WDE Spotlight: Chiara Treglia

Can you tell us a bit more about yourself, your background and your design practice?

I was born in 1994 in Verona, Italy. In 2014 I moved for the first time to the Netherlands to study Industrial Design at TU/e. After my bachelor’s graduation in 2017, I moved to London, UK to start a double master’s program at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College of London called Global Innovation Design. During my master’s, I had the opportunity to work and study in different cities across the world, such as Tokyo and New York. This gave me the opportunity to get in touch with different design cultures and practices and to discover my passion for facilitation and to create bespoke toolkits for people, in particular contexts, with a particular challenge. Through exposure to this wide diversity, I had the opportunity to discover life-centred design, which quickly became the underpinning philosophy of my design work. After my masters I returned to the Netherlands and in January 2020, my partner Dick Rennings and I founded tini studio, a creative facilitation and content design studio. We are based in Sectie-C and in Microlab, Eindhoven and ever since, we have been busy creating custom toolkits (physical and digital) and facilitating sessions for companies and institutions on a variety of topics, from the SDGs, to sustainability, to diversity and inclusion, to design innovation and entrepreneurship.

Your project is part of the Embassy of Water during Dutch Design Week 2022. What can you tell us about this project and what stage it is now?

This project is about creating a toolkit and an environment (at the Raadszaal of the Designhuis), that would enable people, such as stakeholders from housing corporations, developers, but also all the partners of the Embassy of Water, to engage in decision-making about urban development, in such a way that the needs and wants of our primary non-human stakeholder, Water, are no longer an afterthought, but are actually prioritised.

 We are now at the early stages of this project, defining the concept and the interactions that we want to elicit into the users of the toolkit. It will be a joyful, fast ride peaking during Dutch Design Week, during which we will be able to use the toolkit in a number of sessions with these stakeholders, Voices of Water and water itself!

Can you explain how your project relates to the story of this Embassy?

The Embassy has worked already in the past -and still does work – with “Voices of Water”, which are inspired and expert individuals, such as Cees Kamp and Li An Phoa, who embody and give, in fact, a voice to the needs of water. 

This project will come in support of these “Voices of Water”, by providing a structured, facilitated way to make win-win decisions, decisions that consider water’s stake a priority.

What was the main starting point of the project?

This project started from a casual conversation I had with Anouk van der Poll, whom I only met for the first time in June of this year. We discovered that we are both passionate about the work of Daniel Wahl and his book Designing for Regenerative cultures. I told her that during covid, I created a digital toolkit on Miro based on his work, following the principles of life-centred design.  

While using this toolkit, people immerse themselves into the boardroom of a fictional company and they need to make decisions for the future of this company by taking into account non-human, abstract stakeholders, like nature, the future, and society. I casually told her that I would love to turn this digital toolkit into a physical one, even maybe an actual room to use for actual boardroom executive sessions. 

With a big smile, she said, “I have a room for you!” and she walked me downstairs, to the Raadszaal of the Designhuis. This is how it started.

What kind of design/project would you like to realise in the future and why?

I am passionate about creating new, accessible ways for people to grasp complex knowledge and information and to hear perspectives that are normally unheard or under-represented. 

This work is of particular impact in large organisations because it is aimed as cultural and organisational change. Thus in the future, I would like to specialise more and more in the field of Learning and Development and Culture Change by developing toolkits for large organisations in the private and public sectors, for example, ASLM, the European Parliament, or even the United Nations.

How do you think your design can make an impact?

I think this project can be impactful in demonstrating that by following a different process and being open to different perspectives, we can ultimately create solutions for the built environment that fulfil human needs but not at the expense of other living and non-living agents. The impact, in this case, is in opening people’s eyes to the potential of a future of balance and harmony between us humans and the ecosystem around us.

Can you name another interesting designer who works on the same topic, and what makes his/her projects so great?

I am fond of the work of Jeroen Spoelstra, who is living the philosophy of life-centred design on a day-to-day basis through his Unbeaten Studio.

I also closely follow the work of Damien Luz, who is developing interesting life-centred design frameworks and toolkits for designers. In his work, I also see a clear connection between life-centred design and inclusive design, which is another topic that I am passionate about.

If you could choose one person to work with (a designer, politician, artist, scientist, organisation, anyone), who would you choose and why?

Two people come to mind: firstly, scientist and author Daniel Christian Wahl, whose book Designing Regenerative Cultures is a major inspiration for most of my work and certainly is foundational for this project at the Embassy of Water.

What I love about his work is that he sees sustainability as human and planetary health. For us humans, it is easier to think about health than to think about sustainability, which can come across as a buzzword, perhaps too abstract or distant from us. So from that angle that sees sustainability as health, we can feel more emotionally connected to the topic of sustainability.

This brings me to the other person; scientist Brene’ Brown. She works in the field of emotional health, with a particular focus on the topics of shame, vulnerability and leadership. I would love to work with her to create a toolkit that translates her research into playful, accessible experiences for people to develop their emotional intelligence and take care of their emotional health. 

I think that when people have a better understanding of their emotional selves, it is easier for them to see themselves as part of a bigger whole, a wider ecosystem. And this mindset is crucial to make serious steps towards a sustainable future, a future of human and planetary health.