About New
Design Craft
Reimagining Making for Just and Sustainable Futures.
New Design Craft was born from a fundamental question: How can we redefine making in a way that is socially just, ecologically responsible, and deeply connected to material culture?
This approach results from my PhD research on sustainable and humanity-centred design, exploring how craft, emerging technologies, and design justice principles can intersect to create new post-industrial paradigms. In an era where mass production has distanced us from the origins, ethics, and impact of what we create, New Design Craft seeks to rebuild that connection—not by returning to nostalgia, but by developing systems that are relational, adaptive, and culturally embedded as an alternative to extractive industrial models.
What is New Design Craft?
New Design Craft is a hybrid approach to making that:
Bridges Craft & Emerging Technologies – We merge traditional craftsmanship with computational design, open-source tools, and digital fabrication methods.
Centres on Material Culture – Instead of imposing form onto matter, we listen to materials, allowing their properties and histories to guide the making process.
Supports Cultural Resilience – We collaborate with artisans, communities, and researchers to protect and evolve traditional knowledge systems rather than appropriating or diluting them.
Challenges Industrial Hegemony – We critique extractive economies and propose alternative ways of making that prioritise repair, longevity, and shared ownership.
A Vision for Socio-Environmental Justice
New Design Craft is more than an aesthetic or a technique—it is a philosophy of making at the intersection of Design and Crafts deeply tied to community empowerment.
This framework emerges from a PhD research in sustainable, humanity-centred design, which critically examines how industrial production has long been driven by the exploitation of labour, resources, and cultural knowledge. The global supply chain thrives on wasteful processes and systemic inequality.
New Design Craft rejects this model in favour of one that is:
Decentralised – Shifting power from corporations to local makers and communities.
Inclusive – Ensuring that traditional knowledge and marginalised voices shape the future of making.
Regenerative – Working with ecosystems rather than depleting them.
In positioning craft as a site of resistance, design as a critical tool, and technology as an enabler rather than a disruptor, New Design Craft proposes a new design ethic—one that reconciles innovation with tradition, digital with analogue, and growth with care.