From a powerful example of design’s crucial role of healing in post-genocide Rawanda to a city’s solution to homelessness, this episode of HassellTalks examines how deploying, measuring and demonstrating the value of design is critically important to addressing the most pressing humanitarian challenges of our time.

Designers have “freaking superhero” skills, says architect Bryan Bell of the Public Interest Design Movement, and South Carolina’s Design Corps.  They rapidly visualise multiple solutions and design assets, creating countless – limitless – ideas in a single day.  But they’re not so great at measuring and articulating that value - meaning they sometimes get sidelined.

With our world facing the complex challenges of climate, inequality, food, water and political insecurity: a superhero is what the world needs right now.

Humanitarian Architecture: how powerful design can help change the world

Can design firms be truly future-focused if they’re not appealing to the next generation? What will attract the best designers of the future? How do firms give talent the right platforms to make a positive difference? 

We are obsessed with how design can make a difference in the future so in this episode of Hassell Talks we dive right in with Jan Owen AM, Co Chair / Convenor of Learning Creates Australia, and former CEO of Foundation for Young Australians, and Managing Director Steve Coster to uncover what makes tomorrow’s design leaders tick, what they’re looking for – and how to unleash their world-changing potential.

Autonomy, mastery and meaning: What the next generation of design talent wants

Workplace After Covid19

We don’t know exactly what our lives, work and communities will look like post COVID-19.
But one thing we’re sure of is that some trends we saw developing over the past few years have only accelerated since the global pandemic took hold.

They’re trends that are changing how we reimagine or repurpose spaces, think about mobility, and connect with each other and our communities – not to mention increase the appeal of a slowed-down culture. These shifts all have implications for the way people are interacting with places – and as designers this is a time to listen and partner with clients and communities to help us all re-emerge resilient.

For this episode of our podcast, we’re joined by our good friend and collaborator David Grant of Brickfields Consulting. As consumer research experts, David and his team have been delving deeper into these trends, giving our clients and designers extra insights into the people who will use the places we create.

David joins Hassell Principals Angus Bruce, Liz Westgarth, Chong Wang and Richard Mullane to discuss the impact and opportunities for cities from San Francisco to Sydney and Shanghai to London.

Re-emerge resilient: what can trends tell us about the future for cities, spaces and designers

Beyond the impeccable dress sense, designers working in fashion and city-making have a lot in common - both sectors can have indisputable impacts on the world - on a very large scale.

Right now they also have an opportunity to think more deeply about the impact of their work on people, places and our collective future. While fashion is often fast and seasonal and architectural design is often a longer process, both are responsible for dictating trends and aspirations – and both can generate significant amounts of waste.

Our Head of Design Technology and Innovation, Xavier de Kestelier, got together with Christopher Raeburn, Creative Director at Timberland and sustainable fashion brand RÆBURN, to talk about whether technology and similarities in the supply chain can lead to more collaboration between the industries and greater sustainability overall.

“There are some cross industry initiatives that we can work towards, along with things like carbon neutrality and travel that now need to be just standard,” says Christopher.

“But what can we do over and above that? We should, in the right way, challenge each other."

A better fit: tailoring design for a sustainable future

Plants in our cities are important for many reasons, like flooding and urban cooling and biodiversity and human wellbeing and health.
But they also have economic impacts that make green cities as attractive to developers and investors as those who just want to stop and smell the roses.

Episodes 12 and 13 of Hassell Talks looked at why we value wild, natural planting in our cities as well as the importance of scale, ecology and sustainability when creating landscapes that appear natural and organic.

For Episode 14, Principal Jon Hazelwood explores the significance of our emotional connections to nature in cities. He is joined by writer, garden designer and TV presenter Michael McCoy as well as Professor Nigel Dunnett, who is responsible for some of the UK’s most spectacular planted environments like the Barbican, Buckingham Palace's Diamond Garden and the planting designs for the London Olympic park (with his colleague James Hitchmough).

The value of emotional connections to nature

It might be hard to measure, but we know interacting with nature has an impact on our emotions – and that’s never been more apparent in cities during lockdown.

But does the kind of planting we encounter in urban environments matter? Are planned and cultivated spaces what we need, or could we be craving ‘wilder’, less predictable landscapes that fully immerse us in nature?

When it was published in 2015, the book Planting in a Post-Wild World challenged conventional ideas about designing green spaces that would flourish in our cities and suburbs – and capture people’s hearts and minds. It made a groundbreaking argument for a hybrid approach of both the wild and the cultivated that continues to gather momentum today.

Case in point: The High Line in New York – the poster child for naturalistic planting in a city. No other public space project has had such a powerful influence on design thinking in recent times.

In this episode of Hassell Talks, landscape architect Jon Hazelwood talks to Claudia West – director of Phyto studio and co-author of Planting in a Post-Wild World – and Robert Hammond, co-founder and CEO of The High Line, about planting the seeds for a deeper, more fulfilling relationship with nature, whatever the space, scale or budget

Why would we want nature in the city anyway?

The impact of nature on our immediate wellbeing has never been more apparent in our cities than during the lockdowns around the world in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. So does it matter if the nature is native or introduced? 

This debate around native or exotic urban planting can sometimes be a thorny one, culturally, environmentally and emotionally and over the longer term, climate change brings the role of planting and landscape into sharp focus as we consider the future health of our cities.

On the other hand, wholly exotic landscapes bring with them issues of culture, context and invasive issues. Perhaps the answer is somewhere in the middle. Carefully controlled “wild” environments like small pocket parks or larger spaces like New York's famous High Line in are vastly different, but non-native plants play a crucial role alongside native species. In this way designers are ensuring biodiversity, eco-systems and cultural aspects are all catered and cared for.

Following on from Episode 12 of Hassell Talks, 'Making cities wild again', in this episode host Jon Hazelwood brings together Professor James Hitchmough and internationally acclaimed garden designer Piet Oudolf to propose a different, less binary way of thinking about natives and non-natives. Together they look at why carefully considered planting needs to be seen at scale, and for people, ecology and wildlife.

Is 'native' the only answer to the biodiversity question?

Whether you’re a CEO, a property manager or a workplace designer, the office has been the headline conversation of 2020.

How many will go back? What will it look like? How will workplace culture change?

It’s a topic we’ve been examining closely, in everything from our Workplace Beyond 2020 survey to one of our latest podcasts – a ‘Creative Conversation’ on the future of corporate campuses.

Whatever line of inquiry we’re following, we know a mix of qualitative and quantitative insights give us the greatest handle on what’s happening in a workplace. Data really does make the difference to our design process.

For this episode of Hassell Talks, our design strategy lead and Principal Evodia Alaterou is joined by Alex Birch, co-founder and CEO of tech start-up XY Sense. Using sensors positioned within a workplace, their company gets real-time information on how employees move throughout their space and use their work settings – not to mention a better understanding of what makes a safe working environment post-COVID.

Evodia and Alex share what they’ve learned gathering data from four workplace and employee experience leaders in Australia. And we get to hear directly from people inside those businesses too. Cameron McIntosh from Arup, Madeline Mios from Culture Amp, Mark Comer from Cbus and Adam Fitzhenry from Sunsuper talk about the challenges their organisations faced – and how those made them re-think the tools they use to understand and measure their workplace performance and their culture.

The role of data in workplace design in the era of COVID19

What's next for workplace campuses?

Listen to the unedited conversation between Jon Hazelwood, Robert Hammond and Claudia West as they explore the rich and diverse topic of naturalistic planting in cities.

FullConversation_JonHazelwood_RobertHammond_ClaudiaWest

Listen to the unedited conversation between Jon Hazelwood, Professor Nigel Dunnett and Michael McCoy as they explore the rich and diverse topic of naturalistic planting in cities, and the significance of our emotional connections to planting.

FullConversation_JonHazelwood_NigelDunnett_MichaelMcCoy

Listen to the full conversation between host Jon Hazelwood, Professor James Hitchmough and internationally acclaimed garden designer Piet Oudolf. Together, they propose a different, less binary way of thinking about natives and non-natives, encouraging us to look at why carefully considered planting needs to be seen at scale, and for people, ecology and wildlife.

FullConversation_JonHazelwood_PietOudolf_JamesHitchmough

Once practically unthinkable, silent city centres were a feature of 2020. And to attract people back as the COVID-19 recovery picks up pace across the globe, the challenge lies in truly understanding how and why spaces work.

The solution might be staring us – city shapers and designers – in the face. Big Data. 

What exactly can big data reveal to city shapers and designers that they previously never had access to? What does it tell us about human behaviour in urban places and the opportunities to create better outcomes for stakeholders?  And how does it help designers prove their effectiveness of their designs?

With Big Data as a basis, designers and clients can have more informed and meaningful conversations to help generate socially, culturally and economically valuable outcomes. 

Hassell CEO Gerard Corcoran teams up with Place Intelligence’s CEO Norion Ubechel  to dig into the role of Big Data and how it can challenge and validate the design process.

How big Data can challenge - and validate - the design process

Hassell Talks brings together world renowned leaders in fashion, interplanetary exploration, sustainability, brands, resilience, naturalistic planting, workplace and urban design (and much more) to discuss the increasing value of design in tackling the opportunities and challenges of our time.

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