 Good afternoon and welcome to Cooper Hewitt. I'm Caitlyn Condell the associate curator and head of drawings prints and graphic design here at Cooper Hewitt Today marks the official opening of the exhibition nature Cooper Hewitt design Triennial co-organized by Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and Cube Design Museum in Kirk Rada, Netherlands On view concurrently the shows both open to the public today The exhibition allows audiences in both the US and Europe to experience the work simultaneously The first time ever for each of our institutions This Triennial seeks to inspire ideas Collaboration and dialogue to address the most significant environmental and humanitarian issues of our time And I'm excited to begin this dialogue with the conversation today We are fortunate to have two of the designers featured in the exhibition with us to discuss their inspiring practices I will introduce them both briefly and they will speak about their own work before we come together for what I know Will be a lively discussion Shahar Levne is a conceptual material designer born in Israel and based in Eindhoven in the Netherlands Her lifelong fascinations in nature biology and science and philosophy developed into the intuitive material Experimentation during her studies at the design Academy in Eindhoven She was recently named one of the 100 most influential International talents in the creative industry by icon design magazine and was nominated for the 2018 Beasley design of the Year Award Charlotte McCurdy is an American interdisciplinary designer and researcher based in Brooklyn She is a global security fellow at the Rhode Island School of Design with the support of the MacArthur Foundation And also a member of the new museum's cultural incubator new ink She holds a master of industrial design from RISD and a bachelor of arts in global affairs from Yale University Please join me in welcoming Charlotte and Shahar Okay, good Okay, so the conventional story we tell each other about climate change is that it's a problem of burning fossil fuels for the production of electricity and for transport It then follows that what we need to do is to reduce our consumption of those fuels to reduce our release of those gases It then follows that you and I should feel guilty Our unwillingness to sacrifice our modern standards of living causes us to contribute to polluting a pristine nature What this story misses among other things is the third of emissions that come from the chemistry of stuff In the next few minutes, I'm going to tell you about a category of emissions that most people don't talk about Emissions not from burning fossil fuels, but from the intrinsic chemistry of things like buildings and plastic bottles And then I'm going to tell you why adding these emissions to the scope of your concern is a cost for hope not further despair So let's look at the materials currently complicit in climate change. We're talking primarily about cement steel and plastic These materials are carbon emitters like fossil fuels because they are fossilized life in The terms of my work. They are ancient sunlight So what do I mean by ancient sunlight? Big beautiful carbon-based molecules are how life stores the energy of the Sun Let's follow the sunlight of plastic for a minute So photosynthesizing organisms hundreds of millions of years ago took in sunlight and carbon from the ancient atmosphere built carbon-rich molecules of their little bodies, which then Settled to the ocean floor and gradually accumulated into carbon-rich sedimentary rock Which then went to just the right sequence of pressure heat and capture to produce petroleum We then take up that slurry of carbon molecules separate them by length break them apart recombine them into all of our plastics This process releases carbon all along its chain Looking at these materials as ancient sunlight raises a logical question What would happen if we made them out of present-tent sunlight if we took the carbon from our current atmosphere in the sunlight We have right now We could make we could not only reduce our dependence on ancient carbon We could if we do it right store our current carbon in our materials and This isn't science fiction This raincoat is made from a plastic I developed that's made entirely from marine algae macro algae and it is carbon negative It is made from naturally sequestered carbon And I'm far from alone. That's where this gets exciting There are breakthroughs happening in biology and catalytic chemistry in real time And we increasingly have the technology to make new and familiar materials carbon negative For example, there's a company you might have heard of That through one of their partners is sitting on a patent that allows them to make PET standard plastic bottle plastic entirely out of plant sugars But faced with the conversation dominated by biodegradability There's not really space to introduce a good old PET even if this time it's entirely petroleum free This one company produces three million metric tons of plastic a year To put that in perspective if all of that plastic was in the form of 20 ounce soda bottles We stack them into a cube the size of the new museum Don't bother straight this one company produces 10 new museums a day every day every year PET is more than 60% carbon by mass So we have the technology to make carbon negative materials But what's missing is desire and a fundamental understanding of the complicity of materials and climate change This is a design challenge We're on the edge of a revolution and we don't have the vocabulary to ask for it. I See a future where the buildings that shelter me and the shirt on my back have a desirable impact on the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere and Where we can all re-engage or engage for the first time with climate change because we can touch it and have hope I'm Charlotte McCurdy and after ancient sunlight is an umbrella project that builds a path to a future where culture can be a carbon sink in A paralyzed policy environment. We need a citizen led movement to pave the way to a market led inevitability This to me is political realism It's happening already with solar. It can happen with materials too and it has to So I offer you my guiding design question for this project What would it feel like to get back into a present tense relationship with the Sun? I hope you'll join me in working towards a future where we can find out So now to something maybe a little bit different So as a carline introduced me at my name is Chacha Rivlin. I'm a conceptual material designer I'm gonna briefly explain what is a conceptual material designer Because probably you're used to hear about material designers and that they design Systems how to deal with materials or they design new new type of composite materials or for example PT sugar cane sugar based Plastics, so it's more like engineering materials, but I see it from a conceptual way So for me every material is a carrier or a narrative It's a storyteller and I'm trying through design to attract people to listen to the story Is it by interacting is it by looking so I really believe that design can also be a mental practice I'm very very much With the project I'm presenting here. I'm kind of looking to the Anthropocene. Maybe some of you heard about it It's the new geological age that we live in There was a panel this morning Kind of a bit later They're gonna be a panel later and digging into it if it's really should be an official Geological era or or not. I really believe it is Some some people say they started when when humans started agriculture. So when we started changing the Landscape or some people say they started with atomic experiments. So we left atomic residues in the earth What is it really interesting for me about the Anthropocene is that because I look in a really big Time scales geological time scales It's a just one Little second in the lifespan of the earth. So if you can look at here It's like this little little dots. It's only like a split second of the life That's existed here and will probably exist after us I Want to talk about nature in a different way. So the way we see nature is usually very romantic we're always imagining when somebody is telling us nature we think about Fresh meadows or trees and we don't see it and it's not really like that anymore So since the industrial revolution nature started to become completely different Can we call it already next nature because it takes to itself human made materials? We extract it, but we also bring back into it So nature nowadays looks more like the pictures that we see everywhere about plastic pollution see full of plastics rivers of plastic pollution extraction of materials So as I said some people assume that they say that Anthropocene era started when we started nuclear bomb tests and for me it was a really interesting moment because It created a new material kind of a natural way So you can't really call it a human main material, but more like a naturally occurring material This is trinitide. So it was residue that was left In the test area of the bomb trinity. I think it was here in the USA or in Mexico probably I think I'm not sure So yeah, so it was a new type of material that happened because of us, but in a very natural way So I'm really trying to figure out also with my research also the way I work as a designer like what are the Borders between man-made and natural and I found out that it's very blurry nowadays. So we can't really say oh, this is man-made This is natural another Narrative carrying material which is naturally occurring, but it's kind of made made it's fordite or motor agate and It occurred it started happening because of the motor industry in Detroit mainly they found out that in the past we used to color cars by Coating them with a mile putting them in the oven and then taking it out and it was laying on the kind of a rail And what the workers in the factory started notice that there's this material that accumulates all the colors are Accumulating on the rails and they thought wow, this is really beautiful material. We should probably there is a potential to it And what happened today is that because this technology is not Is not happening anymore. We're not using this technology to paint cars. It doesn't occur So people are selling those kind of materials for really a lot of money because of the potential of them And they're really looking at it almost as precious stones So this is kind of what I'm trying to explain when I'm talking about a narrative carrying materials this is a time capsule of a technology that we don't have anymore and It's really you can even look at it in a political sense or into Yeah, like what was the colors that were? really Really popular in the certain factory you can really trace back the economical and the political Changes that occurred at that time through this material But the material that I took as an inspiration for my project metamorphism, which I'll talk about in a second It's the first. It's the newest type of rock occurring on the face of the earth which called plastic lomerate It was found in a Y In a certain area called Camillo Beach And the sand there is very over saturated already with plastic particles because of the gyres and the movement of the ocean so it could be plastic that arrives from really far away and the researchers who found Those plastics are really amazed because it's already a plastic that Take part with other natural materials It's really accumulate and becomes a new type of rock without any human intention They found out also they'd buried quite deep So they really call it the marker of the Anthropocene that will probably stay longer than what we assume will happen to plastic So to go to my my project and what I actually did and so for my graduation project at the design Academy as I said, I'm a very material I'm a material a girl and and I was fascinated by the occurrence of plastic lomerate and this idea of transformation of nature And I also was a bit of sick of the way we treat plastic because it became really like the black sheep of humanity It becomes like the worst thing that we can talk about Every time we talk about pollution every time we talk about climate change We start to talk about plastic and I saw so much So much negative Feelings towards plastic that I wanted really to see maybe there is something else. Maybe we can talk about it in a different way And the moment you start talking about it in a bigger Frame as you as a geologist that I spoke to the world is not going to give a damn about us So for us, it's really a big thing. But if we're talking in a Geological scales time scales, it's not going to bother the earth. It's just going to take it to itself So what is actually metamorphism? It's a geological term that speaks about that refers to heat and pressure that are occurring to materials when they're buried in a certain point When we talk about geological Processes we think immediately like really big Depths really big heat really big pressure, but it starts from 250 degrees and one bar Which is quite light and it's very possible to make it in a lab environment And what they but how geologists refers to it they say that rocks start to act like plastic that they stretch and they become millable and they They change and that's how also you get different minerals and I thought this for information It can be really interesting if we think about it about the man-made materials that would put in it So I started my research by really being just going out doing a field research I went to the beach in the Netherlands and in Israel just collecting the plastic that Went out of the ocean, so it's already plastic that went through some natural processes I didn't want to work with new plastic And I found this little piece of material Which is kind of it is plastic glomerate You don't I don't know if you really can see it in the in the picture, but it already had a few Animals like from the sea starting to grab into it, so it really became part of nature nature So I collected the plastic I collected the sediments which are around it so kind of like the suspicious like the main suspects of what will happen and I wanted to talk about I wanted to refer to the field of speculative design Because again as I said, I don't want to stay in a very small time frame The one the one we're really like talking about now, but I want to look in a bigger scale And so I looked into a speculative design from Dune and Robbie. It's a couple. It's two designers from the UK and They came up with this term and it's talking about different possible narratives So it can be either an alternate narrative So for example if somebody else if Hitler wouldn't win would win the World War two how the world would look like so to a kind of Illustrate that so we can learn for from the way we're using the way We're acting now to learn what would be a possible future or you can do also look and things that really happens in the now and And create some kind of like almost like a detective you take hints you take trends You look at things that occur and you can build a very possible future And what I did I worked with geologist and also I interviewed the person who actually found the plastic lomerate And I asked them what can happen to plastic what really will happen to plastic and of course They said that because it's existing in all kinds of Of environments that momify it for example landfills which are momifying materials Or for example at the bottom of the sea where it's a very muddy Environment and the fossilize it's gonna exist way longer than those 1,000 years we say that they can exist in I'm also very interested in philosophy of design and echo philosophy So a lot of times when I create an object I refer to a philosopher or a philosophical term term And one of the most beautiful essays I wrote was by Ronald Barts And he wrote in his book myth about plastic that plastic isn't essentially alchemical alchemical Substance more than substance sub plastic is the very idea of its infinite transformation And I think that's how nature really works. It doesn't work with good or bad. It just transform. It just digest The material I created the speculative future material that plastic lomerate and all the plastic that we create Will transform into in thousands of years millions of years Is created from a few different materials. So one of them is marble Calcium carbonate which also exists in plastic as a whitener. So it's already in the same environment But it also exists at the bottom of the sea. So it's also the thing that fossilize Animals so I was thinking, okay I have to work with the material that probably will be in the same environment But when I look at the way we extract marble and the way we treat resources and natural resources It's really connected immediately to the age of man the way we change landscapes And I thought it's a very strong narrative that I can kind of inject into my own material The second material I worked with it's called a mind stone and It comes from very deep in the ground when we do a mining for metals or for coal and We bring this ancient materials into the face of the earth so into our time So except for being very poetic and very philosophical About it like oh this man-made landscape I could also work with very organic materials or materials that are not polluted by humans But will come in touch with this polluted material the plastic And of course I worked with plastic from the oceans and from landfills So I couldn't legally go to a landfill. So what I started doing I'm working now with a few a few Companies that they do recycling for household plastic and they give me the plastic They're they're going to sent into landfills. So it's a plastic They don't want to or they can't recycle so it's going to be anyway deep in the ground My material when I use metamorphism on it in a kind of a lab Environment it really becomes like clay It's a very hot clay. So I have to wear gloves when I work with it But I thought it's quite amazing because it's a really different way of the way we're interacting with plastic nowadays It's almost like a craft person. It's almost like in the ancient way We used to extract materials from the earth and really connected them So maybe it will become the new clay of the future. What can I do with it? What will be the value of it? I created this kind of you'll see it maybe upstairs later, or you already saw it and It's kind of a little worshipy kind of a mysterious object and the purpose of doing it was Is that we're kind of worshipping materials? I took the idea from Lacan, which is a philosopher and he called it the object petite So it's the object that will never be able to have we're always worshipping it We're always want to have it if you have 10,000 cars You'll always want to have the newest car and I think also that's the way we're treating nature We always want to control it. We always want to modify it and plastic as well. It's we always want to make it stronger better faster Produced so for me, that's my way of communicating this story to you the crowd The second project the second object I made and it's always also upstairs it's a kind of an archetype of a vase and the idea was to tell the story of the past materials that we work with how we used Natural materials and what will be the new natural materials in thousands of years when we extract landfills as if they were quarries or mines for precious materials and That's it. Thank you So both of the projects are showcased in the try and you'll grew out of your graduate work in your design programs and I was really interested in the fact that both of you chose to name these materials that you were working with and In talking to you right in advance of the show I learned that since the time of your creation the naming of them has been more controversial You've each had different kinds of experiences around the questions that just naming these materials have provoked So I hope you could both tell us a little bit about what that experience has been Yes, we spoke earlier about it and it was really interesting to find a common experience with Charlotte Charlotte that When you name a material immediately you get responses from companies and people who wants to use it for a construction for interior design and I really became very defensive with this material because for me It's a very precious to keep this narrative to keep this philosophical and poetic idea of speculative design I I was really protecting of it from not becoming something that we just used to build I want to keep it as something that is not really happening now They will happen in the future. So of course you can't use it for building if it's not there there yet Yeah, I mean that's exactly To my experience as well that When you name something that people want assume it's you're trying to commercialize it and that it's something that will participate in the economy But I think both of our projects are much more interested in the storytelling work that materials can do and in some ways It's an interesting Shift in the expectations of what design is and what design can do and like the work that design is supposed to do I feel like it's a slightly older or more conservative Model of what designers are doing to say like great like what's put a price tag on it like let's when is it in target? And it's like that's not all design Functions at within society these days and perhaps not where it's most needed given the problems that we face You both chose to make objects that have a familiarity that reference Experiences we have in our day-to-day lives. So why did you make those choices when you were making these works? Well, I kind of use archetypes as a way to communicate to the crowd as kind of an invitation to look closer and Try to understand and one of those techniques is like for example to take an archetype Which is very known in one material that is from in our environment for example What I said about the clay and the moment you transform it into a different material it gets a new meaning and I think that's Also again about about looking in a new way into design that it's more of a tool for discussion than really a material that you can use It's also a bit of a criticism about like why every material that we make we have to use So yeah for me for me. It's a kind of like a getaway an invitation for people and I would say in Working with this material in early stages that I'd often get feedback of like like why not get make Futuristic aesthetics like what what are the aesthetics native to this particular material? And while that's a totally valid and important inquiry the the goal of the project was really around Addressing climate change and addressing that the tools for combating climate change are already here And so having the aesthetics be very familiar very normal and show that this is not it's not some far off future in which we Solve and work on these problems that like it's actually in the present and to make that really Tangible and inherent to the way the design was conceived Top-to-bottom was really important to me We were talking about the Anthropocene which some many scientists believe as the geological age that we're living in and both Of you made work that talked about geological time in a large sense when you're making work That's very specific to this moment How is how is your experience of thinking about time both looking backward in the geological ages and also forward thinking? impacting how you view your own work and also the future of design I Would say I have a specific thought that connects to shahosh shahosh project and put your name I'm sorry, but that in looking through in looking at carbon from a very literal sense and like Focusing on the atoms like where are they where were they where do they come from I found this piece of the story of Geologic Time of Carbon emissions that was really striking and beautiful to me, which is that we're not the first form of life to change the climate that 90% of our coal comes from this one moment when plants develop the ability to produce lignin and it took a hundred million years for Other organisms to figure out how to break it down and so similarly with plastic like it's an incredibly Powerful energy-dense material. It's part of that nature now And it's sort of it's sort of up to the cycles and the systems and the forces that include organisms But also include inanimate objects and forces like to determine what will be retrospectively will be the way this era looks Yeah, I completely agree. I think that's this idea of that every material carries its past but also its future it has a potential for future processes and For me looking in a very big time scale I want us to zoom out because I feel that now we're very as I said We really made a plastic like the source of all evil almost or like the cause of Every pollution and I want people to get to take a step back to look at it from a different scale and Again, it's like geologists They don't look at those things in that way and I think when you look in a different perspective about nature and not very humanistic Perspective you get new new thoughts and new ideas and how we should treat nature as well and how nature works around us Have either of you encountered resistance about the materials and I'm sure with plastic Which is particularly controversial thinking about its future use how it might age in our society But also Charlotte what you've experienced in having these conversations over the last year Yeah, I had a lot of kind of confrontations with people I think I also with my other project. I maybe I'm looking for it Not not on purpose, but that for me This is the purpose for me as a designer when I see people start to talk about it I Received a few times like people saying yes, yes But what is your opinion and I say my opinion my job as a designer is to let you develop your own opinion So I take kind of a step backward. I'm making an immoral Perspective so you can find your way in it. You can make sense of this of those huge systems of your of Make your own opinion do your own research. Don't listen only to something which is on the media or what Sado specialist are saying sometimes and that's what I'm trying to do. I'm really trying to Take a step back and usually when I I'm showing in a in an exhibition and the crowd are coming I'm really enjoying when I see them talking between themselves I don't take a part in it because I'm just the one who initiated the discussion But I wanted to develop it's kind of I give it to the world back I'd say the main criticism That I encounter pretty consistently and I imagine there are people in this audience who are like sitting there feeling it right now Is that I'm very conscious of the fact that my project is very techno optimistic. It falls into a particular way of thinking and talking about addressing climate change and it sort of gets back to this question of My goal is about Planting an idea and sharing an idea and sharing The sense that one could engage with this topic that they didn't feel like they could engage before and so to me it's important to offer In particular to people of my generation a hopeful message even if that comes across as Overly optimistic at time, but I very firmly believe that that's a very important Position to take to get more people at the table get people at the table who are alienated by words like Anthropocene So that we can actually have more people participating in shaping this scary future that we're living into Because it can't be The current like the strategy so far hasn't seemed to work So as much as there are absolutely things to criticize in the particular frame that I offer. I hope that You can consider it as one complimentary approach It's another threat that maybe will bring other people to the table that aren't currently feeling Connected to the narratives that they've been offered so far I can also add to it because we spoke we had we started to talk about design and how design can Really become something else from what we're used to and I think for example in my work And you're also offering an alternative for plastic is that the word plastic although it became very negative Very associate to negative ideas. It's something that we interact with every day So I think it's really helping people to think. Oh, what could be a different solution for it? How can we change completely the systems? How can we maybe I? Sometimes I feel that I give it a kind of a moral break to people that they're like I have to recycle then I'm a good person then I'm nice to the climate change and to the world And I want to tell them this is like a bit of a scheme There's a beautiful documentary which is called their recycling scheme and people are not looking deep enough to understand That they're just living in their bubble and they're just surrounded by by information and sometimes they're okay Not lazy, but they're they don't try to to go forward and I think both by both of our projects We want people to open up to new ideas and to new possibilities We as a curatorial team were really fascinated by the optimism that designers were experiencing and looking at how they were Collaborating partnering with nature even sort of in the moment where there is an increased awareness of climate change The impact on our planet that humans make the UN climate report coming out again this week That optimism is that something that motivated each of you to approach your this area of design? Or was it from a point of pessimism that your work started is the opposite of optimism pessimism or nihilism sometimes I? I would say that My work is more like pragmatic I'd say then Shahar's project that she's presenting here And it is more humanist it's more human centric, and I'm comfortable with that because I'm sort of taking a Stance of Climate change is here. It's gonna suck like the people who suffer are already the most disenfranchised All we have control over is severity and In the logic of the Anthropocene like we are Massively influencing the entire world. Let's get good at it like let's take that seriously instead of retreating from it or pretending that we're not and that's very difficult to do responsibly and collaboratively and inclusively and we have to try or What what's the what I to me the alternative is? retiring repose recline and I dispositionally I Can't sit with that, and I think that there are people like me who feel alienated from this challenge alienated from the exclusive vocabularies that get used and want very badly a way to Connect with these challenges, but not be told You need to sacrifice you need to like feel bad every time you take your kids to school you need to like that there there need to be alternative ways of I'm caring and doing work Yeah, I I think well, I'm not really Not pessimistic or optimistic again. I'm really trying to look at the bigger picture like to be really kind of Normalized but Yeah, well, I'm more trying to Give hope as well like with the way we're dealing with materials So by taking plastic which was kind of the first material that we really changed in the chemical sense like in the chemical state scale and We it became like this amazing materials that we're all using Super exotic in the 50s and then later on it became this monster that we can't control anymore. So I'm more trying to say Listen, let's stop for a moment before we create other materials Let's think about about what we're causing and look at plastic as a study case for it So it really becomes kind of like a thought experiment for future scenarios or For future materials that we're going to use. So I don't think it's Neither not pessimistic or optimistic. I Want to open it up to the audience? If you could wait for the microphone so everyone can hear you You've both been clear that the value of the materials that you're working with For the two of you seem to be primarily the ability to talk about ideas But I'm not sure if you're both on the same page with regards to do these materials have a life Beyond you and beyond these projects of your own or are they just bound up and this is Where they belong in in a philosophical realm as opposed to a material realm Are you an investor? I'll say this is that One reason why it's important to me to not try to commercialize this particular material is that there's so much Greenwashing and so much distrust and so much cynicism So I feel very clear that if I show up at the table with something for sale That changes the dynamic of the story. I'm trying to tell and also There's something very it's very important. I am very in my clear vision and hope and sense that carbon negative material culture In terms of built environment both physical landscape like how that is really a possibility. I'm very Nervous about it becoming something that one brand or one entity owns as like Like unique value proposition and then no one else can touch it And so how how to go about being as open source as open with these kinds of ideas so that everyone feels like they can be like wait I make Viscose which is made from trees like are there ways that I could change my production process so that's fully electrified So that this material can be truly renewable for the first time like I want that little seed to Like travel as much as possible, but I Just accept your challenge for sure Yeah, well I stay I stay again I I have to to defend this project as a very philosophical project because I think that As a thought-experienced, it's really doing its work It really makes people a lot of time. I have people that they just go after I tell them the story and they say Wow, you're really I need to go home to think about it. And I think that's immediately like Open them up to understanding that They need to form their own ideas about Recycling and about treating materials. So it's not necessarily for commercial use because I Don't we're really dependent on plastic We're not only addicted to it But we're dependent on it and people don't understand it when they when they protest against plastic and let's just stop Producing it. I think I don't really believe that we can stop producing it at least for the coming hundred years Maybe we can find yeah, we can find Replacements, but we're so dependent on it they it will take much longer that we that most people think and I just want to open their eyes for it. I just want to make the individuals think about it I don't want to work. I don't make a material which is should be commercialized And just to like piggyback on that sense it like that feeling I think one In terms of how it's these materials are part of our near future. There's something really powerful about connecting the really banal asphalt hydrocarbon that's in the road to really precious It's I'm piggybacking on the way you are so good at creating a sense of the preciousness of plastic that These molecules are incredibly valuable. We need them to make really specific medicines and drugs and we need to be thinking more Carefully about what we do with them because they are precious and we need to probably stop paving our roads Yeah, we really we're treating the earth and its resources like it's not precious But it is and I think the moment that I even put plastic as a precious material of the future That will be mined from like the same way that oil fossil fuels are being mined It's like changing completely the idea of natural resources and it's a bigger It's a way bigger story than just plastic pollution and how we treat how we use plastic It's really like a story about Wow, we're really like we're here for such a small moment and we used up the entire earth for our own needs and wants Way way more than what we really need There another question from the audience Hi, so I'm a product design student Parsons And so one of in all my classes as soon as we started making Products and material that teachers are immediately like oh look into this new materials And it's always about something new that would replace plastic whatever do you think that there is a Possibility like a way that we could start looking back at materials that are already on earth Like I find it quite interesting that you start using clay, which is kind of something that a lot of people gave up on Because plastic is there so like why do we need clay for everything? Do you think that there is a way to look back and start looking at those materials again and see see how they can replace? Plastic, which is the black sheep because you know bio plastic now is like the miracle thing It's like oh, it's the greatest thing, but we still have no idea how it's going to reflect the same way that plastic was the greatest thing So yeah, do you think there's a way to look back in something? Definitely definitely. It's like you just said it that immediately your teachers are saying to make something new But why do we have to make and make and make? We have already there's so much materials that we can look back at it's like also in design We're always looking at design history to create the new so why not look at the potential of things that maybe we looked We looked over for example like what you said with ancient Sun I think it's a beautiful idea to look at this perspective like why we're always looking forward and not backwards as well For the sake of controversy, I'll disagree Because I think that There's value in looking backwards for Technic for techniques materials, but in particular when we're talking about carbon-based materials We are There's always gonna be a trade-off and within you may have encountered like a food versus fuel debate back when ethanol when Plant-based fuels were being introduced and it caused food price spikes that affected people's lives, so a Thing that you I try to always keep in mind is that we are on a planet with 7.6 billion people and counting So when we're talking about going backwards, how do you stay honest and accountable to those? billions of people that weren't around and That weren't meeting resources back when those techniques were dominant so I Think there's value in looking at past techniques, but they will have to be very critically reconsidered to function at a scale in a way that is Meaningful and honors the population that like We have to serve Yeah, I think the men the main word is reconsideration because we can use we can Sometimes we're overlooking and materials that they may have a potential to to benefit us and that there are more natural And we're just like really focusing on inventing something new and that's what maybe I more agree with you than we thought that maybe But I think it's about reconsideration and looking at potential of things because there's I'm sure that there's So much natural materials that we overlooked Because for example you work with algae as well right and algae was existing for millions of years and only in the past few years We really look and it's potential So I think it's it's interesting. Okay, you can also invent, but it's very interesting to also look at the past Maybe we overlooked something that can really be beautiful and beneficial And it's definitely a danger in novelty for novelty sake Time for one more question two more question great Yeah, anybody have a question, please raise your hand high so I can see it. Hi Talking about plastics, I'm just wondering because for example when you see the garments made out of plastic like You know that you could pull yesterday's recyclable basically and that's pretty useful and you think oh, that's great Why I spit on plastic But then when you find out that when you wash them the micro particles go in the in the water And there's no way to avoid that. So my question is just more I mean, it's great to be positive and enthusiastic but just where does it end and how in Which way on the large-scale plastic is really solution or just the thing that we created now We don't really know how to get away from but It's just this idea of like if you want to be upcycling it has to be Cycle that doesn't go to waste and I'm just wondering how you approach that aspect Well, I actually I believe that all plastic that you created still exists. So for me It's not I always when people are seeing my project they say oh, it's about recycling and I I don't I don't approach plastic There's a lot of really beautiful projects about recycling and I'm not against it at all I think it's really nice to and great to reuse materials and I'll just throw away and live in this one time One like this throw away society, but I Just believe they just exist in different ways. So plastic when it gets in for example Recently I started research about the garbage patch and the ecosystems that developed there So it just reaches a different way and this idea of like if we if we clean the garbage patch We're also going to ruin those new ecosystems that they have a potential So it's like a new life for those maybe fibers or plastic materials that we we don't need anymore, but maybe a New evolved animal or bacteria and they actually found a Fungi and a caterpillar that can digest BT. Maybe that's the next future So it's very It's it's a bit like you really need to think about it also like in the ethics of it Like if it just becomes part of our environment how it takes part in the environment And if are we going to take it again out and recycle it? Are we actually ruining something new? What I would Tell my watch to stop telling me that I have a spam call because those are so much fun to get um What I'll offer on that is that Yes recycling is broken The vast majority of plastics that have been produced were never recycled at all those that were recycled the vast majority Which were not recycled again? To me I try to focus and this is like my Global fairs economics math brain Nothing is perfect. No intervention is going to be completely Unproblematic the question is always for me relative to what and how do you how do you start where you are and Have a goal of an entirely renewable entirely biodegradable material culture and Know that you can't just jump straight there We're gonna have to start taking steps building intermediate materials intermediate industries and technologies to get there and not shoot The messenger I guess not not critique that first step because it's not the last step Because we'll never get there if we're bickering over the imperfections of the first step And that's and that sort of gets back to the pessimism versus like optimism thing like there's a realism Path as well that sort of tempers both of those sentiments. Yeah, I think we're more realistic than optimistic or Yeah, exactly. It's it's again. It's not a perfect thing and it's again this Really innocent idea of like recycling and recycling But if you think about it where even if a bottle was recycled, maybe the consumer wouldn't recycle it again So it's not a magical and perfect Chain it just like most people they don't even know what they're recycling and I just read a few days ago that The recycling company they say that it's better to not recycle than to recycle wrong Because for them, it's really hard to take care of Materials that are being recycled wrong and then they just have to send it to a landfill Time for one more question Hi, I'm just really interested in this idea of collaborating with nature And just if you have you can speak to that or have any advice on sort of how you approach that whether you're looking at Systems and landscapes and sort of the priorities of those ecological systems and landscapes and how you would intervene or intersect or Collaborate with them and sort of your approach to that I think I more do what is called bio mimicry mimicry or geo mimicry So I'm really looking in the systems that are happening in nature how because nature for me It's the perfect. It's the perfect processes and systems Yeah, I think I'm more inspired by nature and I'm more interested in what is happening in nature than Interving in it. That's more my approach my So starting from a premise of climate change being the theme Starting from an observation that we already have too much carbon in the atmosphere already. We need to be taking it down out If you ask like a room of engineers to build a carbon sequestering machine that is self-replicating self-cleaning potentially ecologically beneficial and like has zero maintenance They wouldn't be able to do it, but it already exists. It's algae like so that that's sort of where There's a humility in trying to look at the natural world and look at how Incredibly well adapted some organisms are to certain behaviors and how can we How can we leverage that instead of sort of back to your question like just try to invent something new for the sake of newness So that's sort of how I would say I think about collaborating with nature is around appreciating that carbon is Actually incredibly scarce on the surface of the earth, but it's incredibly valuable for life So life's gotten really good at managing it. So how do we leverage that? and try to do it as responsibly and cautiously as possible because You can't it's such a dynamic system. You can't change one thing without creating cascades elsewhere Lovely way to end Unfortunately, I have to bring the formal conversation to a close because we have another wonderful panel if anybody wants to stay and join at 330 with three other at four sorry with three other designers from the Triennial on encouraging growth But both Charlotte and Chahar have offered to continue the conversation in front of their projects Which are on view in the Triennial upstairs Charlotte's piece is on the first floor Chahar's is on the third and if you're interested in further conversations around the Triana you can find four of them in the book Collaborations in design which is available in the shop. Thank you all