Natalie Jeremijenko will lead an EMERGE Workshop exploring the future of truths about nature, engineering, and design. Her Environmental Health Clinic at New York University approaches health from an understanding of its dependence on external local environments, rather than on the internal biology and genetic predispositions of an individual. At EMERGE she and workshop participants will extend this concept to include technology and design. The workshop will start with an assessment of the local ecosystem especially in terms of threatened or vulnerable species or communities. The group will then work to design and produce an artifact that brings aesthetics, advanced engineering and materials, attention to shared public space, and awareness of the local environmental context, into alignment in the creation of a tangible product, an “iconic shared public thing,” such as an outdoor bench that spatially conforms to the constraints of immediate environment, but also is made from materials whose life cycle augments, rather than degrades, local ecosystem function. The workshop thus confronts fundamental assumptions about design, engineering and technology, time and durability, and the things we should or could make, in the future.
Alexandra P
Aubrey W
Christine S
Daragh B
David N
Dulce A P A
Eileen S
James B
Joe C
John A S
Mikhail C
Nate J
Thomas P S
Beth A
Filiz O
Kathryn D R-V
Nalini C
Kiril H
Reed R
Shakira RMc