DESIS Newsletter #4 - Displaying Life
Feburary / March 2011, DESIS INTERNATIONAL NETWORK www.desis-network.org
Designing a successful display system is a task that challenges not only budgets and manpower but also, and specially, creativity. In our case this is even greater since we are not only talking about designer’s creativity, but about how to give visibility to those who, by using their creativity, are improving their livelihoods, our: creative communities.
Furthermore we are talking about a creativity that shows solutions that are already in action, new business models and also ideas which in some cases are not yet replicated on a given territory but potentially spreadable.
Having said that, in this edition we would like to highlight the relevance of some events (such as the DESIS Forum in Paris) in which teachers, students, members of the network, partners and friends, by having shared the same pre-production display format are able to show their work and particular perspectives on design. - The Editor
INDEX
FOCUS | DESIS Forum @ Cumulus conference, May 21, 2011
EVENTS | Experimentcity network meeting - - PERL conference - - DESIS Turkey Kick-off meeting
NEWS | UNEP workshop in New York - - Destination 2022 Design for Sustainability conference in Japan - - DESIS ME conference@ HIT, Israel
RESEARCHES| DESIS Brasil - DESIS Africa, a collaborative platform for mutual learning in social innovation
CASES | Café Tome, dedicated to all those in love with rice and music
RESOURCES | Secret Garden Party, by John Thackara
FOCUS
DESIS International
DESIS forum @ Cumulus Paris conference, May 21th, 2011
Show your project. Exchange your experience with that of others.
To participate and submit your project, please download submission kit. (submission deadline: 25th April)
More information on how to participate can be found at http://www.desis-network.org
Design schools as social resources and the Open Design Program
By Ezio Manzini
To train someone to be a designer means to increase his/her skills in conceiving and developing design proposals for a better possible world. And therefore classes, workshops and seminars are organised, and proposals are conceived and developed, to make experiences on it. The majority of these proposals, being seen as didactic exercises ends-up in the teacher’s drawers and computer files. This huge amount of lost design works represents a waste of students’ and teachers’ creativity, enthusiasm and expertise. In the past, this waste was, or has been seen as, inevitable. Today, it should not be like that: design schools, with their potential in terms of students’ enthusiasm and teachers’ experience, are a social resource: a potentially powerful and useful actor in the transition towards sustainability.
To valorise these resources a large design and research program should be conceived and developed: an open design program based on a peer-to-peer approach, including design schools from all over the world.
This Open Design Program will be started in Paris, the 21st of May, at the DESIS Forum that has been organized back-to-back with the Cumulus Conference (http://www.cumulusparis2011.org). The DESIS Forum is in fact a format conceived to give design teachers and students the opportunity to showcase their projects, to present them and to exchange their experiences in the field of design for social innovation and sustainability. And therefore, hopefully, it will be the first step in the realization of the valorization program that seems to us so urgent and necessary.
EVENTS
Europe
Experimentcity network second meeting, Milan, March, 24-26, 2011
The Experimentcity network consists on partners from eight European countries that meet to discuss and compare collaborative housing solutions and strategies.
‘Collaborative housing’, refers to original ways to approach the shelter issue, for a planet in which both population grows and spaces are shrinking.
To read further, please visit: http://www.desis-network.org/?q=node/388
For a detailed program, please visit: http://experimentcity.net/en/excity-europe
For further information please write to: liat.rogel@mail.polimi.it
Turkey
PERL conference, Istanbul, Turkey, March 14 - 15, 2011
PERL, The Partnership for Education and Research about Responsible Living has set sails for its coming conference: Enabling Responsible Living, March 14 – 15, 2011 to be held in Istanbul, Turkey. The venue: Maltepe University.
To be highlighted at the conference, there is the role of video in the sustainability’s discourse, this by means of a “Student Film Competition”.
To know more please visit: http://www.perlprojects.org
DESIS Turkey Kick-off meeting, March 16, 2011
Photo: Najla Osseiran, Flower Pin Design Workshop at Sulukule for the Spring Sale, Istanbul, Turkey
Based in Istanbul, Istanbul Technical University ITU, has prepared an inauguration meeting to share knowledge on social innovation, sustainability and social responsibility projects initiated by designers in Turkey and the establishment of DESIS Türkiye local network as part of the international DESIS network.
Besides the launching of this node, DESIS International looks forward at learning from all the ancient traditions and wisdom of this edging land, the land of Constantinople, Byzantium, Stambul, the land where East and West meet.
For more information please contact:
Prof.Dr. Özlem ER (ozlem.er@itu.edu.tr),
Arş.Gör.Dr. Çiğdem KAYA (cigdem.kaya@itu.edu.tr
)
NEWS
U.S.A.
DESIS members to participate in the UNEP workshop
"Sustainable Consumption and Production: Transforming Lifestyles"
in New York City on March 2nd 2011
By Lara Penin
Photo: Lara Penin
What can policy makers coming from instances such as the UN (and their 19th session of the Commission on Sustainable Development CSD-19), share and learn from Networks- such as DESIS- for what regards social innovation, awareness raising, communications, and education for sustainable lifestyles.
At the UNEP workshop "Sustainable Consumption and Production: Transforming Lifestyles” we will get to know. To know more please visit: http://www.desis-network.org/?q=node/387
Japan
Destination 2022 Design for Sustainability Conference in Japan
By Prof. Fumi Masuda and Mie Suzuki
In the framework of the 5th conference for Sustainability DESTINATION 2022 that took place in Yamagata, Japan, the first steps towards a solid consolidation of Desis Japan had place thanks to the efforts and interest of the Academia, NGO's and specially thanks to the energy of young people working on the social innovation field.
For more information can be found at: http://www.desis-network.org/?q=node/379
Israel
DESIS ME CONFERENCE 'The future Role of Design'
HIT (Holon Institute of Technology), Israel, December 1, 2010
By Adital Ela
On December 1st 2010, the faculty of Design at HIT-Holon Institute of Technology, Israel, hosted the first DESIS ME event - DESIS ME, this is the: Mediterranean branch of DESIS. The event aimed to raise questions such as:
_What is the future role of Design?
_Can Design Influence Social Change?
_How can design-based approaches reinforce Social Innovation towards sustainability?
Study cases were found to be rather original given the particular context of Tel Aviv, a truly cosmopolitan city in the middle of the Middle East.
For more information please visit:
http://www.sustainable-everyday.net/hit2010
RESEARCHES
DESIS Brasil – DESIS Africa
“Video - Dialogues Brazil-Africa, a collaborative platform of support for mutual learning in social innovation”
By Carla Cipolla
In the framework of DESIS International two of its members started this collaborative project entitled: “Dialogues Brazil-Africa, a collaborative platform of support for mutual learning in social innovation”.
The idea here, beyond having African partners indicating one social innovation that could match a peer in Brazil and thus enable their dialogue and sharing of tools and visions, is to find in Brazil for each African initiative at least one analogous Brazilian case.
To read further, please visit: http://www.desis-network.org/?q=node/383
CASES
Café Tome
Dedicated to all those in love with rice and music
Nowadays hundreds of restaurants and cafés dealing with better ways of eating are cropping up all over the word, so many that what once was really different is today becoming part of the normal city landscape and thus not bringing much new to the urban scene, specially in terms of value and quality. However, we have found that there are also “new” approaches cropping up, ideas with a strong “something else” behind made them not only unique but full of value, restaurants and cafés that go beyond the mere and at times just trendy organic, green and or vegetarian slant, like this one:
Café Tome, founded by a Doctor dealing with Japanese alternative medicine, this restaurant and café not only serves a “well thought” rice (in slow food words) but also invites people to sew and harvest it.
A new business model and valuable place where the motto:
“no music, no life – no rice, no life” in a land where the bread is getting trendy, talks about the relevance of keep traditions - an music - alive.
http://blog.tome-rice.com
http://www.tome-rice.com
RESOURCES
Secret Garden Party, on Power and Love
“Power in this sense is the drive to achieve one’s purpose, to get one’s job done, to grow.
Love is the drive towards the unity of the separated... the drive to reconnect and make whole that which has become or appears fragmented”.
An article by John Tackara talking about power and love. In his words, remarkable in terms of design is:
“Their positive energy beautifully complements the serious but sometimes dry work of design researchers and social innovators: we need each other.”
To read further, please visit http://www.desis-network.org/?q=node/381
Newsletter Editor: Andrea Mendoza (andrea.mendoza@polimi.it), Designer: Eunji Cho
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