Simon Sadler
Description: Simon Sadler is the Chair of the Design Department at UC Davis. His research focuses on the question of how design has shaped us collectively and individually and what alternatives we might have available for the future. He teaches the history and theory of architecture, design and urbanism and works as an affiliated faculty with multiple graduate programs including performance studies, transportation studies and the environmental humanities supercluster. In this episode we talk about a wide range of ideas, from an attempt to define design, the resurgence of a countercultural movement, and the dance between maintaining control and letting go.
Website: Simon Sadler
Publications:
The Dome and the Shack: The Dialects of Hippie Enlightenment
How to Play the Environment Game
Books:
The Situationist City (MIT Press, 1998)
Archigram: Architecture without Architecture (MIT Press, 2005)
Resources:
“We’re all here”
Show Notes:
[0:00:25] Background information and how he got to Davis
[0:04:40] What about design captivated him
[0:08:00] What is design?
[0:14:00] Are we, humans, nature?
[0:20:40] Do AI have rights and how we approach nature?
[0:29:50] How to scale Design and to shift the culture at scale.
[0:36:45] How to story tell within Design.
[0:40:20] Resurgence of a counterculture?
[0:46:50] Losing your mind to become present.
[0:50:00] The dance of being in control vs. letting go of control
[0:52:40] Are we going too far?
[0:55:30] STEM’s vs Art’s opinion of AI.
[1:00:15] Do we make the environment or does the environment make us?
[1:06:50] Why should everybody care about art history and architecture?
[1:24:40] What, do nothing? Don’t push back at all?
[1:26:40] How to get involved in Design.
[1:34:00] Closing remarks