Program
09.00 - 09.30
Registration & Coffee
09.30 - 10.00
Welcome
10.00 - 11.00
Keynote: Ramia Mazé - Which “design”, whose transformation?
With promises of innovation and transformation, many disciplines and parts of society are turning toward design today. In this “design turn,” promising new “interdisciplines” are emerging such as “democratic design” and “transition design.” However, given the heterogeneity of design, we might query which “design” is turned to by which others? Through reflections on such trends and through practical examples, I explore how we might both broaden and deepen relationships with others in the design turn.
With promises of innovation and transformation, many disciplines and parts of society are turning toward design today. In this “design turn,” promising new “interdisciplines” are emerging such as legal design, democratic design, design anthropology, design futures, etc. Design is heterogeneous, however, with diverse fields and genres within. These are characterized by sometimes very different theoretical, methodological and practical foundations. So, which “design” is turned to by which others? This matters for design, since different fields are associated with different design “objects”, knowledge(s) and competences (and associated educational degrees and professional titles). This also matters for others, since their answer to the question will condition what they consider to be “good design” processes and outcomes. In my talk, I outline some of these issues and reflect on the multiple and evolving design knowledge(s) at stake. With reference to “public design” and “transition design,” Iunfold a couple practical design examples including my own and collaborative work. In the design turn, interdisciplines may emerge but disciplines may also eventually separate or absorb into one another, which has consequences for what and who counts as design(er)s today. Ultimately I argue for design practices and studies that account for themselves in more situated and critical ways – by better articulating the multiple and different knowledge foundations in design, we can not only broaden but deepen relationships with others in the design turn.
11.00 - 11.30
Coffee Break
11.30 - 13.00
Critical Approaches on Transformation and Future Literacies
Session Chair: Anna Antonakis
Pierfrancesco Califano - «The bigger the design, the smaller the designer. An Immanent Critique of Crisis, Expansion, and Disciplinary Identity»
Sven Quadflieg, Andrea Augsten, Florian Sametinger - «The Relational Transition Compass — An Epistemic Framework to Anticipate Underlying Assumptions for Plural Futures»
Melanie Levick-Parkin, Francesca Casnati - «Visualising Transformation. Ecofeminist Approaches to Design Pedagogy.»
Cyrus Khalatbari - «Grounding the Digital: Maintenance, Decolonial Pedagogies, and Situated Making for (more) Sustainable Futures»
11.30 - 13.00
Pedagogies for Transformation
Session Chair: Ann Mbuti
«PDN - Partisan Design Network»
Gabu Heindl - «Nonsolution – the problem of solutionism»
Jesko Fezer - «Öffentliche Gestaltungsberatung»
Matthias Böttger - «DreamLab»
Maike Fraas - «Doing less»
11.30 -13.00
Transforming with Care
Session Chair: Aylin Yildirim Tschoepe
Pınar Kaygan - «From Normative to Interventional Gendered Design Practices: Challenges, Conflicts, and Negotiations»
Ghofrane Khiari - «Design for Socio-Ecological Transformations: Relational Dwelling Practices in Tunisian Saharan National Parks»
Amy van den Hooven - «Clinic of the Future: Designing Dialogues for Care»
13.00 - 14.30
Lunch Break
14.00 - 14.30
Presentation of Exhibits
Karya Anliak - «Rethinking Design in Fragments, Multiscale as Design»
Olivier Arcioli - «45 Symbols — Clay to Code»
14.30 - 15.30
Studying Transformations - A Methodology Panel
Session Chair: Davide Fornari
Franca Lopez Barbera - «Always Loop Back: A methodology of accountability at the threshold of becoming»
Maarten Lyndon Smith, Sam van der Horst, Sander van der Zwan, Caroline Hummels - «Designing in mission-driven innovation»
Elizabeth Resnick - «Developing Feminist Designers: Principles, Methodology, Pedagogy»
14.30 - 15.30
Transformation of Spaces
Session Chair: Sarah Owens
Jan-Christoph Zoels - «Holy places, real spaces?»
Büşra Dilaveroğlu - «Architecture and the Afterlife of Transformation: Rethinking Design Agency in Political Modernity»
Raffaella Fagnoni, Giordana Lella, Jessica Sette - «From Temporary Interventions to Social Infrastructures: Design as a Systemic Agent in Urban Margins»
14.30 - 17.00
From Control to Care: Careful Ignorance as a Design Practice for Transformation
A Workshop by Helena Dietz-Röhtlingshöfer
Ignorance is rarely accidental: manufactured uncertainty stabilises power relations and reproduces socio-technological patterns, and design is complicit in this. This workshop asks whether ignorance can be redirected from an instrument of control to an instrument of care, as a deliberate, ethical practice of deciding what not to know and what not to pursue. Starting from a systems map of interconnected ignorance patterns, participants work in small groups with speculative methods to find where these patterns block transformation and how situated interventions might unlock them. The workshop is open to designers and non-designers alike and raises the question of who is licensed to know, and not to know.
15.30 - 15.45
Coffee Break
15.45 - 17.00
Circular Correspondence
A Workshop by Danuka Ana Tomas & Camila Chebez
15.45 - 17.00
Messy Methods
A Workshop by Merle Ibach & Laura Popplow
Transformations such as the shift to net zero are usually pictured as green, frictionless and hopeful, yet they hurt: they leave behind waste, exhaustion, contradictions and ways of living rendered obsolete. Even participatory design and research methods tend to tidy this messiness into diagrams and toolkits, leaving little room for conflict. This performative workshop does not look for solutions. Participants share moments where their methods faltered or became uncomfortable, then sit with what remains unresolved, through silence, writing or sketching rather than immediate discussion. The aim is to approach transformation not as a problem to be solved but as a condition to be inhabited.
15.45 - 17.00
SDN Panel - Transformations in Design Research: PhD Voices from Switzerland
Session Chair: Serena Cangiano
What does it mean to do a PhD in design, and how does a design researcher change along the way? This panel brings together around seven doctoral candidates from Swiss design schools, representing different research approaches (research through design, practice-based, theoretical, participatory) and the different institutional models through which design PhDs are possible in Switzerland, from cooperative doctorates to cotutelles and project-embedded positions.
17.00 - 18.00
Closing & Apero
20.30 - 02.00
Afterparty: Deena Abdelwahed
After starting out her career in a jazz band and earning her spurs on the Tunisian alternative scene with the World Full Of Bass collective and then Arabstazy, the Tunisian producer, composer, and DJ moved to France in 2016. Her hybrid DJ sets, which blur the boundaries between subcultures, have introduced the young artist into the most exacting spheres of the clubbing world (Dekmantel Festival, De School, Berghain, Draaimolen Festival) as well as onto the stages of Europe's biggest festivals (Glastonbury, Sonar, Dour, We Love Green).
08.45 - 09.15
Registration & Coffee
09.15 - 09.45
Welcome
09.45 - 10.45
Keynote: Stephanie Hankey - Everything is Broken, Now What?
Digital technologies are often seen as solutions to social and ecological issues, or as intersecting with them. But they are also drivers of change. Design has a critical role to play in how these issues are made, solved, debated and addressed. Drawing on Tactical Tech’s work, this keynote explores how—and what comes next.
10.45 - 11.00
Coffee Break
11.00 - 12.30
Digital in Transformation
Session Chair: Serena Cangiano
Juan Fortun - «The aesthetics of decentralization in the midst of Techno-fascism»
Cristina Cochior, Helen V. Pritchard - «Infrastructural rehearsals as transitional infrastructures»
Margherita Motta, Emily Groves - «Reality Check: Building situated skills for an uncertain future»
Maria Smigielska, Sarah Dégallier Rochat - «Recoding the Robot: Participatory Design Installations and the Public Imagination of Automation»
11.00 - 12.30
Pedagogies for Transformations
Session Chair: Andreas Unteidig
Guillermina Noel, Loana Gatti, David Loher, Aysun Aytac - «Attending to the World: Dialogical and Situated Practices of Sustainability in Design Education»
Ágnes Jekli, Borbála Marosán - «Designing Participation: Rethinking Co-Design with Teenagers in Design Education»
Emilia Lischke - «Sensemaking and Complexity in the Pedagogies of Transformation Design»
Teresa Palmieri, Kris Krois, Jacopo Ammendola - «It Takes a Village: First steps in Assessing the Impacts of Transformative Design Education»
11.00-12.30
Policy/Public/Institutional Transformation
Session Chair: Jonas Berthod
Anannya Bhowmik Paul - «Making Democratic Economies Legible & Actionable»
Jia Xin Liu, Marzia Mortati - «E-deliberation beyond instrumentalism: Designing the Delegation of Facilitative Agency in Policy Codesign»
Lynn Harles, Bianca Herlo - «Geopolitics of Design Research: From Design Research Labs to Ecologies of Sovereignty»
Caroline Vogel, Sven Quadflieg - «Politics of the Probable: AI as Convergent Infrastructure in Design»
12.30 - 13.30
Lunch Break
13.30 - 14.30
Data Anarchism
A Workshop by Max Frischknecht & Adrian Demleitner
Much of our data is produced, stored and controlled by big tech companies, a dependence that becomes politically urgent as data extraction and platform power converge with authoritarian agendas. This contribution introduces Data Anarchism, an approach that draws on anarchist principles such as autonomy, self-organisation and mutual aid, and presents existing alternatives, from cooperative social networks and community-run servers to low-tech and peer-to-peer infrastructures. In a working session, participants then develop concepts and a shared vocabulary for local, community-governed data infrastructures, asking how knowledge, responsibilities, costs and energy can be shared. No technical background is needed, and the session closes with an open plenary discussion.
13.30 - 14.30
Transformations Everywhere
Session Chair: Jost Zeindler
Dimitri Reist - «The Answer to The Crisis is the Crisis»
Thomas Starr, Jacopo Conti, Ludovico G. Conti, Gianluca Boni - «Transforming Time in the Anthropocene: Speculative Memorial Design as a Challenge to Climate Transformation»
Esmeralda Rebolledo Claro, Ana Valeria Valdez Chagoya - «Hacking the Everyday: 'Nenis' Creating Alternative Worlds»
14.30 - 14:45