular’; decision-making around material trade-offs; and the role of the designer in shaping a new material vision.

The talk is organised by the London Design Festival, enterprise software company SAP, and The Ellen Macarthur Foundation, whose mission is to develop and promote the idea of a circular economy. It is free of charge to the public, pre-registration is required here.

INFORMATION
‘The Circular Design Project: Materials’: Paola Antonelli, Neri Oxman, Kjetil Trædal Thorsen and Ivy Ross, moderated by Wallpaper* Editor-in-Chief Sarah Douglas. 4:30PM BST, Tuesday 15 September 2020