Bologna, 20-22 June 2022

Responsible Innovation/Social Justice/Ecocentrism/Changing Education

How design is evolving to respond to the urgent needs facing our environment and society at large? How to understand and design the dynamic relations between artefacts, human beings and the ecosphere? How might design principles and practices adapt their approaches to attend to the diversity that characterised the world? 

In an increasingly globalized world, new geographies in and of design offer the stage for negotiating ecosystem’s complexity. Design is positioned as a key driver for improving the living standards of many, where human and environmental capitals are pivotal to local economies, but also for the connection to the rest of the world.  

The Forum will involve speakers from the Global Design community, extending the original vocation of the Latin cultures to researchers and designers of the Mediterranean Area, Middle East, IOR (Indian Ocean Region), and Global South regions, with the aim of sharing new perspectives on how design futures can be imagined in a responsible and just perspective, at the forefront of change, building strategic partnerships, creating accessible knowledge. 

The Forum will be held during three-days of meetings, reflection opportunities, networking, in which designers, scholars, young researchers, design entrepreneurs, opinion leaders, will be involved in an experimental format, founded on three pillars – seminars, workshops, exhibitions – to invite audiences from all over the world in Bologna, consolidating the potentials of the design world as a gathering and sharing hub of thought and creative production for present and future generations.  

Speakers’ contributions will inspire the designers’ community of practices, but also students and the wide community audiences, to connect design to all aspects of culture and life, working at the intersections of materiality and culture, post-coloniality, decoloniality, gender studies, and other areas of human thought and action which seek to analyze, question and challenge the disruptive geographies in the world, today.  

Five tracks are proposed to address the different dimensions of design futures of responsibility and justice. 

There’s No Plan(et) B: Sustainable Transitions to Systemic Planet-Centric Design//

Intersectional Design for an Accessible and Empowering World //

Design and Responsive Technologies for Human Wellbeing//

Design Values Out of the Mainstream: New Geographies of Influence//

New Education Pathways for Future Designers in a Changing World//

Call for Contributions

The International Organizing Committee of the 8th International Forum of Design as a Process is inviting designers, architects, artists, engineers, humanists, and similar, to be part of Disrupting Geographies in the Design World. Responsible Innovation, Social Justice, Ecocentrism, Changing Education which is an exchange and aggregator space dedicated to reflect on the emerging practices, processes and experiences of design, applied and enforceable in the realms of innovation, growth and sustainability, considering the centralities of human and nature dimension, blurring the boundaries between creation, distribution and consumption, with a special eye on culture and creativity. 

We welcome case studies, design proposals, scientific and technological research projects, review papers, discussion papers and theoretical considerations to encourage and seek decentralized dialogues, in which different voices can coexist in their difference rather than in an assimilated narrative. Different approaches, practices and processes of design concerning their relation with justice innovation and the ecosphere will be collected, exploring their direct influence on the development of new languages, values, structures, meta-processes, to activate dynamic transition processes. 

We would like to underline to the applicants that papers of the Latin Network for the Development of Design Processes are read in more than 15 countries. 

That is why we expected for submission long abstracts, that must have the following structure: 

– Title 

– Author(s), Institution(s), email(s) 

– Main text (10.000 characters including spaces, notes, references, expressively quoted in the text) discussing Methodology, Results, Conclusions 

– Up to 5 keywords 

– Bibliographic references (APA style) 

– Images, graphics, and charts to be identified consecutively with name and credits 

– Language: British English 

Further information will be soon published on the web site of the event, together with the submission procedure and the fees of participation.

Key Dates