Sara De Bondt is a designer, educator, and publisher. She runs her own independent design practice working with cultural clients and is the co-founder of Occasional Papers, a small publishing company focusing on publishing affordable books devoted to the histories of architecture, art, design, film, and literature. The Walker Art Center called Sara “the epitome of a cultural designer, combining a love of contemporary typography with a deep investigation into the history of graphic design. Through her design practice, which consists of client-based work, designing and editing books, and curating conferences, she is consistently contributing to the critical discourse.” In this episode, Sara and I talk about her background from studying acting to working with Stuart Bailey, Daniel Eatock, and James Goggin; the importance of design history in contemporary practice; and what designers can learn from other disciplines.
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Erin Pellegrino and Jake Rudin are the founders of Out of Architecture, a career consulting firm and resource network, where they are exploring the value of architectural skills both in and out of the profession. Through career consulting, career tools, and their recent book, Erin and Jake help architects leave architecture. In this conversation, we talk about the shape their consulting takes, what's missing from architecture and design education, and why so many designers want to leave the profession.
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Deb Chachra is a professor at Olin College of Engineering and the author of the new book, How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World. In this conversation, Jarrett and Deb talk about why we don't want to think about infrastructure and how it encourages and discourages particular ways of living, overlap of design and engineering education, and value of teaching principles of care and maintenance.
René Boer is a critic, curator, and organizer in and beyond the fields of architecture, design, heritage, and the arts. His new book, Smooth City, focuses on the obsession with perfection in cities around the world. He is the co-founder of Loom, a practice for cultural transformation, and is one of the driving forces behind Failed Architecture. In this conversation, Jarrett and René talk about the idea of smoothness, the intersection of criticism and activism, and finding new forms to fund design writing.
