Drop by: Flora Weil’s Design in Rising Winds

17 November 2023, 19:00

Blown across the borders of China, South Korea, and Japan, spring winds trace a route from Inner Mongolia to consecutive East Asian capitals, carrying a mixture of sand, soot, and industrial particles. Flora Weil’s work examines infrastructurally experimental and environmentally collaborative responses that emerge as a result of this weather phenomenon. Her research focuses on upwind locations, specifically resettlement and geoengineering sites in Gansu Province, China, where large-scale anti-desertification schemes, digital terraforming, and climate migration programs have multiplied.

Weil’s talk will delineate the strategies of a new approach to design, operating within the complex aeolian relationships of this region and eventually dispersing downwind. By exploring how a design for planetarity and elementarity can materialize from mutual climate uncertainties, Weil’s talk will follow the same trajectory as the research, delving into the fluctuations of territories, networks, and ecosystems as they breathe—rising and falling in the process of co-constituting each other’s boundaries.

About Flora Weil:

Flora Weil is a designer and artist with a background in engineering, interested in exploring new narratives around the development of emerging technologies. She holds a double master’s in design and innovation from the Royal College of Art and Imperial College and is currently a fellow at M+ Museum and Design Trust.