About the Author

Ann Thorpe has spent the last several years living in the United Kingdom, where she taught product design and sustainable design at the University College of the Creative Arts and currently teaches at the Bartlett School of Architecture (University College London). Prior to this, she worked in the United States with architects and designers in the Pacific Northwest to increase activities in sustainable building and product stewardship. During this time she served as co-chair of the US Green Building Council's Cascadia Chapter and participated in collaborative eco-redesign projects that involved the University of Washington and companies such as Microsoft and REI. She was also instrumental in developing the Northwest Product Stewardship Council and its first major conference.

She has published a range of articles on sustainable design in publications such as the UK's Design Week, the Pacific Northwest's Arcade Magazine of Design in the Northwest and the IDSA’s quarterly, Innovations. She has also presented papers at conferences on topics such as time and design (at the Dutch Eternally Yours Foundation), design and industrial ecology (at the Int'l Society for Industrial Ecology) and design specification of "green building materials" (at the American Institute of Architects). She spent time as publisher and editor of On the Ground, a journal on community, design, and environment.

Thorpe holds a BS in Design and Environment from Stanford University and an MA in Energy and Resources from the University of California at Berkeley.