Wellness by Design: Creating With and For the Living World

Wellness by Design: Creating with and for the Living World brings together furniture designer and environmentalist Sebastian Cox, interior and product designer Sophie Van Winden, and architect Tam Landells in a facilitated conversation led by artist, researcher and sonic designer Dr Julie Freeman. Rooted in ecological awareness and deep attentiveness to nature, the discussion explores how creative practices shaped through care — for materials, ecosystems and communities — can cultivate wellness across all living systems, human and more-than-human alike.

We’ll consider how designers are weaving environmental stewardship into their processes: through regenerative and bioregional materials, place-responsive making, circular systems thinking, and practices grounded in reciprocity and repair. Together we’ll explore what becomes possible when design moves beyond extraction or decoration and instead becomes a means of supporting ecological balance, connection and resilience. 

This is an opportunity to hear from practitioners who are pioneering more ecologically conscious futures. There will be an opportunity to ask questions and reflect on how creative work can nurture deeper care for the natural world and our place within it. 

Suitable for 16+

Sophie Van Winden – Interior & Product Designer, Co-Founder of Owl / Flots 

Sophie Van Winden is an interior and product designer originally from London, now based in Margate. She is the co-founder of interior design studio Owl, established in 2014 with Simone Gordon, working across residential and selected commercial projects including workplaces, hospitality spaces and show homes. 

She is also the co-founder of Flots, a sustainable product brand creating sculptural cushions dyed using seaweed and food waste. Through Flots, Sophie explores the intersection of craft, material innovation and environmentally responsible design, bringing tactility, play and care for natural systems into everyday objects. 

Tam Landells – Architect 

Tam Landells is an architect focused on creating thoughtful, socially responsive environments. Tam’s practice explores how light, flow, material and spatial rhythm shape wellbeing, designing architecture that supports connection, comfort and a sense of holistic ease. 

Dr Julie Freeman – Artist, Researcher & Founder of Shaped Sound 

Dr Julie Freeman is the founder of Shaped Sound and the inventor of Sonaforms® — sculptural sonic furniture that reimagines connection, inclusion and play through sound you can touch. Working as an artist with natural living systems and emergent technologies, her practice explores sound and real-time data as living, malleable materials. 

Since the early 1990s, Julie has pioneered large-scale immersive installations, sound sculptures and digital works that create immersive, multisensory experiences and deepen awareness of self, space and environment. Her work has been exhibited at leading institutions including the V&A, ICA, Modern Art Oxford, the Barbican and the Science Museum, as well as internationally. 

Julie is a co-founder of Fine Acts, a TED Senior Fellow, and runs Translating Nature, a digital and data art studio.