Meet DAE's new Creative Director

His journey spans from engineering quality design at General Motors and policy work with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, to academic posts in the UK, including Lecturer in Art and Visual Cultures of the Global South at Goldsmiths, University of London. Most recently, he served as Senior Researcher in Digital Culture at Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, where he led the creation of -1, a space for experimentation in digital culture, architecture and design. Amaro’s research and practice sit at the intersection of Black Studies, psychosocial theory, and the critique of computational reason. His acclaimed book, The Black Technical Object: On Machine Learning and the Aspiration of Black Being (Sternberg, 2023), explores the societal impact of new technologies and ways to engage in algorithmic culture. 

Now, at DAE, Amaro sees the opportunity not only to continue asking difficult questions — about justice, agency, and who design is for — but to help shape the systems that empower future practitioners. Motivated by a desire to move from influencing institutions at the margins to transforming them from within, he brings a leadership style grounded in humility, collaboration, and learning. For Amaro, whether founded in making or speculation, design is a profoundly social and philosophical act, and education is a communal exercise — one that must be rooted in lived experience, responsive to power, and open to critique. 

He sees DAE as already carrying these values — it is a school that has historically defied reductive narratives, doubled down on materiality in the face of digital dominance, created critical work in the glitches of global systems, and embraced its community and locality as the curriculum. These values point to precisely the type of agency needed to build the intentional relationships with technology and each other that empower in the face of societal transformation. As the academy enters a new chapter — relocating to Eindhoven’s new cultural district De Kanaalzone, and strengthening its international partnerships — Amaro offers a vision where radical collaboration, speculative futures, plural ecologies of making, and welcoming the school’s global community home, guide both pedagogy and institutional change. 

In this conversation, in which he describes himself as either a lighthouse or a bridge, depending on the situation, Amaro reflects on his journey and what he brings to DAE. From joyfully refusing extractive technologies to co-creating new learning ecologies that celebrate difference and curiosity, from curating practitioners instead of artefacts to imagining the glitterbox of potential that design — and design education — might become when rooted in care, critique, and collective entanglement. 

Nadine Botha: Your journey from Detroit to Design Academy Eindhoven spans automotive design, engineering policy, sociology, and philosophy — it’s anything but linear. How have these experiences shaped your perspective?

Ramon Amaro: I grew up in Detroit, a child of Motown babies, as we call them — my parents were neighbourhood kids alongside people like Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder. Detroit, at the time, was still very much an automotive capital. If you worked, you likely worked in or around the industry. 

My family were car enthusiasts. While most children were drawing trees and dogs and park benches, I was drawing cars. Actually, I was designing cars. My aunt, who worked at Volkswagen, used to babysit me, and she’d promise to take my crayon drawings to the engineers. ‘One day they’ll build your car,’ she’d say. Every time I saw her, I’d ask: ‘Is today the day?’ She’d smile and say, ‘Soon.’ 

Eventually, I studied automotive engineering and joined an experimental team that was working directly on the assembly line at General Motors as a quality design engineer. It was hands-on, real-time design in the thick of the manufacturing facility. It was a significant growth experience for me as a professional, particularly because it was here that I became aware of the human problem in design. I was tasked with solving technical problems, enacting design solutions, or thinking speculatively about the limits of manufacturing, but the humans working on the floor, the humans making the things, were often not accounted for in that equation. What I saw is that if these humans were not healthy and cared for, the design would never be cared for. At the time, I didn’t yet have the language to explain what I was feeling, but I knew something wasn’t right. 

From there, I moved into engineering policy, working on alternative fuel systems — hydrogen, wind, solar and even crude oil  — at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Again, I encountered the same dissonance: the disconnect between policy and technology, and the actual human condition of everyday life. That’s what led me to study sociology — to try to understand the human-technical relationship. From there, I went on to getting my doctorate in the philosophy of technology, and eventually into academic work in history of art departments. It is here that my work became about the collision between Global South aesthetics, alternative and communal design practices, and the applied impact of technology. I apply my insights into the philosophy of technology to understand the lived experience. 

Throughout my career, I’ve been focused not only on pluralism — on how different ecologies come together — but also on the kinds of relationships that extend beyond that, become embedded in communities, and are woven into broader societal concerns. I’ve always examined these questions through a haptic lens — that is, how we engage through making, seeing, hearing, and even sensing — not only in design but also in the ecologies surrounding it. 

That’s why I’m excited to join Design Academy Eindhoven. Because this community is already steeped in those values and understands what it means to centre care, not only in the object or the process, but in the full ecology around it. I feel like my path has led to this moment, and I’m honoured to step into a place that shares a commitment to imagining what design can become. 

NB: It’s interesting that through art history and then design, you found an ecology to explore and articulate your early intuitions. Coming from a more industrial and technical background, what do these creative spaces of exception mean to you? 

RA: Absolutely. For me, design exists within a constellation of ecologies — philosophy, science, art history, and material practice — that are difficult to distinguish because they all seek, in their own ways, to understand the world and one another. 

Suppose we’re to imagine a truly plural society. In that case, we must accept that we each see and sense the world differently — and that those differences, when brought together with care, form vibrant ecologies of belonging. Whether it’s through a speculative design lab, a quantum physics reading group, or working with different materialities of organic concrete or soil types, these types of activities are all part of a shared mission: how to thrive locally while remaining in dialogue globally with other communities thriving in their local ecologies. 

My hope is that whatever we call this expansive design field, we can learn from these cross-disciplinary methodologies and create a design that is for everyone. I strongly believe that how we do that is about not only respecting all the voices in those ecologies, but also learning from each other and different ecologies, and striving together towards various types of futures, whether they be speculative or real. 

One can see these ecologies as constellations, where we’re all our own individual. Sometimes a planet, sometimes a moon, sometimes an organism that’s occupying a planet, and other times we’re visiting other planets or moons as a type of cosmic dust. We’re constantly circulating around and through each other. My focus in thinking about the future of Design Academy is asking how do these constellations come together and what’s preventing them from thriving? Then, what opportunities arise to open up new ecologies and constellations when we reach a shared understanding? 

It may sound like a speculative exercise, but for me, speculation is about allowing us to imagine what we haven’t seen. Our job as designers now is to bring that speculation to the fore, figure out ways to make it actionable and really take a stronger hand. For Design Academy, this means not only thinking about the type of planetary care that we need, but also showing ourselves regionally, nationally, and internationally, and creating methodologies for realising the future. It’s drawing on our entire global community to experiment with new ways of living and thinking about how our ecologies can unfold differently, building new relationships between our bachelor’s and master’s programmes, and exploring what different types of partnerships can happen when we introduce people into new ecologies.

NB: In The Black Technical Object, you suggest that the capitalist algorithm is, in many ways, self-perpetuating — and that efforts to fix or correct it may actually reinforce its power. Instead, you point to gaps, glitches, and loopholes as potential spaces for something different to emerge: perhaps a different way of being human, even a way to rehabilitate both the colonised and the coloniser. While rooted in Black studies, this feels like a broader proposition — a question for all of us living in relation to technology. Would you agree? 

RA: The title of the book nods to Achille Mbembe’s concept of ‘the becoming Black of the world’ — the idea that, having exhausted the Global South as a site of extraction, power now turns inward, nations and states of the Global North turn on their own people, producing new forms of exclusion. In this context, ‘Black’ becomes not a fixed identity, but a symbolic container — a placeholder for difference, for those denied access to a generative life. This includes people, but also ideas, cultures, ways of knowing. And the technical object — whether an algorithm or an artefact — becomes the terrain where that denial plays out. 

But there’s another side. There is joy. There is resilience. There is what the younger folks call ‘auntie energy’ — a kind of oracle of embodied wisdom. It’s not about assigning the label of black, but about recognising our fundamental parts of difference as beautiful, and how these differences function in ecologies that manifest new futures. And I believe design can help us recover that. We only have to ask ourselves: Is this design for everyone? Is this design for care? And we need to do this in our daily interactions too, not just in making but in how we interact with each other within and outside of the academy. When we do, we begin to shape a design practice that is not just critical, but generative. What I explore in The Black Technical Object is what possible spaces exist in AI where we can begin to practice this? 

NB: What are the possible spaces in AI for higher education to begin practising this? There are numerous news headlines at the moment about how AI will disrupt universities. What is your perspective? 

RA: When people say they fear AI in education, or any other process for that matter, what I hear is: What future do I have in this ecology? We have come to expect that our paths are set. We may not have liked them, they may not have been beneficial on an individual or collective level, but there was some certainty at an arrival point.   

All of our foundational standards are now being questioned — quality, collaboration, accreditation, and learning models. Educators who’ve dedicated their lives to building ecologies of learning now face an external pressure that feels almost violent in its imposition: The deeper fear isn’t just about technology — it’s about agency. And any designer will tell you — the surest way to activate someone is to suggest they no longer matter. 

Instead, we can reclaim that agency by entering into new, intentional partnerships with technology. We take what serves us, and leave what doesn’t. Design Academy’s students and tutors are already doing this: refusing what is extractive, while embracing what opens space for new possibilities. An inclusive future will demand both a right of refusal and a right of communion with these technologies. 

The first step is entering into a relationship where we see each other differently, and from that recognition, allow ourselves to see technology differently, too. When we do that, we’re already beginning from a place of care. If we meet this moment with care and intention, we won’t become a fully digital institution, nor will we retreat into nostalgia. We’ll reflect the complexity and diversity of our community, where some practices thrive in dialogue with AI, and others remain rooted in materiality. In fact, I believe this so-called ‘AI threat’ may be exactly what propels us forward. Because when we are under pressure, we transform. 

NB: Transformation under pressure and reclaiming agency in the face of systems that feel imposed reminds me of an oft-told story at DAE. When people were declaring design dead and the digital as the future, the school doubled down on expanding its material workshops. It’s become part of the school’s oral history — often cited as proof that DAE is fundamentally about making. But there’s something else in that gesture too — a kind of creative defiance, a refusal to be boxed in. What do you see as the role of making in design today? 

RA: It’s a global dilemma: A very small group of people have decided that artificial general intelligence is the direction humanity must go. Those tools have been quite forcefully pushed on every aspect of daily life. We can’t even do a basic search or buy groceries without training a model. In the past, saying no to the server farm, yes to the studio might have meant resisting that tide. But today, making and technology are entangled. Doubling down on making means doubling down on the server, means confronting our environmental impact, our digital infrastructures, and the social systems they uphold. 

This is a fantastic opportunity. If we accept that entanglement, then our task is to create the conditions for our making studios to continue thriving within these ecologies, not outside them. Because it is in those spaces of touch and experimentation that new questions and responses emerge. 

AI is not just a technical tool; it’s part of an infrastructural shift. Design is a conversation of intervention. Sometimes it will articulate through material form and process, sometimes through thought, sometimes through operational change. What matters is that we stop simply responding to AI and begin designing conditions where AI responds to us — to our values, our lived experiences, our planetary responsibilities. This is already happening at Design Academy. And I’m honoured to help build the ecologies where that embedded, speculative, and caring practice can grow. 

NB: I see this shift — toward prioritising our human embeddedness and reclaiming agency within technological systems — also reflected in your curatorial approach at -1 at Nieuwe Instituut. Rather than defining digital culture as a fixed or singular concept, you embraced its plurality by centring practitioners themselves as the culture, not just their outputs. Can you share the thinking behind that approach? 

RA: At Nieuwe Instituut, I was tasked with helping define what digital culture could mean — not just at a policy level, but spatially and practically, within the museum and beyond. But I didn’t want to define it from above. I approached it as a sociologist: by mapping the landscape, listening to local ecologies, and seeing what was already being made. What I found in the Netherlands was a strong culture of decentralisation, open-source thinking, and, crucially, a resistance to easy categorisation — a radical ambiguity that aligns closely with DAE. 

So instead of trying to define digital culture, I asked: What if we just show it? We can picture an architect or a designer. But digital culture? Too often, it’s faceless — abstracted into corporations or platforms. I wanted to highlight the real practitioners: coders, artists, toolmakers, people using digital tools in small, experimental ways. That’s where culture lives. This led to the creation of -1, a semi-autonomous space within Nieuwe Instituut. It became a kind of testing ground for the institution itself, but also for digital practitioners. We explored everything from residency models and pedagogical frameworks to livability and funding gaps. The goal being to prototype futures, not just exhibit them. 

Interestingly, many DAE alumni naturally flowed into this space. That’s because DAE already works from this ethos — making in process, embracing ambiguity, valuing failure as generative. In both places, the question isn’t only what do we make, but how do we relate while making? 

And that’s what I hope to cultivate at DAE — not just a curriculum or a program, but a community where knowledge circulates freely, where we borrow from our ‘neighbours’, where we grow through doing and sometimes through not getting it right. If we can nurture that glitter box of potential, we’ll be more than okay. 

NB: You’ve described approaching your work ‘as a sociologist’ by asking questions and staying curious. It also suggests the mindset of a lifelong student. How does that perspective shape the way you lead? 

One of the most difficult but defining moments in my career was becoming Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, where I’d previously been a student. I had this fantasy that it meant I’d been accepted into a grand body of knowledge. But I quickly realised that was just a threshold. The more I learned, the more I became aware of what I didn’t know. That’s what keeps me grounded — the understanding that learning is never finished. 

Asking questions, listening closely… that kind of curiosity has been with me since I was a child. It’s also how I lead. At Design Academy, I want to bring that same openness: to continue learning not only about the institution and its people, but about design itself, beyond what I already know. 

My hope is that we, as a whole community — students, tutors, studio heads, support staff — can revisit what it means to know, and to not know. That we create a culture where learning is joyful, not burdensome, and where curiosity drives both our daily work and our long-term vision. This relates back to how we meet the future and technologies. If we stay curious about the present, we’ll be far better equipped to shape what comes next. 

NB: You come across as an engaged, people-focused leader. How do you envision approaching your role as Creative Director at Design Academy Eindhoven? 

RA: For me, leadership is collective. Being Creative Director is not just thinking about the future sustainability of the academy and what design might mean locally and globally, because nothing happens in silos. Rather, it’s about developing co-participation. 

I begin by asking: how can I best participate? How can I best imagine with others? That means being on the floor in the academy. I want to be where things are happening, where knowledge is being created, where the community lives. Because only from that place can I truly serve the academy and help steward the futures we want to build together. 

NB: You’ve mentioned that DAE is not just about who’s inside the building, but also its broader community and context. The Academy is now preparing to relocate to De Kanaalzone — a new cultural district in Eindhoven, with strong ties to the city’s design ecosystem. How do you read this shift, and what opportunities or challenges do you see in this new location? 

RA: This is a key moment for us, and I sit with real gratitude for the opportunity. How often do you get the chance to start fresh? Not a total reset or erasure, but a moment to carry forward what we’ve learned, reflect on what could work differently, and materialise that into a new space. 

Design Academy’s values — co-participation, care, and pushing discourse forward — already guide how we work. Now, we have the chance to embed those values spatially. Suppose we’re exploring new ecologies between the BA and MA, or different approaches to making. How do we make those visible — and create a kind of village within the new location, where we actively practice new forms of sociality and being together within the building? 

For me, this isn’t just about where we work — it’s about how we relate. The move enables us to create a new kind of sociality, a new way of being together, not just within the academy, but also with our neighbourhood, the Netherlands, and a broader global network. This new location is an opportunity to create a new home base, and ultimately an opportunity to welcome people home. 

NB: Shifting from the context of Eindhoven to the global design landscape, you’ve worked across academia and design worldwide. How is Design Academy Eindhoven currently perceived internationally, and where do you see potential for growth? 

RA: Design Academy’s reputation is international — even if, from within Eindhoven, it can sometimes feel like a small village. That humility is a texture about the Netherlands that I appreciate because it helps us strive, but we shouldn’t let it trap us. While we might relate locally, we operate on a much larger scale. 

I see great potential for building new international partnerships with institutions and practitioners who, like us, are in transition and eager to imagine what’s next. But I don’t think DAE should do this alone. We need to work in constellations — locally, regionally, continentally, and globally — and move beyond one-off exchanges toward sustained, meaningful relationships. 

Are there cross-residencies and different types of international exchanges? What does it mean for an individual or collective from the Global South to be in Eindhoven — and for Eindhoven to be present in their context? How can we exchange knowledge between different labs, institutions, and communities across geographies? What does it mean to engage with different types of scholarship? How can we activate different avenues for our existing discourse? These are the questions I want us to ask. Because for us, internationalism isn’t just outreach — it’s about reflecting who our community already is. Our job now is to welcome that community home.