Design Against Design: Kevin Lo on Radical Practice Across Industry, Community and University

Kevin Lo has spent decades designing for and with protest and social justice movements. From running the exceptional Montreal studio LokiDesign to his current role as assistant professor at Concordia University, he's walked the walk.

25 years after they first met, Kevin and Oliver Vodeb sit down to talk about design's radical potential — and the uncomfortable truth that design is still largely a tool for capitalist extraction. They explore what it means to practice oppositional design across industry, community and the university, what AI means for the future of graphic and communication design, and why — now more than ever — we need radical design in theory, practice and education.

Kevin is a member of the Memefest network, a long-term jury member of Memefest's Friendly competition, and author of the recently published Design Against Design (Set Margins', with an afterword by Oliver Vodeb).

A conversation about experience, maturity, curiosity and the urgent need for design that actually challenges the status quo.

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Shahib Uddin is a social documentarist, using photography as his chosen medium to reveal human nuances of the world

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THIS IS THE SECOND PART OF THE CONVERSATION: Earthship Futures: Radical Design for Community and Life is a live conversation between Daryl Taylor and Oliver Vodeb, at 2026 Melbourne Design Week, recorded as part of the Radical Design Podcast. The discussion focuses on Taylor’s Earthship project in Kinglake, Victoria – an experimental natural building initiative developed through international participatory workshops following the Black Saturday mega-firestorm, Australia’s worst natural disaster.

The session explores how community-led design and architecture can support socio-ecological restoration and regenerativity, post-disaster community recovery and discovery, and social and emotional resilience. Drawing on lived experience, the speakers will examine undisciplined and fringe design knowledge, co-liberatory climate-responsive design processes and practices, and the role of design in rebuilding both physical and social infrastructure in disaster-vulnerable and -impacted regions. The event took the form of a moderated dialogue followed by audience Q&A and discussion. *We were also joined by Serenity Hill, a food sovereignty community activist.

Daryl Taylor

Daryl Taylor is a pioneering Melbourne-based builder, educator, and community leader, known for constructing Victoria’s first council-approved Earthship in Kinglake—a radically sustainable, fire-resistant home built from recycled materials after losing his own in the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires. As a lived-experience mental health and neurodivergency advocate, he has shaped policy and education in community development, disaster resilience, and participatory design across government, NGO, and academic sectors, teaching at five Melbourne universities and co-authoring influential works on post-disaster recovery. Daryl’s work—spanning eco-design, permaculture, and community-led resilience—has earned national awards and features in ABC News and Grand Designs Australia, while his initiatives like Facing Fire, Biocultural Futures, and Retro-Futures continue to inspire sustainable, adaptive living in the age of climate change.

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