Clara Gaggero Westaway

Special Projects

Like any great designer, if Clara has a superpower it would be her ability to see the world differently to the mainstream. Clara is an intrepid designer, inventor and creative director committed to enriching the lives of people through hopeful product innovation.

The daughter of a mechanical engineer and a fashion boutique owner, she studied industrial design in Italy before setting up her own fashion label in Berlin, only to get back into design engineering a few years later, this time in London.

Consequently, her design method is defined by a rare ability to integrate seemingly disparate realms and elements: art and engineering, purpose and aestheticism, the physical and the digital.

When she’s not the colourful and multifaceted co-founder and creative director of Special Projects, Clara is a visiting senior lecturer at the Royal College of Art and at Queen Mary University of London and a faculty member of Oxford University Said Business School OSLP.

 

Clara’s TEDx Talk

Humanising Technology: The Empathic Design Method

Designer and inventor Clara Gaggero Westaway is leading the search for ways in which technology can feel human and be accessible to all.

Working at the intersection of innovation, design and ethnography, her award winning studio is pioneering new ways of enhancing the unquantifiable aspects of life: empathy, wellbeing, delight, with meaningful design and invention.