Open Design Lecture: Kjetil Fallan

«In 1972 there was still grass…»: Design Activism at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment by Kjetil Fallan

Design historian Kjetil Fallan will give a lecture ““In 1972 there was still grass…”: Design Activism at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment” on Thursday, 17 October at 16:00 in room A101. 

Kjetil Fallan’s talk will explore design interventions at, and in the wake of, the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972. What can design activism tell us about the conference’s influence on future political decision-making? Or about the development of environmental thinking and ecologically informed design ideology in Scandinavia? 

The Design Open Lecture series 2024 is part of Sandra Nuut and Ruth-Helene Melioranski‘s Design Issues course. It is public and open to all; however, the seminar following the lecture will be held for the course students.

Kjetil Fallan is a Professor of Design History at the University of Oslo, where he currently leads the project Designing with/out Extractive Materials (deXmat), funded by the Research Council of Norway. His most recent books are Ecological by Design: A History from Scandinavia (MIT Press, 2022); Nordic Design Cultures in Transformation, 1960-1980: Revolt and Resilience (Routledge, 2023) (Co-edited with Christina Zetterlund and Anders V. Munch); and The Culture of Nature in the History of Design (Routledge, 2019). Fallan also serves as editor of the Journal of Design History.