Philip Hector

Background

About Philip Hector

Philip Hector is a design researcher working with social-ecological transformation processes. Trained in Industrial Design (B.A.), Creative Sustainability (M.A.), and Design and Sustainability Science (Ph.D.), he is interested in the creative work of public administration and civil society when negotiating and implementing ideas for a sustainable and just world. I try to practise and theorise design that supports life, along the following themes: public-civic collaborations, cultures of repair and adaptation, nature-based solutions, housing and how these interact in the transformation of our cities and villages. I am especially interested how public servants and citizens find creative ways to work-around institutional practices and structures, and how relational approaches may relate to this. I am further interested in: what constitutes forms of design in our everyday lives, and what illusions we have about design's supposed abilities in transformation; how and why people with little formal design training want, what I call linear creativity, a sort of secure way to explore with expectable outcomes; how design tends to limit and undermine autonomy rather than create freedom; and why men engage comparably less in socio-ecological transformation than people not identifying as men. I work part time to be able to follow these interests appropriately so do reach out in case we have shared interests!