Design Realities: Creativity, Nature and the Human Spirit

Design Realities explores a wide range of topics on creativity, design and spiritual well-being. Using critique, rational inquiry and personal reflection, Stuart Walker looks squarely at our contemporary condition, demonstrates how current assumptions and material expectations are becoming untenable and, most importantly, offers constructive new directions that are feasible, spiritually enriching, and hopeful.

Comprising short essays, lyrical pieces, photo studies and longer discourses, this book takes us on a highly readable and enjoyable journey through some of the most pressing issues of our time. The innovative, intuitive format makes these topics readily accessible, while providing much food for thought about the changing nature of creativity in today’s world.

Written by a leading thinker in the field, this highly original book offers readers something to ponder, discuss, contest and build upon.

Stuart Walker is Professor of Design for Sustainability and a Director of the ImaginationLancaster design research centre at Lancaster University. His research focuses on design for sustainability; product aesthetics and meaning; practice-based design research; and product design that explores and expresses human values and notions of spirituality. He has written and edited numerous books and his propositional and experimental design work has been exhibited across Canada, in Italy and the UK, including an exhibition at the Design Museum, London.

He is Visiting Professor of Sustainable Design at Kingston University, UK, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Calgary, Canada.