On the role of design-led agencies that can work as cement between bricks, allowing systemic responses to systemic challenges, and in particular the case of ArkDes within Sweden’s research and innovation landscape — In my recent book Designing Missions, I frequently return to the idea that our complex shared challenges cannot be easily addressed by our typical democratic structures. The systemic nature of these challenges means that the well-insulated silos in, for example, the Swedish governance frameworks, enshrined in constitutions and founding documents…

A presentation and Q&A for Urban AI, on designing for technology and the city, and a discussion about on tech, cities, public value, capitalism and design practice for Brave UX podcast — Not long after I returned to Australia, back in May 2022, I gave a late-night (for me) presentation to the Emerging Leaders programme at Urban AI, followed by a Q&A with students. Urban AI frame the programme thus:

A radio interview on the Australian city, suburbs and centres—as seen in 1970, 2007, and 2021 — A quick note to point to a radio discussion with me and Jonathan Green of ABC Radio National’s Blueprint for Living, which was just broadcast this weekend in Australia. We discuss the possibility of the suburbs and centres within Australian cities, and beyond. We reflect on the relatively few moments…

The opening text from the ‘Oslo Futures Catalogue’, produced on the first ‘Strategic design for society’ course running at Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO), 2021 — Einar Sneve Martinussen and I just posted about the Strategic Design for Society course that we’ve been running at Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) for Masters design students. We focused on the students’ first assignment: producing an Oslo Futures Catalogue, a portfolio of ideas intended to contribute to…

Co-opting a loose word—the Swedish concept of ‘lagom’—and redeploying it for our streets and neighbourhoods — Working on numerous urban mobility-related initiatives here in Sweden, and running design workshops with stakeholders from municipalities, regional and national government, transport agencies, Volvo, MoveByBike, Voi and many others, I started stringing together a phrase, ‘lagom mobilitet’ to describe how we might better calibrate our mobility to our spaces, looking…

Help build this collection of shared, open research about some of the multiple and diverse forms of value that retrofitting our streets might produce — This is something of an experiment. As part of our ongoing work at Vinnova funding and collaborating on new research and innovation projects around streets, we are also collating existing research. We want to better understand the various forms of value that might be unlocked by transforming our streets, quantifying…

A recent thought on blurring streets and parks in Stockholm echoes an older thought on spatially shaping connectivity and informational intensity on Barangaroo, Sydney — In a recent piece on adapting Holger Blom’s landscaping principles from 1940s parks to today’s streets, I suggested we might think about a blurred, shifting continuum of park-like conditions—biodiverse and culturally diverse activities and environments—moving from streets to gardens to parks. This, as opposed to the traditional binary opposition between…

Adapting Holger Blom’s 1946 principles for Stockholm’s park programme to inform today’s street systems — In my piece unpacking Brian Eno’s design principles for for our Swedish street mission, I suggested, as an aside, that “it feels like landscape architecture, having been unfairly downplayed for decades, perhaps for obvious if unfortunate reasons, may increasingly be the most important strand of architecture moving forward, for those…