chris haughton - Filed under 'sustainability'

Im an Irish designer and illustrator. I was listed in Time Magazine's DESIGN 100 for the work I've been doing for fair trade company People Tree. My first book 'A Bit Lost' is in 11 languages and has won 9 awards in 7 countries including the Dutch Picture Book of the Year. 'Oh No George!' comes out in March 2012

www.vegetablefriedrice.com
www.nodenepal.com

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December 10, 2011

Creative Data

I did this illustration a little while ago for the designer and sustainability consultant Leonora Oppenheim. Leonora is one of the most knowledgable people i know about design and sustainability and is very active writing for coolhunting and treehugger as well as consulting and a ton of other things besides. She has a huge passion for the possibilities of design as an agent of change.

Creative Data was set up by her to get design and artists together with science and researchers to communicate data and research to the wider public.

would be so nice if more design was for projects like this rather than advertising and branding. hope to see lots more from creative data. have a look>

http://www.creativedataprojects.com

Filed under // design sustainability

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October 22, 2010

Post-carbon future

I have been asked by the excellent New Internationalist magazine to create a two page spread to show how our post carbon cities may look.
Together myself and Jess have come up with some ideas of how it could look, but we thought it would be great to see if others can add ideas to this. If you have any ideas yourself please add to the comments below or retweet/fwd to friends who may have suggestions. I only have till monday to finish (!) but hopefully we can gather some ideas. Thanks!

what we have so far.....

1 quiet revolution urban wind generators

2 BedZED style zero carbon housing

3 Urban allotments

4 Chicken. the post-carbon pet! (above the chicken is a roof clad with solar panels)

5 Carless roads. Cycle track/tram/pedestrianised with local markets

6 Public transport. elevated trains/trams/underground system

This is the final image

Filed under // illustration london sustainability

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August 6, 2010

Kumbeshwar Technical School Carpets

Through People Tree I was introduced to the really excellent Kumbeshwar Technical School I posted about them a little earlier here. Like Mahaguthi they support and train lower caste women and also men. They also support a large school of 260 and an orphanage of 19 children. I have been having exhibitions of my digital illustration work from time to time, i have been converting the files to screens and screen printing them or simply printing them digitally.

I saw the opportunity to collaborate with KTS. They make these amazing natural hand-spun Tibetan wool carpets. The carpet making process is quite similar to the pixel make up of digital images so as many of my images are quite flat with few colours so I had the idea of producing some of my designs as carpets. Together with Satyendra and the design team we found a way to covert digital images directly to carpet graphs which will hopefully make the design process a little easier.

Im really excited about the possibilites with designing carpets though, could be great.

UPDATE.....................................

I have just set up a new website for these carpets

to view and order please take a look at

noderugs.com

Technical training for the adults. KTS have a facility to produce knitware, carpets and also furniture, and they provide training to their workers

School-children-celbrating-childrens-day

From their profits they also fund a school of 260...

...and an orphanage of 19 children

The first test grid i made digitally (i managed to mess up and specify C31 (beige) instead of C30 (black).... Chris you idiot!!!!

it worked ok though!

some details in production

and some designs ......more to come

I will post more about this soon when the first batch of carpets comes through.

If you want to order or enquire about a carpet please mail me .....chris (at) vegetablefriedrice (dot) com

Filed under // fair trade nepal rug social justice sustainability

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June 11, 2010

My OFFSET talk. basically.

The talk I gave in Dublin at the Offset series of talks has been put online.

I get a little bit better after the first few mins…. oh dear....

Thanks so much to everyone at OFFSET for putting on such a great event. Its probably the best series of design talks ive seen together anywhere. It was an amazing honour to speak at it. Many of the other talks are now online. David Shrigley's one is really funny.

Filed under // Un Peu Perdu a bit lost fair trade ihan hukassa little owl lost mama kwijt me people tree sustainability video

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February 8, 2010

Prof. Anil Gupta's Shodh Yatra in Assam

'The minds in the margins are not marginal minds'

I had heard about the fantastic work of Prof. Anil Gupta two years ago while teaching at Sristi College in Bangalore.

Professor Gupta's interest is in sustainable technologies and remedies found in India's rural fringes. Traditional technologies such as herbal remedies and other traditional and localised knowledge are facing a decline as these areas adapt to the globalised world. Local knowledge is often under-appreciated in these areas as they strive to modernise. The aim of the Prof Gupta and his team is to record and foster this knowledge so that it is not lost and can perhaps be utilised in new ways.

In addition to this work Gupta and his team are also documenting some incredible new innovations by the local communities they visit. Most of the communities visited by the team are subsistence farmers and use their limited resources in very inventive ways. Without anything other than the resources that grow naturally around them these farmers are living within entirely sustainable systems. There are some really interesting ideas for the developed world.

THE SHODH YATRA

Dr. Gupta had the idea of connecting and learning from these communities 12 years ago. He and his team tried to think of the best way to visit the isolated communities. In the end they decided the only way these places could be visited was by foot, the communities are so isolated that many do not have access by road, also these group walks of learning are deeply rooted in the Indian tradition which Gandhi had tapped into as his way of gathering support and connecting peoples. The Shodh Yatra was born, in Hindi it means literally 'foot travel' The first Shodh Yatra was in Gupta's own state of Gujarat and since there has been a Shodh Yatra every six months. 24 in all so far in almost every region in India. On average 300 people, mainly farmers and academics but also a passionate and extremely diverse bunch of interested individuals from botanists to product designers from all over india and beyond come to each Yatra. Amongst the amazing people we met on the Assam Yatra were journalists, zoologists, architects, anthropologists and a really interesting amateur botanist.

Prof Gupta has set up the Honeybee Network, the idea is to 'cross pollinate' isolated communities with the other knowledge systems and innovations of their neighbours. He has collected so many innovations in the past twelve years that their database actually holds the largest amount of registered patents in the developing world. The idea is to use these innovations in a completely open source or creative commons way.

He has also set up the Grassroots to Global network to create business plans for the local amateur innovators to reach a global audience.

We joined the Yatra at the Rural Volunteer Centre outside Dhemaji in northwest Assam. The RVC was set up by Ravindranath as an NGO to provide knowledge and training to local farmers.

There is also a good article about Dr Guptas work in DESIGN OBSERVER here

I hope i can someday do some work for Dr Gupta. Very inspiring stuff.