The Things We Make: a panel on the messy business of making ideas real
Description
Three people who turn good ideas into real things, and what it actually took.
Fri 13 Nov · 5:30–7:15pm · Āiotanga Community Space, Emily Place, Auckland CBD
$10 ticket, which covers food and drinks.
What you’ll get
An honest look behind the scenes: the experiments, compromises and failures between a promising idea and a finished product
Three very different perspectives: a design academic, a materials-science founder, and a design director championing Indian makers
A frank conversation: who decides what something is worth, and how good ideas become viable businesses
Come along if you’re a designer, maker, student or founder, or you’ve ever wondered who made the things you own and what it took.
What we’ll talk about
What happens between a promising idea and a finished product?
How do different views on sustainable design, material innovation and art direction shape what gets made?
How do you make a good idea commercially viable, and who decides what it’s worth?
Do we need to make more things, or rethink how we make them? What shouldn’t we have to compromise?
Hosted by LUCAtech, developing regenerative biomaterials that create value for communities while rebuilding the ecosystems they come from. This evening is our way of listening: to the makers, designers and founders in this room, and to the stories behind what they make. We’ll share ours too.
Follow along @lucatech_nz
Lineup
Jennifer Whitty
Senior Lecturer in Design | Auckland University of Technology Editorial Board of the International Journal of Sustainable Fashion & Textiles Visiting Professor at Xi’an Polytechnic University Co-Founder of Space Between, the collaborative design activism platform Jennifer Whitty is a designer, researcher and educator exploring how fashion and design can nurture more caring relationships between people, materials and the more-than-human world. A Senior Lecturer in Design at AUT, she brings nearly two decades of international experience, including at Parsons School of Design in New York. With whakapapa to Ireland, Jennifer has lived and worked across four continents and understands herself as a third-culture person. These experiences inform her openness to different worldviews and commitment to the pluriverse a world in which many worlds can flourish. Connecting material practice, systems thinking, futures thinking and speculative design, she explores how we might imagine and make alternative futures. Her work asks what we value when we make, whose knowledge and labour are recognised, and how creative livelihoods can sustain the care, relationships and love of making that give them meaning.
Shefali Khilwani
Director of Design at The House of Things Based in Udaipur, India, Shefali is Design Director at House of Things, a design destination curating exceptional pieces from established and emerging designers, artists and craftspeople. House of Things brings together luxury, diverse aesthetics and contemporary perspectives on Indian design. In their role, Shefali works at the intersection of design, product and brand, championing creative collaboration and products that balance distinctive aesthetics with meaningful stories and the hands, materials and ideas behind them. Lucky for us she is currently visiting NZ!
Dr Keith Hudson
Dr Keith Hudson is a scientist, entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of Sapro-Tech, the company developing Sapro+, a next-generation leather alternative designed to combine premium aesthetics and performance with circular design principles. His career spans the University of Oxford and three New Zealand biotechnology companies. Dr Keith brings scientific expertise and commercial experience to developing sustainable materials, with a focus on practical, scalable solutions that reduce environmental impact.
Tickets for good, not greed Humanitix dedicates 100% of profits from booking fees to charity
