In an era marked by climate crisis and the excesses of late capitalism, overconsumption leaves us strangely undernourished. Extractive systems continue to shape our landscapes, leaving many of us caught in cycles of burn out and disconnection. We see inequity entrenched in the structures that shape our everyday lives—from the distribution of resources to the valuation of time and labour, to the ways land is managed and exploited. Practices remain resource-intensive, often out of step with the regenerative futures we aspire to cultivate. We find ourselves caught between the bite of personal values and the bitter aftertaste of complicity. What does it mean to design within this context?
This issue of Kerb arises from a moment of shared urgency. As emerging designers, we share a collective APPETITE; a hunger for sustaining, ethical ways of working. We seek practices grounded in care and reciprocity, renewing connection with both community and environment. Resisting the overindulgence that has long defined our systems of value.
How the journal is intended to be read
This edition was born around a table, through conversation. Each idea sparking the next. In the act of gathering, we rediscovered what we needed: collective practice, shared values and hopeful paths forward. A feast of scraps, cooked together, nourishes us more than a table of excess ever could.
Our process mirrored a dinner party where a meal is shared among friends, a series of courses prepared by many hands, shaped by discussion and thoughtfulness. Like any meal, this journal unfolds with rhythm and intention; there are moments of depth, sharp provocations, and quieter interludes to cleanse the palate. Its sequence is designed to leave you hungry for more; welcoming you to the table, nourishing your appetite, and finally inviting you to pick through the scraps. Tuck in. You will find unexpected practices and ideas, asking you to reconsider how you might live and work differently—offbeat, resourceful, and always for the greater good.
The issue is shaped by this process we have worked through as an editorial team, inviting you to savour the contributions that have been cooked up around intentional, equitable and sustaining ways of practising. Our contributors come from diverse backgrounds but their works carry a common note: a desire for change and more holistic ways of working. Each serves up something distinct, and we bid you to taste, reflect and act.
We hope you read this issue as you would share a meal—unhurried, open-hearted, and with curiosity. May it stir your thoughts, satisfy something deep within, and leave you sated, inspired and ready to share the meal with others.
Guest List
Our dinner party begins with an invitation, but who gets asked and who is left waiting?
The issue’s first course explores the power of the collective: setting the table and reconfiguring the GUEST LIST. The act of pulling up a chair leads to eating, talking, arguing, passing the salt and saving a seat, all of which open up new ways of creating and collaborating. There is no head of the table here. Each person brings something of value: unique lived experiences and ways of knowing.
Across these pages, contributors explore how collective action reshapes systems: disrupting hierarchies, redistributing power, and reimagining how we work and live. Together, they ask what it means to unionise, to build networks of care, resistance and responsibility.
Peggy Deamer reflects on how we advocate for ourselves and one another; by rethinking the ways we come together and design through work and education, she questions how we value labour and time. Raphael Kilpatrick, Millie Cattlin and Emily Simek reimagine extractive sites as tables of shared responsibility, while others, such as Bernadette McKenna, reflect on how listening deeply to Country can nurture relationships between people and place, encouraging non-Indigenous allies to commit to doing the work. All draw attention to those historically pushed to the margins, considering inclusivity and equity in design.
Nourish
Once seated at the table, NOURISH invites readers to consider what fulfilment means in a world already gorged on excess.
In a culture that prioritises consumption over care, nourishment becomes a radical act. This course questions what truly sustains us. How might we design systems that feed rather than deplete?
Contributors explore how we might support ourselves, one another, and our environment by taking a more holistic approaches and redefining abundance. Su Dennett and David Holmgren explore how food, home and architecture intersect; how the labour of growing, preparing and sharing food can form the basis of more just systems. Audrey Tseng, Eva Yang and PLAYTE offer speculative recipes as tools of remembering and imagining new relationships between people and place. Through fire, gardens, seeds and shared meals, the works included in this course become tools of resistance, storytelling and healing. They remind us that nourishment is not what fills us, but what grounds us.
Scraps
But when the feast is over, what’s left behind?
SCRAPS invites you to linger; picking through the remains, sifting, sorting and shifting focus to the overlooked and discarded. This course reflects what we cast aside too quickly. What knowledge, materials and labour are hidden in plain sight? These articles turn to the residual and ask how they might be revalued, repurposed and reimagined.
Contributors embrace what is partial and unresolved, encouraging you to see richness in what remains, whether in fragments of bushland that resist urban expansion, or in the lingering memories of disaster.
Marti Franch and head of the Girona Shores Brigade, Jordi Batalle, frame maintenance as a form of authorship, designing the unclaimed and foregrounding invisible labour. Designers from topoScape and Archigrest embrace nature’s insatiable hunger to reclaim ruins of the Warsaw uprising mound. These works embrace process and imperfection, offering grounded forms of advocacy and quiet resilience from the scraps at hand.
Palette Cleansers
Between courses, PALATE CLEANSERS offer brief, surprising pauses; moments of critique and playful disruption. They don’t seek resolution but instead prompt reflection.
Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski trace colonial violence through poetry, while Michael Parlapiano’s imagery reveals how suburban habitats are reshaped for convenience. Further speculative sections and essays draw us into bunkers and cakes respectively, while others reflect on teaching and making; playful modes of education or sculptures that blur the lines of realities.
Closing Invitation
As emerging designers curating APPETITE, we live the realities of our theme’s urgencies; the process of inviting others into this issue through contributions and conversations has been as nourishing as the pieces themselves. Like any good meal, this journal was prepared together, seasoned by many voices and shaped by the relationships formed around the editorial table. It unfolded slowly with trust and occasional mess. The process wasn’t always efficient, but the outcome is all the richer.
As you read this issue, let it be messy; mark its pages, discuss it, pass it on. Let it spark disagreement, curiosity, recognition. We hope it will accompany you as you converse, teach, make and design. We hope it reveals practices that are intuitive, relational, and grounded in everyday acts.
Taste what’s been served.
Bon appetit.