The infrastructures of everyday life

About this presentation

I'll talk about the impact of tech on us—our communities, our environments, our places—via the new and old forms of shared infrastructures that tech can create, or diminish, and how they in turn embody, and shape, what we stand for as communities, societies. These are 'social infrastructures', such as streets, libraries, parks, playgrounds and the like, but also the 'increasingly social' infrastructures of energy, water, waste, mobility and so on, as well as new understandings of nature-based technologies, shared spaces, shared housing, shared resources. These new and old forms can address our shared systemic challenges, but this requires new forms of interdisciplinary design practice, drawing from UX and service design as much as architecture and urbanism, as well as innovative modes, and increasingly by public sector and governments, as much as private sector. I'll draw from project work all over the world, but also locate it firmly in an Australian context, including the work of Melbourne School of Design as a 'design school for the 21st century'.