Clare Brass

Clare Brass – who has worked for many years as a product designer in Milan, for clients such as Alessi – is passionate about sustainable design. ‘Ever since I began working as a designer, educator and designer Victor Papanek’s famous words have been ringing in my ears,’ she says. ‘He talked about a designer’s role as “persuading people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, in order to impress others who don’t care”. Redefining the role of the designer in the creation of a more sustainable and equitable world has been a personal quest for me since then.’ In 2007, Brass set up SEED (Social Environmental Enterprise + Design), which explores new avenues of cross-collaborative entrepreneurship for designers. SEED is developing a research project involving a pilot food waste and food-growing system co-designed with residents of a London housing estate. Today she is senior tutor in Innovation Design Engineering at the Royal College of Art and head of Sustain RCA, a new centre for sustainability at the same college. ‘I’m fortunate to have been drawn into Be Open,’ she says, ‘because its openness has led me to meet and share ideas with many like-minded people from all backgrounds who believe in what I’m trying to achieve in my work and with my students, and want to help me get there.’