Alternative Design
We want to help designers of space think like futurists so we can become makers of a better future.
Alternative Design
Reading Between the Lives
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What if you could borrow a person the same way you borrow a book? In this episode, we sit down with Human Library founder Ronni Abergel to explore the simple but radical idea that the best way to fight prejudice isn't through debate, but through conversation, and how the spaces we design either make that possible or get in the way.
We thought, what if we could create a space where you could meet these people that you thought you knew a lot about but never really had a chance to talk to and ask freely to better understand or to better challenge your preconceptions? And we didn't really understand just when we started discussing the whole grasp of the idea until after a little while, that hold on, these mechanisms that we're discussing here, if this works, these are universal to mankind.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to the Alternative Design Podcast, where we explore the power of foresight and design to create future-ready spaces. In each episode, we talk to diverse voices to discover the ways our world is changing and uncover insights that will influence the built environment of tomorrow. I'm your host, Kaylin Reed, an interior designer and certified futurist. And I want to help designers think like futurists so we can take actionable steps today to become makers of a better future.
SPEAKER_01What if the most powerful design problem we never talk about isn't a building? It isn't a floor plan or a finished selection. It's the conversation that never happens between two people who share a city, a workplace, a neighborhood, and never really see each other. Today's guest built something to fix that. Ronnie Abergel is the founder of the Human Library, an experience where instead of borrowing a book, you borrow a person. You sit with them for 30 minutes, you ask them anything. And the space that holds that conversation matters a lot more than people realize. For those of us who spend our careers designing the built environment, this is one of the most quietly radical ideas in experience design. Not just places people move through, places people change in. This is episode 37: Reading Between the Lives.
SPEAKER_02I want to say I was afraid. But it impacted my life quality because I was afraid of somebody out there. I had to be worried about somebody. And if I met somebody and they seemed gay, did I have to be worried about them or afraid? And, you know, until I got it addressed and I, you know, diffused my fears. And it takes something to face your fears or your concerns. But here's a space where you could do it. Because we'll not tell you what to think or what to feel or what to do, but we just want to give you access to the real people before you cut yourself off from them and you cut them off from you.
SPEAKER_01This is Ronnie Abergell, a social activist, a change maker, and founder of the Human Library. His story that he graciously shared with me is not all that unique when it comes to preconceptions and biases towards individuals and people groups we don't know very well. Everyone knows you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. But here's the truth: you're biologically wired to do just that. It's instinct. And for thousands of years, that kept us alive. But those same instincts that once protected us, they're also what divide us.
SPEAKER_02The problem is we pass a lot of really quick judgments, and often some of them can have negative consequences for other groups in our community and for ourselves. And if we don't have the courage to revisit some of those judgments to unjudge someone, uh we're missing out. We're missing out on friends, opportunity, network, and life quality.
SPEAKER_01We're living in this moment where division feels more common than unity, where trust is getting harder and harder to build, where it's somehow easier to be bold in a comment section than it is to say those same words to someone's face. This idea couldn't be more timely. In the design industry, we've been wrestling for years with the value of placemaking, what it actually does for human connection. We talk constantly about building community. We complain that going into the office just means staring at a screen through back-to-back Teams calls. And underneath all of it, we're still facing a loneliness crisis. All these signals are pointing at the same need. True connection, the intentional kind, the kind that doesn't require a device. It's becoming a real priority. We're seeing people that are seeking out slower, deeper forms of connection. Not the friendly but forgettable exchange you have with your barista every morning. I mean genuine relationship building, the kind that creates loyalty, trust, and that feeling of actually being known by another person. And all of that makes the human library feel incredibly necessary right now. But Ronnie actually came up with this idea 20 years ago.
SPEAKER_02We had a friend who was unfortunately assaulted in the nightlife here and he ended up getting stabbed. He survived, but it was a very scary reminder of things that are escalating in a direction that we as young people could not feel safe about back then. And so we reacted, we responded, and we formed a group of our peers, and we we started a whole campaign and an organization to mobilize young people and to educate about alternatives to reacting with violence. And in about six, seven years' time, we we had gained pretty good insight into these mechanisms, and and we realized that part of some of the responses we saw was our prejudices, you know, was tainted by our prejudices, by our biases and what we thought we knew about other people. And so uh back then we thought, what if we could create a space where you could meet these people that you thought you knew a lot about but never really had a chance to talk to and ask freely to better understand or to better challenge your preconceptions. And we didn't really understand just when we started discussing the whole grasp of the idea until after a little while that hold on, these mechanisms that we're discussing here, if this works, uh these are universal to mankind. The co-creators said, Well, you mean like a library? And I was like, Yeah, we're asking strangers to sit down with strangers and talk about something potentially very challenging, very personal, or very taboo.
SPEAKER_01The very first human library event was held at Copenhagen's Roskild Festival in 2000. Four days, over 50 human books, more than a thousand readers. And it didn't stop there. Today, the human library has reached 85 countries, and there's a good chance there's a chapter near you. So let's get into how these conversations actually work.
SPEAKER_02So you borrow our book, our open book, our person who volunteered to be that open book, and that person will give you 30 minutes of their life, a short introduction to the topic that they have volunteered to be open about, and then you can ask any question you want with respect and sincerity, of course, right? But you and you can also challenge, really, let's say you had uh very strong emotions or reservations or considerations or apprehensions about certain groups or a certain specific group in your community, you might potentially borrow a person from that group and ask them questions, and and they'd be happy to answer them. So it's truly a space where we can explore ourselves and the people in our community and find out, you know, that maybe we have more in common, or maybe we're just not very much alike, but still we understand each other. And our hope is that after you read with us, uh you will gain insights and knowledge that can help you better understand both yourself and potentially the groups that you engaged with during your reader's journey. But it is in your hands, there's no preset agenda, and the rules are real simple. Bring the book back on time, bring it back in the same condition, please don't take it home.
SPEAKER_01So, listening to Ronnie describe the format, my designer brain would not stay quiet. We know the environment has power, real power. The science is pretty clear. Your surroundings, how physically and emotionally safe they make you feel in the moment, can directly affect how open you are to other people socially. And the human library isn't just asking people to do small talk, it's asking you to be vulnerable with a stranger. There's a concept we've been tracking called nothing is neutral. Every design decision communicates something, whether you meant it or not. Just ask Pantone. When they released this year's Color of the Year, Cloud Dancer, a shade of white, the response was not quiet. Color alone can signal who belongs in a space and who doesn't. That's the stakes. Every cue in the built environment, the lighting, the furniture, the scale of the room is either telling you to open up or shut down. For the human library to actually work, so much of that has to be designed right. When we come back, we'll hear what Ronnie has to say about that. Meet CF Stinson Brands with three exceptional brands, Stinson, Arkham, and Enzea. You can specify across an entire world of design solutions, all under one roof. From high performance upholsteries and textiles to draperies and window fabrics, privacy curtains, wall covering, and wall protection, CF Stinson Brands makes it easy to find exactly what your project needs. And with CF Stinson, it's not just about variety, it's about performance. These products are built to withstand the heavy use and high traffic of any commercial environment, with bleach cleanable surfaces, advanced stain resistance, and durability that stands up to demanding environments like healthcare, workplace, hospitality, and beyond. Plus, many materials are designed with sustainability in mind, including certifications and thoughtful material choices that support healthier spaces. CF Stinson brands, where innovation meets inspiration, and everything you need comes together seamlessly. Explore more at cfstenson.com.
SPEAKER_02I've said this many times. I think we're pulling a Jedi mind trick on folks, and we're really truly benefiting from the fact that it's not just centuries, it's 6,000 years that libraries have been around as an information center. In the early years for the elite, obviously, but it's it's been around as an information center for humanity for a very, very long time. And in our culture, in our timeline, it's a completely neutral place. It's completely non-commercial, like you said. You can spend the whole day and not spend a dime. It's free for all, it's open for all, it's all inclusive, it does not judge you, it asks you to respect its framework and the other people in the space, and it gives you opportunity and access. Very few places in our culture carry those traits like the library. It creates a safe, serene, often quiet space. And so right there we break a little bit with the fact that, hey, talking in this library is actually appreciated and welcomed, and we can make some fun with that. But today modern libraries also host you know debate meetings, town hall conversations, all kinds of panel discussions and author sessions and reading groups, and so there's loads of conversations happening inside those those buildings. So we fit in very well there. Uh and the space is accommodating, but we're also able to utilize other physical spaces. I mean, I've I've published our books in a shopping center in Iceland, in a shopping mall, because with the right furniture and sort of the right ambience level and some shielding, you're able to create an intimate space, even in the middle of a very busy space.
SPEAKER_01What Ronnie just described connects to something that we've been tracking. Designers strategically carving out peace in public. Not just a quiet nook on the outskirts of the floor plan, but intentional moments of self-regulation and intimate gathering inside spaces that are traditionally loud, open, and occupied. But what I keep coming back to is something much simpler. We're living in this intelligence on tap era where information is infinite and instantaneous. And honestly, as a researcher, I find it genuinely hard to hold that much information that quickly and make any real sense of it. It's so much at my fingertips at any given time that it can feel like I'm constantly just sifting through piles and piles of information. The library is one of the last spaces that still asks you to slow down long enough to consume one thing at a time, one book in your hands, thought through completely before you move on. And that's exactly what the human library is doing with people. It's asking you to put the screen down and be fully present with one human being, their story, their experience without the noise. The format mirrors the medium for sure. That said, Ronnie didn't stop at library walls. In 2020, he had the chance to take this idea somewhere else entirely.
SPEAKER_02So the furniture and the flowers were sort of built in together. And with just enough distance between each section. Because in the sections where we would switch the sections where one corner would then go over to the next reading corner, we'd have a double flower box with high flowers growing up, uh plants that would create some separation between the two conversation spaces. So not too much ambience and voice would spill over and allow everybody to be in their own conversation space. But it's always a challenge with us because you know some readers are much more loud than others. And uh and that's just the way it is. But but it's uh it's crucial. And the garden sort of helped us really find a good balance on those things.
SPEAKER_01I want to point out how much this experience benefits from being in a garden. While we discussed libraries as an obvious choice to support these conversational readings, it's worth unpacking the many jobs that the biophilic elements are doing here. The plants are both defining and diffusing space. When planters and furniture are fused together, you're not only getting the visual benefits of the greenery, you're getting the smell, the touch, even the sound of it. Through much of our trend work, we've been seeing the same design pattern being signaled across industries. And that is a reshuffling of sensory priorities in the built environment, sound especially. So often, sound in a space is treated as something to fix later or a problem to solve. But we continue to see that sound is being treated as this intentional design layer. It's becoming sound first design.
SPEAKER_02And we created these reading sections. So our in our concept, we offer small groups to share a book. So you could go one-on-one, you could bring a friend or a partner or your kids or your whole family, but maximum five tops six. If you're if you guys know each other, uh it's fine. But then five people could share a book. So we created these little reading group sections of the garden where it could accommodate, you know, up to four, up to five, up to six readers and distribute them so that we had eight stations. And then we built something very unique for the garden. We built a um a dialogue swing, which was a, you know, those normal swings kids will sit in, and there are two swings next to each other, and they'll just say you can go the highest and the fastest. Well, we had something made in cast iron and with wood, where the seats were one big seat, two seats built into each other, and then sort of reversed of each other. So one would be seating facing one way of the swing direction, and the other would sit the opposite way, and that way we could sit and look at each other and have a conversation while we're slowly sort of swinging on there. And that could be for the more intimate, you know, loans. So the garden consisted of these areas, loads of flowers and plants, and then a nice swing in the middle for that little personal conversation.
SPEAKER_01This simple tiny moment in the middle of the reading garden is an example of something much bigger that we've been seeing. Play becoming form. It's this idea that products and places are being reperceived through the lens of user participation and open-ended systems. It's flipping the design from where can I sit to what can I do here? And while incorporating opportunities for play into the floor plan may have once felt too whimsical or juvenile, not anymore. In a world of rising geopolitical tension, economic volatility, and a cost of living that feels relentless, joy is becoming an intentional design strategy, a deliberate choice. Think about how something as simple as this conversational swing can provide an effective tool for movement and motion that can regulate the nervous system all while chatting with someone. It's inviting people to come and participate in what's going on.
SPEAKER_02You just see how they change. You see how they open up already during the first half hour, and they're opening up, they feel more comfortable. Okay, it's safe here. Oh, I can really ask. By the second book, they're now leaning in, their arms are no longer crossed. By the third book, we're talking about can I get closer? Okay, so I look at those signs and I see people engaging. I see them changing in front of my eyes, I see them engaging.
SPEAKER_01Hey, it's Kaitlin. I want to take a second to introduce something new that we're adding to the show. This is good design, a segment where we pause the conversation just for a moment to highlight a design signal of change. Something that's caught our attention or that's pointing to a better design future, something that genuinely inspires a little hope. Because if you spend enough time in trend research, you can start to feel the weight of everything that needs fixing. This is the antidote to that. We're gonna make this a regular part of alternative design. So let's get into the first one. There's a moment in every designer's career where you picture a space, you truly picture it, and then immediately start editing for reality. The cord has to reach the wall, the outlet that dictates where the desk goes, the cable management that becomes its own design problem. We've been designing around power for decades. Finland is about to change that. Researchers there have demonstrated a wireless power system that transmits electricity through the air using controlled electromagnetic and radio waves, completely bypassing the need for traditional cables. Think about how Wi-Fi works. This is essentially that, but for power. It can already charge small devices and sensors, even drones. No contact required. You're just inside the field, and things just power on and work. Let that sit for a second. Because the implications for how we design the built environment are enormous. So much of workplace design is quietly constrained by infrastructure that most people never even think about. Where the columns are, where the outlets are, where the Table trays run beneath the floor. These are the invisible rules that every floor plan is negotiating with before a single human is considered. Power has always been a fixed point that everything else orbits around. Remove that constraint entirely, and the workplace becomes genuinely, finally, fully flexible. Not flexible in the way that we've been saying it is for the last decade, all while quietly still anchoring everybody to a charging station. Actually flexible, boundaryless work. A lounge chair in the middle of a garden can become a workstation. A rooftop can become a meeting room. A staircase landing can become a quick focus zone. Work from anywhere stops being about cultural policy and starts being a spatial reality. And there's something even deeper. Cables are visual noise. They signal obligation. They say, you're tethered here. A space designed without them isn't just cleaner, it feels psychologically different. It's lighter, more like a place that you choose to be more than one you are assigned to. Right now, the new technology is working at the device and sensor scale. We're not talking about powering a full office floor just yet, but that's exactly what makes it an interesting signal rather than a finished solution. The direction is clear, and in design, the direction matters sometimes even as much as the destination. So this is a reminder that some of the oldest constraints in the build environment aren't permanent. They're just unsolved problems. And someone, somewhere, just solved one. And that's good design. Something I really wanted to know from Ronnie was how often things actually got really intense. We talked earlier about how easy it is to be bold behind a screen, the comment section version of ourselves versus the face-to-face version. But I was genuinely curious about what happens when disagreement shows up within the human library. Does the physical presence of another human being change the temperature of that conversation? Does the environment do enough work to keep things from escalating?
SPEAKER_02Well, first of all, heated debates doesn't happen that often because people actually no, people actually come in and take it kind of quiet. There can be strong disagreements, and there can even be, you know, somebody that might raise their voice, but the most raised voices I hear are laughter. You know, are people realizing things, dimes dropping, and the most I see is hugs and body language opening up. It's very, very rare that you have angry folks. There are people that disagree, but they just typically don't end up screaming and shouting about it. And I think it's the prep work because we tell you before look, you can ask anything you want. This person volunteered. They're not there to disagree with you, they're just there to share their experience and what they've learned in their life. And you can question that if you want and have them explain more, but it's their truth. And you can't take it away from them. This is how I lost my leg. And you know, you can think what you want about it and anything, but this is what happened to me.
SPEAKER_01What Ronnie just described doesn't surprise me, but it does validate something really important. The loudest sounds in the human library are laughter. And I think we can all agree that physical presence does something real to the quality of a conversation. You can see someone's face, you can read their body language, your brain is actually registering them as an actual person, not a profile image, not an avatar, not a username. It's just a lot harder to dismiss an experience when the person who actually lived it is sitting right in front of you. And here's the thing: healthy relationships are no longer optional. Not for employees, not for patients, not for students, not for anyone really. Even at the corporate level, we're seeing social moments being deliberately built into the workday because leaders are finally recognizing that relationship quality isn't a soft metric, it's a strategic one. And there are real design strategies that we can leverage to create the conditions for exactly that connection moments that are slower and more intentional. So, what's next for Ronnie and the human library?
SPEAKER_02Our next move is the Human Library Book Cafe. That's our next physical space move where we want to move into cafes and we want to create activities inside where we can be open all year round. And then you can also have digital access to the cafe space, and you can have in-person access. So that's some of the things we're applying for funding for now is to open a book cafe in Aarhus and in Copenhagen and then experiment to see, you know, Tuesday nights, we could have sort of a book club. All the weekends we could be open, children in the daytime, uh adults can come in and do online readings, we can have school visits on weekdays, whole classes to come into the cafe. So there are you know a lot of ways to get a flow of activities and readers going, or you could just be open on weekends. You don't have to be open every day. It's a not-for-profit thing. But you just need to find a sensible location without too much operating cost. But it'll be something you could take much more widely advantage of the space than an outdoor garden.
SPEAKER_01There's also something incredibly exciting on the horizon that will bring the magic of the human library to even more readers.
SPEAKER_02Then there's the digital offering, which is our digital bookshelf. It's uh going to be featured on CBS Sunday morning, I think, or early April, a seven-minute segment. And at that stage, we're inviting 25,000 US viewers to hop in on our URL and sign up for a free library card. Because we need to get these conversations going in America. Well, all over the world, like you said. But uh, it seems to me a very significant time that we try to ramp up our offering. So normally we would not give away these things for free to the public because we can't fund our library that way. But we're going to give a do a big push, and the first 25,000 to sign up will get a free human library card. So they can join our online bookshelf. And that's a space where, with up to four other readers, you get that half hour and you get to choose the topic at a time that's suited for you, where you join the conversation video over internet live. So you could borrow a transgender, uh, an unhoused, somebody with HIV or autism, or a Jewish, or a Muslim, or a refugee, or an immigrant, or a polyamorous on, you know, obesity. There is a lot of topics to go through there. And just you hop in and you enjoy these readings. And that's the next big thing. We're hoping to get a lot of public readers in and to get more public conversations going.
SPEAKER_01I highly encourage our listeners to take advantage of this amazing opportunity while the digital library cards last. While so much of our episode highlights the intrinsic beauty of what the human library offers for places and physical presence, there's still tremendous value in getting to know someone who you might never have gotten the chance to encounter, even if it's in the digital world. There's of course other ways that you can get involved too.
SPEAKER_02Well, if anybody out there are listening in or curious to get involved, they can always pop in on our website and read more about our work at humanlibrary.org. So just plug in that. And then finally, I mean, we're operational in LA, in San Francisco, in Chicago, in Fort Wayne, in central Indiana, with Muncie, Indiana as a base, in New York City. If anybody wants to get involved locally in our bookie post, we always need more good books and more librarians.
SPEAKER_01Here's what I keep coming back to after this conversation. Ronnie didn't start with a design brief. He started with a problem. People were getting hurt because they didn't understand each other. Fear and assumption were filling the space that knowledge and proximity could have occupied instead. And his solution, pretty much almost accidentally, became one of the most elegant pieces of experience design I've encountered. A borrowed human. 30 minutes. Ask anything. That's it. And it's still working 26 years later. As designers, we always want to talk about what a well-considered environment can unlock in people. And this episode is one of the clearest illustrations I've seen of why that conversation matters beyond aesthetics, beyond square footage, and even finish selections. The spaces that we create are either making it easier or harder for people to show up for each other. We're living through a connection crisis. The data is not subtle about it. Loneliness is affecting our health, our productivity, and our ability to function as communities. And as designers, we're being handed one of the most important briefs we've ever had. Not just to build beautiful spaces that function well, but to build spaces that bring people back to each other, that slows things down, that create the conditions for someone to feel safe enough to be honest, safe enough to be curious, safe enough to change their mind. If today's episode resonated, our Furnishing the Future report launches this June at Fulton Market Design Days. It goes deep on a lot of the trends we touched on today, so stay tuned for that. And if you want to borrow a human, head to thehumanlibrary.org. If you're in Chicago, LA, New York, San Francisco, or Indiana, there's likely a chapter near you. And if you want to get in on the digital bookshelf, Ronnie's offering the first 25,000 signups a free library card. That link is in the show notes. So don't judge a book by its cover, but maybe borrow one.