TASMEEM Doha 2007, the fourth annual international design conference, which begins today, features 16 international speakers who have made their mark in the respective fields. The four-day event is being held by the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUQ) in partnership with the Ministry of Civil Service Affairs and Housing, and Qatar Foundation. David Suzuki is the keynote speaker of the conference, which has as its subject the implementation of sustainable design policies and practices.
The speakers are Anita Ahuja, Gijs Bakker, Jonathan Barnbrook, Nicholas Blechman, Natalie Chanin, Kirsten Childs, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Rebecca Earley, Dr Yasser Elsheshtawy, Pliny Fisk III, Dawn Hancock, Yasmeen Lari, Cameron Sinclair, Dan Sturges, and Susan Szenasy. Suzuki, chair of the David Suzuki Foundation, is an award-winning genetic scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster, and recognised as a world leader in sustainable ecology. He is renowned for three decades of his radio and television programmes that explain the complexities of the natural sciences in a compelling, easily understood way.
In 1974, he developed and hosted the long running popular science programme 'Quirks and Quarks' on CBC Radio. In 1979 he became the host of the Canadian television series 'The Nature of Things with David Suzuki,' a role which won him four Gemini Awards. His eight part television series, 'A Planet for the Taking', won an award from the UN.
In 2002 he received the John Drainie Award for excellence in broadcasting. Dr Suzuki is also the recipient of Unesco's Kalinga Prize for Science, and the UN Environment Programme Medal. Ahuja, a writer and designer, is the president of Conserve, a Delhi-based NGO working on waste management.
Since 2002, the forum is engaged in an alternative recycling process that uses waste plastic bags to make a wide range of products as a resource for income generation for the urban poor. Once the products got acceptance in the international market, Conserve HRP, which has Ahuja as its creative head, was created as a commercial vehicle. Trained as a jewellery and industrial designer in Amsterdam and Stockholm, Bakker designs jewellery, home accessories and household appliances, furniture, interiors, public spaces and exhibitions.
His design work has won numerous international awards in fields including furniture, jewellery, applied arts and architecture, and is represented in museum and private collections worldwide. Currently a professor at The Design Academy in Eindhoven, Bakker lectures, serves on juries, conducts workshops and exhibits all over the world. Since 1990, London-based Barnbrook Design has been producing innovative work that combines a mixture of typographic structure, politics and irony.
The studio, which chooses to remain small, has created such fonts as Mason and Exocet for Emigre, plus others released through Barnbrook's own font foundry, Virus. Barnbrook has collaborated with contemporary artists, including Damien Hirst on the monograph 'I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere with everyone, one to one always, forever now'. Blechman is principle of Knickerbocker Design, an award winning graphic design and illustration studio in New York.
His clients have included the New York Times, Random House, The Nation, Greenpeace, Harper Collins, Penguin Books, Simon and Schuster and the UN. Chanin creates projects that reflect a wide range of disciplines, from sustainable clothing and home furnishings to a limited edition jewellery line. She is currently developing an archive of oral histories entitled, "The History of Textiles," a collection of oral histories.
Chanin is best known for her work as co-founder and designer of Project Alabama, which became known for elaborately embellished and completely hand-sewn garments, made from recycled materials by local artisans and sold in stores around the world. Interior designer Childs has received recognition from several professional organisations including the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), which she represented at the 'Greening of the White House.' Childs, who has worked with a number of architectural firms including Skidmore, Owings Merrill and Richard Meier Associates, joined Croxton Collaborative Architects as director of interior design in 1985 and played a key role in developing the company's sustainable agenda.
De Bretteville was awarded the golden medal for leadership by The American Institute of Graphic Arts in 2005 for having authored and designed innovative and feminist print graphics, and creating more than a dozen aesthetically rich, metaphoric projects embedding typography and images in the material fabric of public sites. Earley, a London based textile designer, and senior research fellow at the University of the Arts London, currently produces hand and digitally printed textiles for her own label, undertakes public art projects and commissions. Also an educator, facilitator and curator, her recent projects include the curation of Well Fashioned, an exhibition dedicated to eco fashion, at the Crafts Council Gallery in March 2006.
Architect Dr Elsheshtawy's research has focused on environment-behaviour studies, socio-cultural sustainability and architectural theory within the context of changing urban/architectural patterns of Middle Eastern cities. CMPBS' mission is to concentrate on the interrelationships between the built and natural environments with a focus on sustainable community and local economic development. Hancock's Firebelly, a design studio with a passion for straight lines, social justice and old copy machines, is credited with producing powerful, thought-provoking work.
Firebelly is described as an assemblage of talented people who understand the importance of collaboration. Lari, the first woman architect of Pakistan, is also an architectural historian, conservationist, Heritage Foundation Pakistan's executive director, and Karavan Pakistan Initiatives chairperson. As principal of Lari Associates, she designed several famous buildings in Pakistan.
Lari has written several books and monographs on the historic architecture of Pakistan and has conducted Karavan Pakistan activities for engaging youth and communities in heritage safeguarding across the country. Sinclair is the co-founder and executive director of Architecture for Humanity, a charitable organisation that promotes architecture and design solutions to humanitarian crises. Currently he is working in six countries on projects ranging from school building, tsunami and hurricane reconstruction to developing mobile medical facilities to combat HIV/Aids.
As president of Intrago, a community mobility company, Sturges looks at new possibilities for personal mobility. An automotive designer, he left his job at General Motors in 1988 to create small vehicles to fill the gap between the motor scooter and the automobile. By the age of 29, he had started his own car company (trans2) to build Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (over 30,000 now built).
Today his company is owned by DaimlerChrysler and makes the most popular battery-operated electric vehicle on US streets. Szenasy is editor in chief of Metropolis, the New York City-based magazine of architecture, culture and design, for the past two decades. In choosing experts for their new documentary, design: e2, on the economics of environmental consciousness, PBS chose to interview Szenasy extensively as a keystone authority on sustainability.
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