Gauthier Roussilhe
design and research
for transitions

This website intends to reduce its contribution to digital industry ecological footprint. Therefore the whole site and server services has been thought over and the average page size has been reduced to 450,56kb (Low tech, High future).
Interviewing David Gener, a citizen and electrician leading his village towards energy autonomy by 2022 (Prats EnR). Credits: Nicolas Loubet
Interviewing David Gener, a citizen and electrician leading his village towards energy autonomy by 2022 (Prats EnR). Credits: Nicolas Loubet

I’m a designer and researcher studying how the environmental crisis modifies ways of designing products, services and systems. Within this framework my practice and my research questions focus mostly on digital design and environmental impacts of the digital industry.

Secondly I explore how design practice can help negotiate the everyday life brought by new living conditions and new material conditions. I'm designing and maintaining services and systems with limited investment, resources and energy for both humans and non-humans.

My work consists of:

  1. Advising organisations, doing in-depth investigations, field research, ethnography and translating the research back into understandable outcomes (films, objects, talks);
  2. Writing reports and creating cartographies, films, motion graphics, digital media based on a low-impact approach;
  3. Giving talks and teaching the current and next generation of designers.

We can collaborate if:

  1. You want to imagine new ways of designing products / services / systems in a world with limited resources and energy;
  2. You are interested in creating new imaginaries of a sustainable everyday life;
  3. You are an organisation trying to reframe their practice within the Anthropocene and the necessary transitions.
Leading a workshop for UX designers in Toulouse, asking them to design a website with an limited energy budget (kWh) rather than a monetary budget (€), credits: FLUPA Toulouse
Leading a workshop for UX designers in Toulouse, asking them to design a website with an limited energy budget (kWh) rather than a monetary budget (€), credits: FLUPA Toulouse

Selected talks

I'm mostly speaking about the environmental impacts of digital, transitions and low-impact digital design.

  • Repenser le numérique dans les limites planétaires, CREIDD, Troyes, 2019
  • Framing digital industry into planetary limits, CCC, Leipzig, 2019
  • Repenser le numérique dans les limites planétaires, Orange, Paris, 2019
  • Les usages énergétiques du design numérique, GDS Ecoinfo, CNRS, Grenoble, 2019
  • Grounding Design, Micro Meso Macro, ENS Lyon, Lyon, 2019
  • Repenser le numérique dans les limites planétaires, Blendwebmix, Lyon, 2019
  • Politics of Design on damaged Earth, Paris College of Art, Paris, 2019
  • Values for Design, Design Does Forum, Barcelona, 2018;
  • Design for Decentralisation, Interaction 18, Lyon, 2018;
  • Algorithmic complexity and design ethics, TodaysArt, the Hague, 2017;
  • Low tech vs High tech in the megacity [...], European Lab, Seoul, 2016;

Workshops and teachings

I teach design students, engineers, political sciences students about the materiality of the digital industry and its ecological impacts.

  • Les impacts environnementaux du numérique (with Maxime Efoui-Hess), INSA Lyon, Lyon, 2020
  • Négociation et Design dans un monde abîmé, ESC Clermont, Clermont-ferrand, 2019
  • Cartographie des controverses, ESC Clermont, Clermont-ferrand, 2019
  • Storytelling and animation: introduction class, Goldsmiths University, London, 2019
  • Digital design and ecological transition, FLUPA, Toulouse, 2018
  • Introduction to Ethics, Gobelins, certification for UX designers, 2017-2018
  • From critique to virtue, speculative design exercices (with Flora Fischer), Ethics by Design, Lyon, France, 2017;

Some contributions and press

I write about design politics, digital industry, transition policies, technics and I submit once or twice a year peer-reviewed papers.