Educators in Britain are embracing the idea that purposeful risky play promotes resilience and builds more self-reliant young people. As a result, public playspaces there are being redesigned or newly built to actively present that risk. What that looks like—playgrounds with access to saws, knives, loose bricks and two-by-fours, and fire—is something that might sound alarms for some parents here in the litigious U.S.
https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/risky-play-design
Tag Archives: design
Why Nike Is Making Shoes You Can Take Apart
The ISPA team tackled the disassembly challenge. “Designed in partnership with engineering, digital product creation and development, these shoes are completely informed by method of make — it really is a case of form following function,” says Darryl Matthews, VP, Catalyst Footwear Product Design. “Our hope is that these ideas and aesthetics become normalized, accelerating our ability to imagine how shoes will continue to evolve in the future.”
https://news.nike.com/news/nike-ispa-link-link-axis
The Imagination Machine
The imagination space is a construct of what is immediately imaginable given our lived experience so far. Take, for a recurring example, the car. Because of the car it is easy for most folks to plausibly imagine more eco-friendly cars, autonomous cars, even flying cars. The car produces the imaginable future variations of the car within the limits of our futures cone or imagination space. However, these imaginable futures are also confined and structured by the car so that it is much easier to imagine marginal improvements on the car such as making it safer, more environmentally friendly or more efficient than it is to imagine cities without cars.
Essay for Yale Architecture Journal Perspecta 54 examining the relationship between imagination and expectation, science fiction and software.
Decoding The Metaverse
What does it mean to design urban technology?
What Augmented Reality Means for Our Lives, Our Work, and the Way We Imagine the Future (Supersight by David Rose)
Why Do Many Self-Driving Cars Look Like Toasters on Wheels?
As progress slows toward putting self-driving cars on the road, it’s looking like the vehicles may first be put to use schlepping things rather than people. Packages, after all, don’t complain when the robot takes the longer way around because it’s uncomfortable making left turns across traffic. The nice thing is that both people and packages can comfortably fit into cubes. Zoox, despite its new Amazonian overlords, insists that it’s still focused on robotaxis, though Levinson says “a lot of things are possible with our platform.”
The case for ugly design
Designer’s amazing creations ask us to rethink waste (Speculative Design)
More than 90 materials, ranging from recycled paper, plastic, metals and leather made from kombucha, were presented at the first workshop, which took place in December. “I wanted to create an open-source space that’s democratised in the sense that it can be added to by designers, artists and other people during workshops,” says Edwards, asking: “What is Johannesburg’s material future?” Read more (Times)
How Artifacts Afford: A Conversation with Dr. Jenny L. Davis (The Deep Dive)

In this conversation, Philip spends time Dr. Jenny L. Davis, author of How Artifacts Afford: The Power and Politics of Everyday Things. In their conversation, they discuss the conditions and frameworks that are part nuanced field of affordances. They cover the political choices of technology and culture and the inherent role that power plays in our design choices.