Auditorium 3

As a continuation of discussions held at different events and projects, some design scholars have for a while been talking about the urgent need to both widely advocate a more general approach to Sustainable Design and, perhaps more importantly, also swiftly explore much more radical approaches to address pressing matters of climate change, the transformative potential of design and new strategies for making and research. This seminar focuses on the latter.

The seminar will bring together design researchers that already have these issues high on their own agenda and already acknowledge that we can't ‘grow' our selves out of this predicament. Development as we know it - and as championed in the west/north - has successfully exported a global single-lane path to prosperity that again and again has proved to be inherently unsustainable. Based on this, we in this seminar will discuss the following matters:

How can we move from knowledge about the need for radical change to effecting actual change?
How can we move from Sustainable Design (sustaining what?) to a more radical transformative design?
How can we move away from Development (as we know it) to what we tentatively can label "Real Progress" and what role is there for design?

The seminar is free of charge and everyone interested in exploring design's ability to contribute to an appropriate and positive change of the present climate change are welcome. For attendace, please email hakan.edeholt@aho.no no later than Tuesday 6 October at 12.00.

CONTRIBUTORS

The event will include some short presentations but primarily be built around an attempt to share and build knowledge about how we as a design community best can contribute to the change (of the change). The presenters are:

Dr. Mathilda Tham from Goldsmith in London and Linnæus University in Sweden, will talk about Learning for change and how we can educate for futures of sustainability?

Prof. Håkan Edeholt from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design will talk about what kind of visions we need for direction and ask what kind of concrete activities that could entail.

Prof. Mugendi K. M’Rithaa from CPUT in Cape Town and the next president of ICSID will talk about ICSID as a vehicle for addressing these very global challenges.

Prof. Jun Zhang from Hunan University will talk about challenges and opportunities as seen from a Chinese perspective.

Prof. Andrew Morrison from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design will talk about ”Design Fiction” as a vehicle to explore alternative futures.

The seminar is free of charge and everyone interested in exploring design's ability to contribute to an appropriate and positive change of the present climate change are welcome.