“Designers are not neutral agents”: Paola Antonelli explores design’s role in building a better future

For January’s Nicer Tuesdays, we welcomed writer and curator Paola Antonelli to headline the online event. Paola, best known as senior design curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, joined our editor-in-chief Matt Alagiah for a riveting discussion on the theme of creative responses to crisis. Dialling in from New York, Paola shed light on her latest project, a collaboration with design critic Alice Rawsthorn. Titled Design Emergency, the project looks at the ways in which design can build a better future, or more specifically, how design can help us to recover and build a stronger society after the pandemic.

In this highly insightful 25-minute Q&A, the writer and curator covered a lot of ground. From the dilemmas that design students are facing today, to the responsibility of designers and how they should accept the consequences of their actions, this multi-faceted talk leaves much food for thought. Delving into speculative design and how to approach such loaded subjects from a curatorial perspective, Paola’s Nicer Tuesdays talk unearths how “even the tritest form of design can bring opportunity”.