Guidelines for a transition phase

“Design is a creative activity whose aim is to establish the multi-faceted qualities of objects, processes, services and their systems in whole life-cycles” (ICSID 2005). A creative activity that is also the reflective one of choosing between different possibilities. The openness of the field of possibilities where designers are operating is one of the factors that characterises their actions. When there is no room for choice, because the solution is dictated by strong social conventions and/or technological constraints, there is no design.

Given this degree of freedom, designers have to adopt some criteria for choice and on this basis choose what, in their view, is better to do. That is, given that ethics is defined as dealing with “what is good and bad, right and wrong”, they have to make ethical choices.

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How to design sustainable solutions

The transition towards sustainability calls for a radical change, i.e. a systemic discontinuity. At a local scale, to promote this discontinuity means to generate low material intensive and highly context-related socio-technical systems. In this framework the role of design is to promote this discontinuity and to conceive and develop these system.

The paper articulates the above statement, outlines the related design problems and, in particular, discusses what it means to conceive, produce and deliver sustainable solutions……

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Promising signals for a sustainable development.

The paper introduces some promising cases of social innovation and discusses the possibility/opportunity of moving from them to conceive and develop sustainable enabling solutions.

In particular, it focalises two clusters of cases (the creative communities and the collaborative networks) that permit to build a new and practicable vision of a sustainable future: the multi-local society. A vision that should have the capability to catalyze the action of different social actors in a sustainable direction……..

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Promising models for a sustainable development.

The following notes are a draft for the discussion. They focalise a set of emerging signals that, in different fields of applications, indicate the practical possibility to shift form centralised systems to distributed ones.

The specific interest of these signals is that, taken all together, they converge towards the vision of a concrete possibility: a large socio-technical system, the distributed system, that, in perspective, could become the infrastructure of a sustainable economy and, more in general, of a sustainable society……..

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Social innovation, creative communities and strategic design.

“If someone is hungry do not give them fish. Give them a fishing rod and teach them how to fish”. This ancient wisdom shows us, now more than ever, the way out of the tunnel that a mistaken idea of comfort, and an equally mistaken idea of economic growth, have driven us into. In this article I want to talk about how the story told so far is changing and how it can change. I want to talk about the new ideas emerging and the new experiences we are gaining; about the new opportunities that are opening up…….

This paper is based on the first results of an on-going activity named: Creative Community/EMUDE, Emerging Users Demands for Sustainable solutions. It is a program (more precisely: a Special Support Action) that is promoted as part of the 6th Framework Program (priority 3-NMP) of the European Commission and coordinated by INDACO, Politecnico di Milano. To the program are participating 10 research centres and universities and 8 European schools of design.

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Prospects for a sustainable local development and the possible role of design.

Contrary to what was thought in the past, the joint phenomena of globalisation and networking have given rise once again to the local dimension. By the expression ‘local’ something very removed is meant from what was understood in the past (i.e. the valley, the agricultural village, the small provincial town, all isolated and relatively closed within their own culture and economy). Indeed, it combines the specific features of places and their communities with the new phenomena generated and supported world-wide by globalisation and by cultural, socio-economic interconnection. Unfortunately, these phenomena are characterised today by extremely negative dominant tendencies, on the one hand, that swing between traditionalist stances, supporting local interests, and reactionary stances (all the different forms of fundamentalism hidden behind the protecting veil of traditions and identity); and, on the other hand, by inclinations towards turning what remains of traditions and landscapes into a show for tourist purposes (the tourist-related ‘supermarket type’ of localism, which is just another side of the standardising aspect of globalisation, from which there is the desire to break away).

Luckily, however, at a closer look, more interesting and promising cases can be observed. Local communities that invent unprecedented cultural activities, forms of organisation and economic models; initiatives which, as a whole, represent an interesting development scenario, which we can refer to as cosmopolitan localism……

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Local and global visions

In the transition towards a sustainable society, shared visions are needed to orient the political and economical debate and to conceive and promote sustainable solutions. Scenarios and, specifically, the design-orienting scenarios (DOS), may play an important role in promoting the social generation of these shared ideas and, more specifically, in creating favourable conditions to conceive and develop sustainable solutions. In this framework, scenario building becomes a new, specific and socially relevant design activity.

The paper discusses these themes presenting the results of some design workshops on “Scenarios of sustainable ways of living”, that recently have been held in several places [in Europe(1), in China(2), in Japan, Korea and Canada(3)].

The paper is organised in three parts: (A) the introduction of the design-orienting scenarios and of their potential role in the generation of sustainable ideas of wellbeing, (B) the discussion of the traditional and emerging ideas of wellbeing and of a general framework of new, sustainable ones, (C) the discussion of the workshops results.

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(1) In the framework of “SusHouse.Strategies towards the Sustainable Household”: a research funded by the European Union’s Environment and Climate Research programme Theme 4: On Human Dimensions of Environmental Change (ENV4-CT97-0446). The research has been co-ordinated by the Delft University of Technology and has been concluded in the year 2000.

(2) In the framework of “Hong Kong – Mainland China Network on Design for Sustainability”: a research funded by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The research started in the year 2001 and it is developed in the framework of a joint-programme with CIRIS-Politecnico di Milano – Italy, and with the Hunan University in Changsha – China

(3) In the framework of “A global network on design for sustainability”: an on-going Program of activities promoted by the CIRIS-Politecnico di Milano.

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