© 2010 Doors of Perception / John Thackara.

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John Thackara / Writer & Speaker

Actual position: writer, speaker and event producer, Doors of Perception [fr]
Language: English / French
Years of experience: 25

“one of the great voices on sustainability”/ Business Week
“has established a global reputation as a cutting edge design expert“/ Wall Street Journal
“brilliant insights into the internet and sustainability“/ Economic Times of India
“a business provocateur…”/ Fast Company
“among the most influential people on the internet” / topsy.com

Experience: John Thackara is a writer, speaker and event producer. He is the author of “In The Bubble: Designing In A Complex World” (MIT Press) and of a widely-read blog, doorsofperception.com. As director of Doors of Perception, John organizes festivals around the world, at a city-region scale, in which communities imagine sustainable futures – and take practical steps to realize them.
John Thackara studied philosophy and journalism, and worked as London bus driver, before working in book publishing in New York. He edited Design magazine for five years, was later Modern Culture Editor of Harpers & Queen, and was design correspondent of The Guardian. In 1987 he set up Design Analysis International (DAI), a conference and exhibition company with offices in London and Tokyo. DAI organised events at the Pompidou Centre, Victoria & Albert Museum, Axis Gallery in Tokyo, and other venues.  From 1989-1992 John was Director of Research at the Royal College of Art. From 1993 to 1999, he was founding Director of the Netherlands Design Institute in Amsterdam. In 2007, he was Program Director of Designs of the time (Dott) a new social innovation biennial in England. He was commissioner of City Eco Lab at Cité du Design in St Etienne, France, in 2008, and at Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2009.  He is an Associate of the Young Foundation in London.

Among John’s 12 books are Design After Modernism: Beyond the Object (1987), and Lost in Space: A Traveller’s tale (1995). His most recent book, the best-selling In the Bubble: Designing In A Complex World, was published by MIT Press in May 2005 and has since been published in nine other languages. He has lectured in more than forty countries.

Fast Company described John Thackara as “a business provocateur….”. For the Wall Street Journal, he “has established a global reputation as a cutting edge design expert”. Wired called him a “a design luminary”. The San Francisco Chronicle described him as a “wired era visionary”. The Economic Times of India noted his “brilliant insights into the internet and sustainability”. For the influential weblog Rhizome he is “top dog in the space of flows”.
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