Can human happiness be designed for?

What is human happiness and is it something that we can specifically design for? Hosted in conjunction with Helsinki Design Weekly, The Happy Hour is a podcast that explores these questions in detail. Organised to coincide with Designing Happiness, the central exhibition and symposium of the 2025 edition of Helsinki Design Week, the podcast examines the way in which objects, urbanism and systems can help to support happier sciences and communities. The conversation was recorded by Radio Helsinki; hosted by Disegno's editor-in-chief Oli Stratford; and features Anniina Koivu, curator of Designing Happiness; Jennifer De Paola, clinical psychologist and researcher on happiness at the University of Helsinki; and David Sim, urbanist and partner at Softer, as well as author of the book Soft City.

The Happy Hour

A conversation about curating around women in design

A live recording of Design Stories Brussels, a panel discussion hosted at Design Museum Brussels on 23 January 2025, which explored the challenges and opportunities of curating around women in design. The panel was part of Looking Through Objects: Women in Contemporary Polish Design, a research platform exploring women’s contribution to social change through design and creative practices launched by London’s Royal College of Art and Warsaw’s SWPS University. The conversation was hosted by Disegno's editor-in-chief Oli Stratford, and featured Agnieszka Jacobson-Cielecka and Gian Luca Amadei, the curators of Looking Through Objects, as well as Nina Serulus and&nbsp;Marjan Sterckx, co-curators of Design Museum Brussels' exhibition Untold Stories – Women Designers in Belgium, 1880-1980. Design Stories Brussels&nbsp;served as a springboard for the upcoming&nbsp;Looking Through Objects&nbsp;exhibition showing at Design Museum Brussels between 9 May to 28 September 2025. The talk was a collaboration between&nbsp;Design Museum Brussels,&nbsp;Polish Institute Brussels,&nbsp;SWPS University&nbsp;and the&nbsp;Royal College of Art.

Design Stories Brussels

AI technologies loom large in contemporary design discourse, but how well do we understand this new technology and the opportunities it presents? In recent years, IBM has been collaborating with Map Project Office and Universal Design Studio to design both AI hardware and the physical environments it inhabits, with the aim of making the technology more transparent and approachable. In this episode of&nbsp;Where Next? Conversations with Map Project Office,&nbsp;host Oli Stratford is joined by Maya Murad and Ryan Mellody from IBM, as well as Emilie Robinson and Lilsl du Toit&nbsp;from Map and Universal to discuss spatial design for new technologies, the dangers and opportunities of AI, and the necessity of catering to clients with different informational needs, from developers to scientists.

10. Where Next? How can we humanise AI through design?

How women might move design forward and engender social change through creative practice

A live recording of How women might move design forward and engender social change through creative practice, a panel discussion recorded at the Royal College of Art in London on 19 September 2024. The panel was part of Design Stories London, a collaboration between London’s Royal College of Art and Warsaw’s SWPS University, supported by the British Council and Polish Cultural Institute London. It was hosted by Disegno's editor-in-chief Oli Stratford, and featured Alicja Bielawska, a visual artist and assistant professor at SWPS; Ewa Klekot, a professor of anthropologist with SWPS; Joyce Yee, a Professor of Design and Social Innovation at Northumbria School of Design; and Teal Triggs, a professor, historian and writer around graphic design at the Royal College of Art. This event served as a springboard for the upcoming edition of Design Stories Warsaw, scheduled for November 2025 as part of the UK/Poland Cultural Season 2025. The Warsaw edition will be part of the British Council's cultural exchange program between the UK and Poland. Design Stories is also a part of the wider Looking Through Objects&nbsp;project, including&nbsp;a touring exhibition, lecture series, talks and interviews organised in different locations across Poland, UK, Belgium and the Baltic states. This project is a collaboration between the Royal College of Art and SWPS University. It is supported by the British Council.

Design Stories London

Screens dominate contemporary technology and the home, but we are regularly encouraged to see them as non-objects: glass voids that present a surface and nothing more. But what happens when we start to think of screens as objects in themselves, and how might we encourage more meaningful, intuitive interactions with technology by doing so? In this episode of&nbsp;Where Next? Conversations with Map Project Office,&nbsp;host Oli Stratford is joined by Jake Weir, Fredrik Hellberg, Lara Lesmes, Rowan Williams and Rhiarna Dhaliwal to discuss the role of screens in design.

9. Where Next? Why is a screen not an object?

Sound design is well established across music, film and media, although the field’s importance to product design and architecture has historically been overlooked. Yet given the central role that electrical devices play in our lives, how can the sounds they emit be tailored to make our everyday experiences more intuitive, friendly and integrated in our environment? In this episode of&nbsp;Where Next? Conversations with Map Project Office,&nbsp;host Oli Stratford is joined by Chloe Glews, Freddie Webb, Emily Candela and Joseph Zeal Henry to discuss how our understanding of creativity is shifting to become more collaborative.

8. Where Next? What should a product sound like?

We often think of technology and nature as separate things, but what happens when they come together? In this podcast, recorded live from the heart of Maison&amp;Objet, host Oli Stratford discusses different approaches of combining technology and ecology with designers Simon Dupety, Suzanna Laskaridis and Felix Rasehorn. The episode digs into how new brands and young designers are seeking to create a more transparent, optimistic and less ecologically damaging design industry.

Maison&Objet: A Natural Interface

How can design connect to nature? At January's 2024 edition of Maison&amp;Objet,&nbsp;Disegno&nbsp;created a pair of podcasts, recorded live from the heart of the fair, to interrogate this question. The first episode sees the journal's editor-in-chief, Oli Stratford, speak with Mathieu Lehanneur about&nbsp;Outonomy, an installation Lehanneur created as the fair's Designer of the Year. Lehanneur reflects on how his vivid yellow pavilion brings into question the binary ways we approach technology and nature, and instead encourages us to blur the lines between these two spheres.

Maison&Objet: Conversations in Tech Eden

“Creativity” has become a buzzword – a tagline that brands and individuals deploy to describe how they approach business. But what do we mean when we use this word so freely, and what role can designers play within a business climate that already professes to be “creative”? In this episode of&nbsp;Where Next? Conversations with Map Project Office,&nbsp;host Oli Stratford is joined by Mitzi Okou, Jay Osgerby, Andu Masebo and Oskar Smolokowski to discuss how our understanding of creativity is shifting to become more collaborative.

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