Clara Guasch Sastre
Thursday 7th October 2023 | 9:30am – 10:30am
Clara works with strategic material and innovation development. Aiming for systemic change through circularity and for more sustainable options. Clara was part of the core group for the Better Cotton Initiative in its initial and consolidation stages. At IKEA she also led the agenda for material and innovation development for textiles. In Elisava she takes part in the DTNM (Design Through New Materials) Master. She has lectured at ETP Textiles in Brussels, at DAE in Eindhoven, at the Volkenkunde Museum in Leiden and at MA-DE in Barcelona.
She is a member of the council of the Urban Innovation Platform for Barcelona, BitHabitat, and of Hemp the Climate, an organization that supports the development of hemp as a climate positive industrial material re/source. As a consultant and advisor on strategic material and innovation development, Clara is helping companies shift towards more sustainable models. She wants to see positive change happen. To that end, she engages in different initiatives across various sectors. Whilst she keeps researching materials and innovations in connection to sustainability.
John Thackara
Friday 8th October 2023 | 9:30am – 10:30am
John Thackara is a writer, advisor and event producer. For more than thirty years he has travelled the world in search of stories about the practical steps taken by communities to realise a sustainable future. He writes about these stories online, and in books; he uses them in talks for cities, and business; he also organizes festivals and events that bring the subjects of these stories together.
John is the author of a widely-read blog and of How To Thrive In The Next Economy. His previous books (among twelve in total) were Wouldn’t It be Great If... and In the Bubble: Designing In A Complex World (MIT Press).
John curated the celebrated Doors of Perception conference for 20 years – first in Amsterdam, later across India – and was commissioner of the UK social innovation biennial Dott07 and the French design biennial City Eco Lab. Since then, with a focus on social, ecological and relational design, Thackara has curated place-based xskool workshops in 20 countries and has lectured in more than forty. From 1989-1992 John was Director of Research at the Royal College of Art. He was the first director (1993—99) of the Netherlands Design Institute.
Currently, John Thackara is visiting professor at Tongji University with a focus on urban-rural reconnection; a senior fellow at the Royal College of Art; a Fellow of Musashino Art University in Japan; and visiting professor at Milan Polytechnic University.