John Thackara

John Thackara is a symposiarch who designs events, projects, and organizations. He is also the Director of Doors of Perception (Doors), a design futures network with offices in Amsterdam and Bangalore. Founded as a conference in 1993, Doors now connects together a worldwide network of visionary designers, thinkers, and grassroots innovators. This unique community of practice is inspired by two related questions: "we know what new technology can do, but what is it for?" and, “how do we want to live?”.

To explore these questions in context, John Thackara organises collaborative innovation projects in which designers, together with grassroots innovators and citizens, develop new service concepts and prototypes in real locations. The results are published on the Doors of Perception website, and discussed at the celebrated Doors of Perception conference.

A former journalist and publisher, John was the first Director (1993-1999) of the Netherlands Design Institute. He is a member of the Virtual Platform, a club of research institutes which advises the Dutch government; he also sits on expert groups advising the European Commission on its innovation policy, and was on the coordinating group, responsible for vision building, of Convivio - the EU network for social computing. Currently, 2006-2008, he is Programme Director of Design of the Times in the North of England, Newcastle.

He lives in between the South of France and Amsterdam.

John Thackara studied philosophy and journalism in England 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, and was twice chairman of the European Design Summit.

Writings

Among John's 12 books are:
* [http://www.thackara.com/inthebubble/index.html In the Bubble: Designing In A Complex World] , published by MIT Press in Spring 2005 (ISBN 978-0262701150)
* Design After Modernism: Beyond the Object (1987), and
* Lost in Space: A Traveller’s tale (1995). John Thackara has lectured in more than forty countries.

Press

* Fast Company described John Thackara as "a design guru, critic and business provocateur…".Fact|article|date=October 2007
* For the Wall Street Journal, he "has established a global reputation as a cutting edge design expert".Fact|article|date=October 2007
* Wired called him a “a design luminary”Fact|article|date=October 2007, and the
* Economic Times of India noted his "brilliant insights into the internet and sustainability"Fact|article|date=October 2007

External links

* [http://www.thackara.com John Thackara]
* [http://www.doorsofperception.com Doors of Perception]
* [http://www.dott07.com/ DOTT]