Description

Talking Circles offer an opportunity to meet other delegates with similar interests and concerns. Delegates self-select into groups based on broad thematic areas and then engage in extended discussion about the issues and concerns they feel are of utmost importance to that segment of the Research Network. Participation is open, encouraged, and supported.

How Do They Work?

The Talking Circles are grouped around each of the conference themes so discussions can focus on the specific areas of interest represented by each theme. 

How to Begin:

Allow members of the group to briefly introduce themselves. 

The facilitator should encourage open dialogue and ensure a collegial and respectful conversation. 

Starting Questions to Assist Discussion

Talking Circle: Who are we?

What is the territory, or scope, or landscape of this thematic area?

What are the burning issues, the key questions for this theme?

What are the forces or drivers that will affect us as professionals, thinkers, citizens, and aware and concerned people whose focus is this particular theme?

What are the future directions (in research, in theory-building, in practice) for this thematic area?

Theme 5: Design Management and Professional Practice

On the organization of design, design work, and design as a professional practice.

Living Tensions:

• Designing Design – from conceptualization to specification
  
• Common Knowledges – sharing insights, research, theories, and designs in communities of practice
• Multidisciplinary and Cross-Professional – approaches to design
• Professionalism and its Trajectories – narrowing specialisms and/or multiskilling
• Working with Research – design practitioners as researchers or users of research
• Business of Speed – the economics and pragmatics of rapid delivery and design alongside construction
• Logics of Collaboration – interactivity, responsiveness, and reflexivity in communities of practice
• Democratization of Design and Public Accountability – consultation and consensus building
• Evolutionary Design – collaborations over time
• Expertise as facilitation – designers who know what they might not know
• Designing Projects – planning, management, and project afterlife
• User-Centered or Client-Centered Project Management - the changing role of the designer as advocate

Theme 6: Architectonic, Spatial, and Environmental Design

On constructing spaces, environments, and sustainable design practices.

Living Tensions:

• Common Spaces – ecological footprints, atmospheres, biospheres, eco-spheres
  
• Life Cycles – designing products and services for the longer term
• Relations of human and Ecological Value – static or dynamic
• Standards and Regulations – implicit, explicit and social certifications
• Planning the Urban – cross-disciplinary perspectives on cities of the future
• Nature Designed – parks, wilderness, and elementary ecologies 
• Understanding Human Impacts – natural resource use and environmental footprints 
• On Sustainability and Eco-Design – design in an environmental, economic, social, and cultural setting
• Interdisciplinary Ecological Practices – working with scientists, social scientists, and economists
• Scenario Planning – designing for alternative futures
• Making and Breaking Codes – regulation in the design industries
• Documenting Sustainable Design Process – methodologies, heuristics, and routines