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John Thackara
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Archive: December 2011


Why Walls Need Floors

When he was sixteen years old, Floor van Keulen made a wall painting in the stairwell of his mother's beauty salon. For the next 43 years, the artist has worked with the knowledge that most of his site-and time-specific specific works are destined to disappear. Why?

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From Milk to Superfoods: Supping with the Devil?

Two new publications this week have left me sick to the stomach. I just don't think it's defensible any more to turn a blind eye to the social and ecological crimes Big Food is committing, in other parts of the world, so that you and I can eat what we damn well feel like.

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From Druids to Biorefineries: Innovation in a Small Nation

How best do you help a resilient economy emerge in a region that has one foot in ancient ways and traditions — its other in the world of global universities and nuclear power?

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John Thackara is a writer, speaker and design producer, and director of Doors of Perception. In addition to this blog, he is the author of twelve books including In The Bubble: Designing In A Complex World and Wouldn't It Be Great If….


Newsletter


From March 2002 to September 2010, John Thackara sent out a monthly email newsletter: Doors of Perception Report. The newsletter contained short, opinionated texts about social innovation and design.
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Recent Book



In the Bubble: Desiging in a Complex World
John Thackara
The MIT Press, 2005
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