[Please accept our apologies for cross postings]
CHANGING THE CHANGE
An international conference on the role and potential of design research
in the transition towards sustainability
Torino 10th - 11th - 12th July 2008
Newsletter 02
In the framework of
WORLD DESIGN CAPITAL TORINO 2008 | © ICSID An Icsid initiative of the IDA
Contents:
Design research for sustainability
Ezio Manzini (conference coordinator), Politecnico di Milano
Jorge Frascara (international advisory board coordinator), University of
Alberta
Resilience by design
Mugendi M’Rithaa (international advisory committee member), Cape Peninsula
University of Technology
Design research
Bill Moggridge (international advisory committee), IDEO
Craftsmanship, Community, Design
Claudio Germak (national committee member), Politecnico di Torino
Call for papers and visualisations
Please visit the conference website:
www.changingthechange.org
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Design research for sustainability
Ezio Manzini (conference coordinator), Politecnico di Milano
Jorge Frascara (international advisory board coordinator), University of
Alberta
The Changing the Change Conference’s main aim is to present and discuss
the design research contribution to the transition towards a sustainable
knowledge society. That is, its capability to generate visions, proposals
and tools to re-orient the emerging knowledge society towards more
socially and environmentally sustainable directions.
This aim is based on some concepts that have to be clarified and discussed.
Knowledge society: it is the result of a large transformation that is
taking place at a global scale. Its meaning overlaps the ones of service,
information and network society: concepts that represent different
expressions of the same on-going complex phenomenon.
In the Changing the Change conference we assume that the evolution towards
the knowledge society, even if presents some positive characters, as it
appears today, is not bringing us to a sustainable direction. It has to
be well understood, but, at the same time it has to be re-orientated.
In other words, the transition towards a knowledge society is the
“big on-going change” that has to be changed.
Sustainability: in recent time the use of words “sustainability” (as a noun)
and “sustainable” (as an adjective) has become quite common. This popularity
can be seen as the positive expression of a growing concern for the
environment. But, at the same time, it presents the risk of being mis-used.
That is, used in superficial ways (little environmental improvements proposed
as steps to sustainability) or even as “green washing” strategies (presenting
some green initiatives to cover deeply un-sustainable ways of doing).
In the Changing the Change conference we use the term “sustainability” only
in relation to deep and systemic changes in the ways of thinking, living and
producing. In other words, systemic changes, in our view, are the
pre-condition to generate visions or proposals that can be presented
as “sustainable”.
Visions, proposals, tools: they summarise design’s main results. Visions
are images of how a whole context could be like if new conditions where
given (what if a new idea of wellbeing, of development, of production,
of eating were disseminated?). Proposals are original combinations of
products, services and communications capable to face specific issues
(such as housing, mobility, health, food,…) in an original way. Tools are
conceptual and practical instruments that permit the enhancing of these
visions and proposals.
In the Changing the Change conference we assume that the social learning
process that should bring us towards a sustainable society has to be fed
by these visions and proposals. And supported by these design tools.
Design research: it is a research activity developed with design tools,
skills and sensitivity; where “research” stands for the production of
knowledge that can be shared and accumulated to become the starting point
or new researches and specific projects; and where the expression “developed
with design tools, skills and sensitivity“ stands for a research activity
developed by designers who explore complex design issues and generate
visions and solutions.
In the Changing the Change conference we assume that the transition towards
a sustainable knowledge society is such a large and new challenge that
individual design activities are only a good first step, but cannot be enough.
They are a good first step because individuals can move with agility,
explore possibilities and develop models, but design for sustainability calls
for a community of designers working and debating with other actors to build
a new design knowledge and a new set of visions and proposals.
If you are a designer and have done work in this direction, Changing the
Change is the opportunity for you to share your experience and work toward
the creation of the much needed change toward a sustainable society.
Leave a comment on the Blog:
http://www.changingthechange.org/blog/2007/12/20/design-research-for-sustainability/
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Resilience by design
Mugendi M’Rithaa (international advisory committee member), Cape Peninsula
University of Technology
As Saki Mafundikwa aptly stated, “Africa is not poor, it just doesn’t have a
lot of money!” The principal question that perspectives from the continent at
the Change the Change conference need to address is: “If Africa does not have
a lot of money, what then does it have?” Additionally, and more specifically,
“How can design help accelerate and perpetuate enabling conditions that will
help secure a truly sustainable future for all its denizens?”…
Africa has a predominantly youthful demographic with a population that is
expected to rise to a billion within the next eight years. Failing
infrastructure, material deprivation, epidemics, civil war, and pervasive
political dysfunctionalism have failed to dampen the continent’s sense of
optimism. This historic and diverse continent is incredibly wealthy in
natural resources, and richer still in human capital- if one looks beyond
popular projections coloured by cynicism and skepticism, a picture begins
to emerge- one of a vibrant, engaging and resilient people making the most
of their common lot. The robust anthropocentric philosophy of ubuntu
(whereby an individual’s humanity is reaffirmed by their community) is
increasingly being invoked. Ubuntu finds practical expression in the
continental zeitgeist of the African Renaissance to rally the people of
Africa in proactive response to the challenges facing the continent,
as well as through the agency of the New Partnership for Africa’s
Development (NEPAD).
Across the continent, examplars of home-grown/grassroots sustainability
are emerging. In eastern Africa, for example, the Jua Kali informal
manufacturing sector offers gainful employment opportunities that far
supersede those of the formal economic sector. Indeed this phenomenon
is integral in Kenya’s vision of becoming an industrialized country by
the year 2020! Entrepreneurship via small and micro-enterprises is
constantly growing covering a vast number of business sectors with
promising potential role for self-sustaining distributed economies.
Similarly, a highly empowering sustainable rural transportation project
was facilitated by the SABS Design Institute in South Africa.
Other initiatives include an eco-village project by the Sustainability
Institute in South Africa. Proactive engagement with international
partners has created practical models for local designers to emulate.
These include the innovative communication design project in Uganda by
Designers Without Borders, as well as cost-effective eco-design projects
in Kenya and Namibia by the Design for Development Society.
Africa needs to tell the rest of the world its own success stories-
and this forum could well be the catalyst for Africa to respond to
Ezio Manzini’s challenge to ‘leap-frog’ into an advanced multi-local
society wherein the continent’s spirit of resilience informs humanity’s
collective vision of sustainability…
Leave a comment on the CtC Blog:
http://www.changingthechange.org/blog/2007/12/20/resilience-by-design/
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Design research
Bill Moggridge (international advisory committee), IDEO
Design Research ~ How to know
Interdisciplinary Design Thinking ~ What to do
Specialist Design Skills ~ How to do it
General Design Awareness ~ How to choose
Here are four kinds of design. They form a hierarchy of contribution, with
Design Research at the highest level.
Let’s start at the bottom with General Design Awareness. Do you remember
what happened when desktop publishing emerged in the 1980s? All those
notices on pin boards at the office about the picnics and social events had
been written by hand before that, and then suddenly they were printed from
laser printers and composed on WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get)
screens. Everyone was suddenly a graphic designer, choosing fonts and
composing layouts. At first the tendency was to use lots of different fonts on
the same page, and to completely fill the surface with type. Over time these
amateur designers became more aware of the skills of graphic design; they
started to choose fewer and more appropriate fonts and leave some white
space around the text. The tools that democratized printing had the effect of
increasing the general design awareness of many people who had never thought
about fonts and layout before, and as a result they started to respect the
talents and skills of the professional graphic designer. A similar effect can be
expected as mass customization allows people without college level design
education to make design decisions about products.
Professional designers operate at a more sophisticated level, having mastered
Specialist Design Skills. They are expert at deciding how to do it, how to create
a elegant solution to the problem posed by the constraints, but they expect
the context that they operate in to be decided by someone else, probably
the boss or the client. This expectation wastes the value of design thinking,
and reduces the stature of the contribution made by designers. Why not
apply interdisciplinary design thinking to deciding what to do in the first place?
That change is overdue! Particularly with the challenging problems posed
by the complexity of design contexts in the world of digital technology and
global connectivity, the application of teams can help to set the brief for
development, to harness design thinking in order to decide what to do.
By developing interdisciplinary design thinking we can encompass the process
of planning and management, but we are still woefully immature when it
comes to knowing how to know. The whole area of Design Research is infantile
in scope. An important opportunity in the context of Changing the Change will
be to move design research forward faster and more effectively, so the we
discover more about how to know and how to communicate the results of that
knowledge.
Leave a comment on the CtC Blog:
http://www.changingthechange.org/blog/2007/12/20/design-research/
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Craftsmanship, Community, Design
Claudio Germak (national committee member), Politecnico di Torino
The largest furniture industry in Japan has inaugurated, with Enzo Mari,
a program called “Un milione di alberi di Sugi - One million Sugi trees”,
a type of wood that grows widely and easily in Japan, used to re-propose
furniture of the Japanese rural tradition. Alessi promotes Twergi series,
small objects for the kitchen and table, manufactured by communities of
craftsmen from some of the Alpine valleys in Piedmont and distributed with
success worldwide. These examples, chosen among so many, stress the
importance of the bond between industry and craftsmanship, tradition
and local materials.
In this direction, in our Region we have attempted to work not with
individual craftsmen but with a number of communities. We have
established networks for knowledge and promotion, provided technological
and business assistance to the enterprises. Rather than closed projects,
because we know how much craftsmen value their independence, we provided
“guidelines”, open to freedom of interpretation of the craft community in
respect of certain shared rules. We have defined sustainable protocols for
production, and outlined scenarios of consumption that configure products
not exclusively for connoisseurs or nostalgics, but for everyone is able
to appreciate quality. The territory, in this sense, becomes the first
client of the typical craft product: the bars and restaurants, the offices
of the institutional communities, the shops selling typical products like
foods, are filled with new products, becoming the site of the promotion.
For this reason, “Artigianato Comunità Design” is the subtitle of the
exhibition entitled MANUfatto that, if you come to Turin for the
conference, we can visit together in the splendid framework of a historic
but out-of-the-way location that, like typical craftsmanship,
has the same problems of visibility, communication and survival.
Welcome!
Leave a comment on the CtC Blog:
http://www.changingthechange.org/blog/2007/12/20/craftsmanship-community-design/
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Last news / now on line
- New deadlines for abstracts
- Participation fees and bursaries
Important dates
February 18: deadline for abstracts and visualisations NEW DATE!
March 20:notification to accepted abstracts and visualisations NEW DATE!
May 26: deadline for full papers and final visualisations
July 10-11-12: conference
NEWS AND NOTES
New deadlines
The call for paper is having very good response world wide. But we are
searching not only for papers, but for good papers and for papers form
regions of the world that normally have not the capacity to participate.
To get this results more time is needed to give the possibility to our
communication to arrive to everybody could have some design vision,
solutions and tools to propose.
For this reason the deadline for the submission of abstracts has been postponed.
- February 18: deadline for abstracts and visualisations
- March 20: notification to accepted abstracts and visualisations
Bursaries
The Conference intends to present the design research activities that are
developed world wide, even in the economically most disadvantaged countries.
For this reason, thanks to the help of the supporting local institutions
(Regione Piemonte and City of Torino), there will be the availability of several
bursaries, covering conference registration, travel and accommodation in Torino).
The local sponsors will cover all the conference expenses and the registration
fees collected will be totally used to finance bursaries for those who will
need them . For more information consult the web-site.
Good papers?
What do we intend to say by “good papers”? We mean papers that demonstrate
that design (and, in particular, design research) can make an important
contribution to the social learning process towards sustainability.
This contribution has to be characterized by strong visual and communication
components of sustainable scenarios and solutions. And of the tools that
could be necessary to implement them.
The papers should be based on design research done and communicated using
(mainly) design tools and designers skills. In addition to the traditional
paper, the authors can present their results also in the form visualizations
to be shown in a parallel exhibition we intend to organise (NB: these
visualizations are not traditional scientific posters. In our case,
they have to be highly communicative materials presenting design research
results in terms of visions and proposals)
International Advisory Board Coordinator
Jorge Frascara has been appointed as a Coordinator of the International
Advisory Board. Jorge has a worldwide reputation as a design researcher,
a large experience in organising international conferences and now is
staying in Italy (virtual meetings are good, but we need direct
relationships too!). His specific role will be to steer the process of
building the Reviewers Committee and coordinating the process of
selection of the abstracts and of the papers.
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Changing the change conference
In the framework of
WORLD DESIGN CAPITAL TORINO 2008 | ICSID An Icsid initiative of the IDA
Organizers:
Politecnico di Milano and Politecnico di Torino
Promoters:
Co-ordination of Italian Design Research Doctorates with Conference of
Italian Design Faculty Deans and Programme Heads
Endorsements:
CUMULUS and BEDA
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