Regional and Urban Design Committee

  • 1.  Can Design Save the World?

    Posted 03-24-2015 01:11 PM
    This message has been cross posted to the following Discussion Forums: College of Fellows and Regional and Urban Design Committee .
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    Can Design Save the World? 

    Can Design Save the World? Ezio Manzini certainly thinks that design can shape the world and he explains why in a lecture tour on the occasion of his new book Design, When Everybody Designs: An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation," (MIT Press, 2015). 

    Manzini is a Professor and the Chair of Design for Social Innovation at the University of the ArtsLondon (UK), Honorary Professor at the Politecnico di Milano (Italy), and Guest Professor at two universities in China, he is considered by many the guru of "social design" a term that only recently became popular. Naturally, his lecture was hosted by the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) which added a few years ago a program for social design which aptly resides in a strip of Baltimore's North Avenue where MICA has become a real game changer by being socially and financially active.
    Lecture poster

    Manzini begins his lecture by explaining why "design" has become such an expansive term that today "everybody designs." His explanation why design has become such a fuzzy term is interesting, indeed: The term has become "diffuse" and ubiquitous because, so he proclaims, "Modernity is where people can design their own biography." Before modernity, he explains, biographies and lives were pretty pre-ordained and without much choice. Consequently there was less of a need for design (especially not processes), and design experts had the field for themselves for the design of products. Now "we have to learn to navigate in increasing complexity" he says and adds "complexity is good because it means more opportunity". 

    The notion that we who live in modernity have more choices than in all of human history is clearly worth a moment of reflection. This is a point that is rarely made....Read full article

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    Klaus Philipsen FAIA
    Archplan Inc. Philipsen Architects
    Baltimore MD
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