Keynote Speakers
Tegan Bristow
Wits School of Arts
Tegan Bristow is Fak’ugesi Principle Researcher & Senior Lecturer at the Wits School of the Arts, with a specialisation on African Art, Culture and Technology, and she additionally acts as Editor in Chief and Digital Editor of the Ellipses Journal for Creative Research. In 2017 she completed her PhD with the Planetary Collegium at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Arts at Plymouth University in the U.K. Bristow directed the Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival from 2016 to 2020 and now works closely between Festival, Tshimologong Innovation Precinct and the Wits School of Arts developing research on the Digital Creative Industries in Africa and now she is currently working to map and develop the intermediary landscape of the digital cultural industry in Africa. Under her directorship the Festival grew into an internationally recognised platform that not only critically supported the development of culture and technology in Africa.
Bristow poses questions to new technologies and technological futures through the lens of African cultural knowledge and pre-colonial knowledge systems from a Southern African standpoint. Presented as a trajectory through her work; from thematic exchanges and development agenda of the Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival (co-founded and directed 2015 – 2021) as a digital arts festival with a critical position on technology, culture and society in Africa. Extended into the questions of a ‘vernacular algorithm’ and her current research at the intersection of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and African contemporary art. An exploration of a range of practices that run through decolonizing methodologies and knowledge forms that include the contributions of insurrectionary and vernacular knowledges, thereby engaging these knowledge systems as an aesthetic algorithmic encounter that aims to critique contemporary algorithmic thinking.
Paolo Cardini
Rhode Island School of Design
Paolo Cardini is currently Full Professor and former Graduate Program Director of the Industrial Design department at Rhode Island School of Design. His previous appointment was within the interdisciplinary design graduate program at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar. His work ranges from product to interaction design and from integrated communication to strategic planning. He studied Industrial design at Politecnico di Milano and Glasgow School of Art and he has been department chair for the bachelor and master courses in Industrial Design at Istituto Europeo di Design in Turin. He designs and consults for various international firms and he is lecturing in conferences and design schools worldwide contributing actively to the field with papers and publications.
Paolo Cardini will illustrate the value and meaning of “Designing From Within”. Operating on the transfer of the biological terms endemic and endogenous into the design realm, the talk will aim to open a window on updated just design practices and principles. Through references on Design’s past, its mistakes and some of its questionable methods, Professor Cardini will invite us to rethink the role of design and designers in our society moving across the complex matrix that runs from global awareness to local identities and from future thinking to present actions.
Flaviano Celaschi
Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna
Full Professor in Industrial Design, Department of Architecture, Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, Italy. PhD in Architecture and Environmental Technology. He founded the Degree Course in Industrial Design at the University of Bologna in 2013. He set up and coordinates the Advanced Design Unit, research center on design and anticipation, at the University of Bologna. In 2008 he founded and coordinates the Latin Network for the Development of Design as a Process, an international network that organizes the International Forum of Design as a Process. Research consultant for public and private organizations, companies, foundations, universities, in the field of design driven innovation. He has taught at the National Academy of Art in Hangzou, University of Wuxi, Design Center in Cengdu (China); University of Malaga (Spain); CETIQT University of Rio de Janeiro, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, UNISINOS Jesuit University of Porto Alegre, Universidade Estadual de Minas Gerais of Belo Horizonte (Brazil); Pontifical University of Santiago (Chile); Nacional University of Cordoba, Siglo 21 University of Cordoba, Catholic University of Cordoba (Argentina); National University of Bogotà (Colombia); Teacnologico de Monterrey of Guadalajara (Mexico); German University of Cairo (Egypt); UNIPAL of Mangalore (India); Polytechnic of Milan, Polytechnic of Turin, II University of Naples, Free University of Bolzano, University of Bergamo, University of Urbino, University of Genoa (Italy).
I extend my warmest greetings and appreciation to the colleagues who have come from many continents to honour this 8th Forum of Design as a Process, a scientific conference that is now in its fourteenth year. Following the pause mandated by the Pandemic, we are back with great enthusiasm, and much need for debate and in-person relations and exchange.
It is a great pleasure and an honour to open this Forum the intent of which is to address the new geographies of knowledge and innovation that the cultures of design are called upon to engage with.
We have some certainties:
that new centralities are no longer defined by the borders of continents, nor those of nations,
that there are no longer only a small number of key productive sectors,
that metropolises are no longer the only true centres of production and reproduction,
that these streams are no longer channelled by financial capital alone,
or even by corporate or national mega-research centres,
finally, that we are interested solely in the field of artificial goods.
There is probably a territory that we share in common, a territory that we wish to map out together over these days in Bologna, which is located within a confine defined by new coordinates:
in the point of transition from speed to continuity of streams,
in the importance of individual authorship, which opens to collective intelligence,
in the dematerialised digital, which holds our analogic physical corporeity within it,
in the myth of unlimited growth, which is reconsidered in terms of sustainability understood as the inclusion of the time factor in each decision,
in the world of linear choices of scale, which must find a balance to exponential events,
in the singular centrality of business, which is reduced by the centrality of the territories in which it operates,
in the daily practice of urgency and emergency, which are finally resigned to act in preaction and proaction, to become anticipation,
finally, in the world in which processes become more important than products.
The material we are exploring is called CHANGE and here I wish to inaugurate, with you, a field of research that I believe is essential to bring to light today for design research: STUDIES ON CHANGE.
Social and relational processes, production processes, communication processes, learning and human and environmental development processes. These are the fronts we will explore, thanks to your valuable and esteemed papers, in an attempt to trace interesting points of reference to the systemic complexity in which we are all immersed.
A special thanks goes to Elena Formia and the colleagues of the Advanced Design Unit of the University of Bologna, who have made this event and your hospitality possible.
I wish us all the best in our work here.
Gabriella Gómez-Mont
Experimentalista
Gabriella Gómez-Mont is the founder and director of Experimentalista, a novel type of nomadic and creative office specialized in cities – and that constantly shifts shape to accommodate high-level, transdisciplinary collaborations across the world. She was also the former Chief Creative Officer of Mexico City, and the founder of Laboratorio para la Ciudad (2013 – 2018), the award-winning experimental arm and creative think-tank of the Mexico City government, reporting to the Mayor. Besides her fascination with all things city, Gabriella is a journalist, visual artist, and director of documentary films, as well as a creative advisor to several cities, universities and companies. She has received several international recognitions for her work in different fields.
We are nothing except in the context of our interdependencies; our sense of self continuously being recreated by all that surrounds us, human and urban, “real” and not. Our metaphors, our subjectivities, our urban imaginaries give shape to the world as much as our social, economic and political contexts. Hence public imagination is of paramount importance; we however lack almost entirely an infrastructure of (and for) imagination.
In this keynote, Gabriella Gomez Mont – former chief creative officer for Mexico City, and founder of Experimentalista, a creative and urban studio – will share thoughts and examples from across the world of how a society or community can be prompted to explore alternatives and possibilities at the different scales of a city, and within its multiple tensions… What novel political forms, urban languages, creative institutions and civic typologies could we invent? Pointing towards the politics of tomorrow, in which creative practices assume a core role in society.
Anoushka Khandwala
Freelance
Anoushka Khandwala is a designer, writer and educator based in London. Her practice sits at the intersection of word and image, imagining how they can work together to shape culture. She has written about unearthing global design histories for Elephant, the lack of women of colour in design for Creative Review and indigenous design responses to the climate crisis for AIGA Eye on Design. Anoushka uses design as cultural intervention, creating identities for queer South Asian organisation Gaysians, sustainability podcast Down to Earth and the inaugural print magazine of famed music website Gigwise. She currently teaches at Central St Martins, and speaks regularly on subjects close to her heart—recent events include Don’t Mention Brxxxt at University of Arts Berlin, Questioning, Dismantling, and Rebuilding the Institution at Royal College of Art and Decolonizing Design at Maryland Institute of Creative Arts. (ph.Sam Bush)
Using Audre Lorde’s idea that “We do not live single issue lives”, Anoushka Khandwala presents the ways in which Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality affects design. Through the lens of her personal journey from student to practicing designer, writer and educator, she explains how she came to understand design not as a singular process, but one that intersects with many of the issues that affect our lives today. The talk will culminate in stories that deconstruct the different ways in which intersectionality manifests in the design world. This will include the connections between indigeneity, design and the climate crisis; the female illustrators of the Black Panther Party; and the intertwinement of the paisley pattern in the history of the British Empire.
Alessandro Rancati
New Bauhaus Unit, European Commission´s Joint research Centre
Alessandro Rancati is an architect and designer with experience in design for policy, strategic design, design direction. Member of the New Bauhaus Unit at the European Commission´s Joint research Centre. Interested in bridging design and complex-adaptive systems theory while contributing to the develop a design culture in the European Commission.
International Chairs
Erik Ciravegna
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Escuela de Diseño
PhD in Design (DIeCM) from Politecnico di Milano. At present, he is Adjunct Professor at the School of Design of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His research field is Communication Design, focusing mainly on Packaging Design, in particular on the communication qualities of packages, on their narrative and symbolic dimensions, and their information accessibility (Inclusive Design approach). He is interested on social communication and ethical responsibility of designers. In addition, he works on the development of methods and tools (both digital, and analogical) in support of research projects, teaching and training activities. Also, he participates in experimental projects in the area of Visual Arts. Current relevant projects: “The Good Packaging”, a laboratory/observatory on the impacts of packages on society and environment; “Design Drama”, a methodology to foster creativity, holistic development and well-being of people.
Lígia Lopes
Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto
She is a Portuguese designer and design activist. An industrial design graduate with a PhD in Design from the Faculty of Architecture of Lisbon. She has been teaching Design since 2002 and is currently an Assistant Professor at Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. For the past few years, she has been working on participatory design approaches that place value on processes and people by actively involving them, thereby giving voice to less visible or marginalised groups. In this way, she affirms the activist stance in design and through a conscious choice of process and attention to the product cycle, ensures that it is more human and transparent. Her personal project, CANHOTA, responds to the need for projects rooted in and sustained by design ethics that are committed to developing products, services and strategies through Conscious Design.
Mirko Daneluzzo
Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation
He is an architect, Co-Founder and Head of Design of Nyxo ltd, and Lecturer at Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation. He taught Computational design and Design Laboratory at the Academy of Applied Arts LABA – industrial design department, in Rimini. He received his master’s degree in architecture at Greg Lynn’s masterclass, University of Applied Arts, Institute of Architecture in Vienna, where he has been also a student of François Roche (R&sien) at the Crossover Studio UAA-IoA, titled “(n)certainties v.03”. He has been teaching assistant of François Roche at the University of Architecture in Venice, for the summer workshop “Waste Archipelagoes”. His work has been exhibited internationally in several events including the Architecture Biennale in Venice 2010, Beijing 2010, and Tallin 2017, and in different Design Weeks, including Tokyo, Dubai and Shanghai.
Qassim Saad
Curtin University
An Iraqi industrial designer living in exile since 1991, Qassim Saad holds a BA, MA, and PhD in Industrial Design. Since 1984, he has taught design and served in academic leadership roles in Iraq, Jordan, New Zealand, Egypt, Germany, and currently as Senior Lecturer at the School of Design and the Built Environment in Curtin University in Perth, Australia. Saad’s research embraces both creative practice and traditional scholarly research related to design and social innovation “outside the centre.” His theoretical work aims to empower societies in developing countries to achieve a better quality of life through the application of design methods and practices.
Roberto Iñiguez Flores
Tecnológico de Monterrey, Escuela de Arquitectura, Arte y Diseño
Roberto Iñiguez Flores currently leads the School of Architecture Art and Design at Tecnológico de Monterrey, a national scale project that has operations in 19 cities with undergraduate and graduate programs in Architecture, Design, Digital Arts and Urbanism. His research focuses on the Advanced Design Cultures, with particular interest on anticipation processes, the relation between systems and design, and how individuals and organizations develop “advanced” design competencies. Member of different academic boards and Conferences: Project Oriented Learning Environment global platform, the London Design Embassy, the Latin Design Network, the European Academy of Design, the Systems and Design Network, etc. Has been visiting critic and speaker in several forums and universities in America, Europe and Asia.
ADU Ambassadors
Anna Bernagozzi
École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs
She is professor of design theory and history and researcher t the EnsAD – École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Paris . Additionally, Anna is design consultant, editor for design magazines, organizer of international conferences, seminars and curator of exhibitions on the social role of design in prestigious venues like the Tripostal of Lille, La Villette, Paris, the French Institute of Milan, Italy, the French Institute of Lomé, Togo, the international Biennale of Design for Social Innovation Reciprocity, Musée de la vie Wallonne, Liège, Belgium , the National Taiwan Science Education Center, Taiwan. She heads at EnsAD the EU research project 4Cs (from Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture) and the EnsAD DESIS Group.
Mirko Daneluzzo
Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation
She is a Portuguese designer and design activist. An industrial design graduate with a PhD in Design from the Faculty of Architecture of Lisbon. She has been teaching Design since 2002 and is currently an Assistant Professor at Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. For the past few years, she has been working on participatory design approaches that place value on processes and people by actively involving them, thereby giving voice to less visible or marginalised groups. In this way, she affirms the activist stance in design and through a conscious choice of process and attention to the product cycle, ensures that it is more human and transparent. Her personal project, CANHOTA, responds to the need for projects rooted in and sustained by design ethics that are committed to developing products, services and strategies through Conscious Design.
Vanessa De Luca
Istituto Design SUPSI
She is a multi-domain designer with a background in Interaction Design and Gamification. She received a PhD in design studies from Politecnico di Milano. She is researcher at the Institute of Design SUPSI in Southern Switzerland. Her interest, explored through theory and field work in interdisciplinary contexts, includes biocultural design, ecology, traditional knowledge and broader links between design, environmental issues and community-led projects.
Lígia Lopes
Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto
She is a Portuguese designer and design activist. An industrial design graduate with a PhD in Design from the Faculty of Architecture of Lisbon. She has been teaching Design since 2002 and is currently an Assistant Professor at Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. For the past few years, she has been working on participatory design approaches that place value on processes and people by actively involving them, thereby giving voice to less visible or marginalised groups. In this way, she affirms the activist stance in design and through a conscious choice of process and attention to the product cycle, ensures that it is more human and transparent. Her personal project, CANHOTA, responds to the need for projects rooted in and sustained by design ethics that are committed to developing products, services and strategies through Conscious Design.
Other guests
Rachel Cooper
Lancaster University
Rachel Cooper OBE is Distinguished Professor of Design Management and Policy at Lancaster University. She is a Director of ImaginationLancaster, an open and exploratory design-led research centre conducting applied and theoretical research into people, products, places and their interactions, and also Chair of Lancaster institute for the Contemporary Arts. Professor Cooper’s research interests cover: design thinking; design management; design policy; and across all sectors of industry, a specific interest in design for wellbeing and socially responsible design. She has published extensively on these topics, including books ‘Designing Sustainable Cities’, ‘The Handbook of Wellbeing and the Environment’ Living Digital Worlds. She is also series editor of the Routledge series Design for Social Responsibility covering topics such as designing for sustainability, inclusivity, service design, sport, health, transport and policy. She was founding editor of The Design Journal and also founding President of the European Academy of Design. She is currently President of the Design Research Society.
Lorenzo Imbesi
Sapienza Università di Roma
Lorenzo Imbesi is an Architect, PhD and Full Professor at Sapienza University of Rome, where he is Director of SDR Sapienza Design Research.
Previously, he was an Associate Professor and Graduate Chair at Carleton University (CA), ICCS fellow (Government of Canada) for two years in a row and member of the Research Board of National and European.
He is a member of the Cumulus Association Executive Board, a member of the Executive Committee of EAD European Academy of Design, a member of the Board of SID Italian Society of Design, and he has been visiting Professor in many international Universities. Also, he is the author of papers in journals and books, while he is co-Editor of Design Principles and Practices Journal and a member of the Editorial Board of The Design Journal.
Stefano Maffei
Politecnico di Milano
Architect and Ph.D. in Design. Full Professor at the School of Design, Politecnico di Milano. He teaches Advanced Product-Service System and Production Models, Service Design and Innovation Theories and Cultures. He’s the Director of Polifactory the new Makerpace/Great Research Infrastructure of Politecnico di Milano, which integrates a coworking (for talents pre-incubation), a product-service-system research lab enabled by a fablab that explores innovation models connected to micro and distributed production. He’s also the Director of the Service Design Master and the Service Innovation Academy, POLI.design, Politecnico di Milano. His current research and work interests focus on new production-distribution models and advanced-distributed-micro manufacturing systems and service design-driven innovation. He received the ADI’s (Associazione per il Disegno Industriale) XXII° Compasso D’Oro Prize for design research with Design Research Maps (2011).
Tonino Paris
Sapienza Università di Roma
He is an architect and professor emeritus at the School of Design of East China Normal University, Shanghai. Former full professor of Design at Sapienza, University of Rome, where he directed the Department of Innovation Technology and Culture of the Environment, and the Department of Planning, Design and Technology of Architecture. At Sapienza, he founded and directed the School of Design, the Sapienza Design Factory Laboratory and the Sapienza Design Research interdepartmental centre.
Promoter of numerous publishing initiatives, he founded and directed the magazine “diid_disegno industriale | industrial design” for fifteen years, and directed the “Quaderni – Planning, Design, Technology”. Art Director of the publishing house Rdesignpress.
His research and experimentation activity is documented in essays and books mainly addressing the phenomenology of contemporary design.