RSA - Design and Society

Design and Society

18th Mar 2013; 18:00

(full recording including audience Q&A)
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RSA Keynote

Design is one of the most powerful forces in our lives. It is so ubiquitous that it determines how we feel and what we do, often without our noticing. When deployed wisely, it can bring us pleasure, choice, strength, decency and much more. But if its power is abused, the outcome can be wasteful, confusing, even dangerous.

Given this ubiquity and power, designers have a duty to address their social responsibilities.

In the inaugural RSA Tindale Lecture, leading design critic Alice Rawsthorn explores how designers are rising to the challenge of fulfilling their public duty by collaborating with specialists from other disciplines to address some of our most pressing environmental, technological and social challenges - and to improve the quality of daily life for everyone.

Speaker: Alice Rawsthorn, design critic, the International Herald Tribune and author of 'Hello World: Where Design Meets Life' (Hamish Hamilton, 2013).

Chair: Lucy Kimbell, designer, researcher and associate Fellow at the Said Business School, University of Oxford

The RSA Tindale Lectures celebrate the memory of the late Patricia Tindale, the first and final Chief Architect at the Department of the Environment.