In a changing world everyone designs: each individual person and each collective subject, from enterprises to institutions, from communities to cities and regions.
Sometimes these projects generate unprecedented solutions; sometimes they converge on common goals and realize larger transformations. As Ezio Manzini describes in his book Design, When Everybody Designs, we are witnessing a wave of social innovations as these changes unfold.
Manzini distinguishes between diffuse design (performed by everybody) and expert design (performed by those who have been trained as designers) and describes how they interact. He maps what design experts can do to trigger and support meaningful social changes, focusing on emerging forms of collaboration. These range from community-supported agriculture in China to digital platforms for medical care in Canada; from interactive storytelling in India to collaborative housing in Milan. In his talk Manzini will draw a comprehensive picture of design for social innovation: the most dynamic field of action for both expert and nonexpert designers in the coming decades.
Program
16.30h: Lecture by Ezio Manzini on design for social innovation:
17.15h.: Round-table discussion with Virginia Tassinari (LUCA arts - MAD campus C-Mine), Lou Yongqi (Dean College of Design & Innovation, Tongji University) & Tanguy Coenen (iMinds iLab.o / SMIT)
18.00h.: Opening of Kunstenfestivaldesarts
Ezio Manzini
is an Italian design strategist, one of the world’s leading experts on design for sustainability. He is Honorary Professor at the Politecnico di Milano, and founder of the DESIS (Design for Social Innovation towards Sustainability), an international network of university-based design labs. Over the past 30 years his work has coalesced around four watchwords: small, local, open and connected.
Invited by Crosstalks VUB
