MTalks—Flow State: Designing the Logistical City

As Amazon and other logistics-based companies further establish themselves as household names, their increasingly automated operations continue to redefine our cities and our lives. Behind faceless big-box facades, vehicles, workers and robots follow intricate choreographies to ceaselessly circulate goods. In this talk, panel members will discuss how design can illuminate logistics—that largely opaque science of ‘moving stuff around'. When logistics networks break down, they become visible, and their fragility is made evident—a scenario perfectly illustrated by the recent Ever Given fiasco, and even Australia’s vaccine rollout. Taking advantage of this recent visibility, the speakers shed light on an urgently important topic that, for the public, exists largely in the dark.