bauhaus
imaginista

Nan O’Sullivan

Author

Nan O’Sullivan holds a Diploma of Interior Environmental Design and a Masters of Architecture. For over twenty years Nan has enjoyed a prolific career crossing between these creative but sometimes divergent disciplines. This constant negotiation between aesthetic disciples led her to make the leap to academia about five years ago where she is now the Faculty’s Associate Dean and Director of the Design for Social Innovation (DSI) Programme at Victoria University’s School of Design. Her curiosity into the visual languages of the Pacific regions alongside the challenges of discipline specific languages led to investigations of plurality. Nan promotes indigenous knowledge both as a visual and ideological body of knowledge that can grow design’s appreciation of its roles and responsibilities within a world that is, one hundred years after the Bauhaus in transition, once again. In her teaching and research Nan aims to challenge and grow design's capabilities and capacity to contribute to positive change. Nan speaks and publishes internationally about the value of both mātauranga Māori and place-based knowledge to the design of sustainable and sustaining futures.