Stuart Walker Interview

Stuart Walker Interview Transcript, 09 12 2007
Rachel Griffin: So I thought it would be nice to first welcome you to
Eindhoven and the Design academy and then also to begin with you
speaking a little bit now about your current position at Imagination
@ Lancaster telling us what you guys are doing there, what kind of
projects you’re focusing on, so on and so forth.
Stuart Walker: I moved recently from the University of Calgary where I
was the Associate Dean of Research for a number of years and Professor
of Industrial Design, and the faculty of environmental design at the
University of Calgary is a small postgraduate faculty that concentrates
on interdisciplinary studies, industrial design, architecture, urban design
and planning, and environmental science—it’s really environmental
management—but it’s called environmental science. The design of large
scale landscape interventions, and management of that.
But it was founded on interdisciplinarity, so I was asked to take over
the position at Lancaster University which is a small research-intensive
University in the UK. Because they are setting up a new initiative which is
called Imagination @ Lancaster, which concentrates on interdisciplinary
studies and wants to set up new PhD programs and to conduct research
with other faculties, with other institutions and with industry. And thats the
kind of thing I was doing at Calgary.
It’s a rare opportunity, I think, that an academic gets to go in at the ground
floor and really build something from the start. And it was also back in
Britain, which I’d lived in Canada for 17 years and loved it, absolutely loved
it, but Britain is home for me, so that was an extra kind of enticement to go
back. So with the combination of the two, we decided to move back to the
UK. I’ve been there about a month and a half, two months.
Oh so it’s still very new!
It’s very new! We’ve just had the launch last Wednesday in London, at the
Design Museum.
Congratulations! So, stepping backwards, just for a moment, to
the book. You said something that I thought was very interesting,
comparing the sustainable design movement to religion. I thought
that was very potent, especially being in a department that focuses
on this sort of thing. So could you describe that idea further and
perhaps also it’s implications, if you feel that there are any for the
way that we deal with this issue.
Um, yeah, there’s a chapter in the book called Sustainabiity: the Evolution
of Contemporary Myth, which likens the sustainability movement, or our
current concerns, and articulation of sustainability, I liken it to a religion.
Now I don’t think it’s as profound as many of the religions, but I think in a
rationalistic, science-based world, where religion has been marginalized,