Green Talks is a new series of Podcasts by ECOWEEK, Archisearch.gr and Design Ambassador. This new series of Podcasts co-hosted by Vassilios Bartzokas creator of ARCHISEARCH.GR & the DESIGN AMBASSADOR, and architect Elias Messinas creator of ECOWEEK. The duo interviews leading Architecture and Design personalities who share their experience and how they connect Design, Sustainability and Innovation in their work.

Emese Pancsa, this podcast’s guest, is a designer who is committed to supporting social impact. Her vision is to re-code sustainability at the level of habits and digitalization.

Together, designers and architects need to become a kind of ecosystem designers. Part of her vocation is to design supportive solutions that help communities become more self-sustaining and improve their quality of life. As a doctoral student in architecture, she researches in the field of sustainability pedagogy. Last summer, they founded a company around a playful urban composting system based on sustainability education.

The conversation started with a reference in Pancsa’s path, and how she chose her career while being very diverse, as she started as an economist, then looked at design and architecture and then went back to economics combining design, that finally led at becoming an environmental entepreneur and specifically refered to the reason why she chose composting and to the way her family influensed her to start finding a creative solution.

At that point she stated that she noticed that a lot of people were willing to engage with composting but they were unsatisfied and the wanted to give up, so she wanted to help, while as a designer, “I consider design as a toolkit, that helps you find a solution that can make composting easier and fun and hopefully educational..and invite more and more to join.” 

“I was very motivated when I looked at statistics and found out that people were willing to do composting if it would be easier”.

While talking about the composting process Emese Pancsa highlighted the difficulty of the traditional way of composting, for people living in the cities and not having a garden, that needs soil and takes ten or more months, and how that affected her to start looking for something that people could be involved in the procedure and get to see the result and take some feedback for their effort. She was also looking for a divice that people can put more staff in it, with a wider range of “ingredients list”. 

During her research on that field for indoor composting technology, Emese, found a Japanese technique that can handle almost every kitchen leftovers except liquids, but it also needed a lot of manual treatment.  

Concerning the relationship between composting and architecture n’ design, Pancsa highlighted an holistic approach that defines her work, the idea that there is a general influence for everyday environment, people’s lifes, even architect’s projects. 

“Hopefully my wish is for the composting to be available in public spaces, inspiring people to compost at their house, in their gardens and get to know that this transform of waste into something valuable can be an easy everyday routine that can have a huge impact.”

source: https://forbes.hu/uzlet/okoskuka-belteri-komposztalas-lakasban-compocity-pancsa-emese/

Finally Mr. Messinas, asked Mrs. Pancsa about the qualities and the features that she is searching in while looking at young’s designer portfolio, or a young entepreneur and she responded that she thinks that it is very important to grow as a team and having new people on board, being able to grow together and learn from each other in a way that opens everyones minds. For example she refered to all the fundamental questions that an intern asks when he enters the team obligating the team to go back to “what is the mission” and “what we are working on”. 

She also stated that it is a very important feature to fall in love with the project itself and be there when it gets hard, be commited and be a person that the team can rely on in the same way that he will rely on the team back.

Listen to the whole episode with Emese Pancsa here

READ ALSO: Green talks_by ECOWEEK & Archisearch.gr | Ulrike Schartner podcast recap