Why Material Intelligence Matters at NeoCon and Chicago Design Week 2026 with Jon Strassner and Kenn Busch

As Chicago Design Week 2026 approaches, the conversation around commercial interiors is expanding beyond product launches and showroom trends at NeoCon and Design Days to focus more deeply on the materials that shape our built environments. In this episode of I Hear Design, host Robert Nieminen welcomes back Kenn Busch of Material Intelligence and welcomes Jon Strassner, founder of ReWritten and host of Once Upon a Planet, for a timely discussion about materiality, sustainability storytelling, and circular design. Together, they preview what attendees can expect from Destination NeoCon and the ReWritten pop-up, while unpacking why designers, specifiers, and manufacturers need to ask better questions about what products are made of, where they come from, how they perform, and what happens at the end of their useful life. The conversation explores embodied carbon, material transparency, supply chain accountability, certifications, circularity, remanufacturing, reuse, product take-back programs, and the challenge of making sustainability feel accessible rather than overwhelming. Busch and Strassner also explain why storytelling may be one of the most powerful tools the design industry has to move sustainable material choices from niche conversations into the mainstream.

You can listen to Why Material Intelligence Matters at NeoCon and Chicago Design Week 2026 with Jon Strassner and Kenn Busch online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Why Material Intelligence Matters at NeoCon and Chicago Design Week 2026 with Jon Strassner and Kenn Busch is an episode from Interiors+Sources Podcast by interiors+sources.

This episode is 59:25 long.

This episode was published on May 11, 2026.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Interiors+Sources Podcast when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.