Sense and Sensibility
Design Impact Assessment
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Gerhard M. Buurman
The history of design goes back just 150 years. Design first became an important artistic-technical discipline, then a strategy (design thinking) and finally an epidemic. In my paper, I develop the thesis that design often makes false promises. The promises of design - and this is probably the reason for its great success - are more often associated with economic promises of success and less with intellectual rationality. This is certainly also due to the fact that we have irretrievably lost the most cultivated rules for 'good design' ("Good Design Is Good Business"). So when we talk about our future, we should expand our capacity for 'reflection' and think about 'restriction'. We can only save ourselves from the onslaught of ideas (ideas consuming themselves faster and faster) by setting up the right barriers to market access. In my study I outline the reasons, first experiences and the perspectives for a legally regulated innovation and design impact assessment.
Towards a New Forma Mentis: The Impact of Polytechnic Culture as a Training Model for Contemporary Territorial Development
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Paolo Tamborrini, Chiara Lorenza Remondino
Outlining and defining the concept of training means, first of all, identify a specific mindset. Starting from the introduction of pedagogical/experiential activities, this contribution aims to qualify a new training model. A model intended as a fulcrum of laboratory activities as well as didactic, practices as well as theoretical, strongly characterizing the polytechnic study path, activities from which young creative people and future entrepreneurs, can learn using all the possible channels, because the higher the involvement and the multi/transdisciplinary contamination, the more the level of experientiality will be raised. By integrating this concept with the definition of a system, understood as a complex reality whose elements interact with each other, a circular model according to which each element conditions the other and is in turn conditioned by it, it follows that the meaning of each single element it should not be sought in the element itself, but in the system of relations in which it is included. In this logic, the training system is enriched with ever new perspectives aimed at creating a logic of interaction, comparison, constant and concrete sharing with obvious repercussions on the territorial context. A training system that is specified, verified, and re-clarified starting from an analysis of the contemporary state of the art in Turin, but above all from its first experimentation within design courses.
Forging A Design-Sense: Shifting from Socially Motivated to Publicly Engaged Design Education in Newark, NJ View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chantal Fischzang
Balancing design curricula with social responsibility has been my focus since I started teaching at Rutgers University-Newark (RU-N) in 2012. Expanding the discourse to integrate social advocacy within design education is not new, but what grants me a unique working experience is context: a changing tide at RU-N and its commitment to restoring relationships with its city, in tandem with Newark’s special time of revitalization. At RU-N, our Graphic Design program is a resident partner of Express Newark (EN), a university-community collaboratory rooted in creative practice, conceived to fulfill the school’s public mission to build a greater Newark. Within this framework, my journey towards tenure and promotion concentrates on publicly engaged design practice and education. By working in a place co-owned with community, a design-sense is forged. It allows students to witness decentralization of power, and experience a nuanced distinction between visually representing a social concern and co-building around it, to make issues more visible and facilitate action. It establishes deep networks of trust, and allows our program to become a (design) resource to heal and empower the city of Newark. Through various case studies, I exhibit my experience with publicly engaged design education as an aspirational model for design pedagogy, by self-examining the veracity of our collaborations, the scale of engagement, terms of commitment and action at which our design interventions have, or could make change happen— at a project, system, and/or cultural level— with (not for) our city.
