parsons journal of design strategies vol4

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the journal

of

Design

strategies

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Vol. 4, No. 1 | Spring 2010


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The Journal of Design sTraTegies 1

Editorial Staff

Executive Editor

Lisa DeBenedittis

Managing Editor

Matthew H. Robb

Guest Editor

Lara Penin

Project Manager

John Hafner Layden

Copy Editor

Amanda Siegel

Art Director

Isa Gouverneur

Graphic Designer

Shoko agaya

Production Artist

Steven Arnerich

Illustrations

Mariana Amatullo

Brigitte Borja de Mozota

Stephen Clune

Clarisa Diaz

Cynthia Lawson

Gavin Melles

Lara Penin

Lou Yongqi

Te Journal o Design Strategies is publishedannually by Te New School in association

with the School o Design Strategies at Parsons

Te New School or Design.

PARSONS

66 Fith Avenue, 9th oor

New York. NY 10011

Parsons ocuses on creating engaged citizens and

outstanding artists, designers, scholars, and business

leaders through a design-based proessional and

liberal arts education.

Parsons students learn to rise to the challenges o

living, working, and creative decision-making in

a world where human experience is increasingly

designed.

Te school embraces curricular innovation, pioneer-

ing uses o technology, collaborative methods, and

global perspectives on the uture o design.

Te Journal of Design Strategieswelcomes submis-

sions or the Spring 2011 issue, addressing the

theme o ransdisciplinary Design. Tis issue o

the journal will explore emergent design practices

that generate new outcomes, establish new elds, or

recongure our understanding o design. For inor-

mation about submitting articles or consideration

or the orthcoming issue, please email Jamer Hunt,

Guest Editor, at [email protected].

The New School 2010. All rights reserved. ISSN: 1935-0112.

ISSN: 1935-0120 (online).

Vol. 4, No. 1 | Spring 2010

Change Design
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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2 www.newschool.eDu/parsons/sDs

3 lEttEr from thE dEan

4 lEttEr from thE EditorS

6 StEphan WEiSS mEmorial lEcturE SEriES

7 SEction 1: dESign, SuStainability, and Social changE

8 Small, Local, Open, and Connected: Design for Social Innovation

and Sustainability Ezio Manzini12 Responses to Ezio Manzini Arjun Appadurai14 Te DESIS Network: Design and Social Innovation for Sustainability

Lara Penin, et al

22 SEction 2: caSE StudiES

23 Enabling Society: New Design Processes in China;

Te Case of Chongming Lou Yongqi and Clarisa Diaz29 From the ownhall into the Studio:

Design, Democracy, and Community Resilience Tomas Darwin34 Designed by versus Made by:

wo Approaches to Design-Based Social Entrepreneurship Cynthia Lawson

41 SEction 3: Educational initiativES

42 Sustainable Product Design: Balancing Local echniques and Holistic Constraints

Trough Innovative Curricula Gavin Melles, et al52 Design for Sustainable Development: Examples from Designmatters at Art Center

College of Design Mariana Amatullo60 Into the Open: Positioning Practicefrom Venice to New York to Philadelphia;

An Interview with Co-Curators Aaron Levy and William Menking Laetitia Wolf

67 SEction 4: nEW profESSional trajEctoriES

68 Design and Behavioral Change Stephen Clune76 Closing the Design Gap Elliot Felix81 Recovering from an Annus Horribilis: Book Review of Expanding Architecture:

Design as Activism Denise Ramzy84 New Roles in the Organizational Design of High Social Value-Creative

Business Models Jonatan Jelen and Kaleem Kamboj91 Design Management as Core Competency: From Design You Can See to

Design You Cant See Brigitte Borja de Mozota

99 contributorS

tablE of contEntS
http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/sdshttp://www.newschool.edu/parsons/sds


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lEttEr from thE dEan

I am delighted to present Volume 4 o the Journal, an issue ocused on thetheme o change design. Inspired by the 2008 Changing the Change coner-ence in orino, Italy, the issue explores some o the ways that contemporarydecision-makers in a wide range o elds are turning to the skills, methods, andprocesses characteristic o the design disciplines to efect positive, constructivesocial change.

With this issue, we inaugurate some changes o our own, starting with thename o our publication: this is nowTe Journal of Design Strategies, a name bet-ter reecting its institutional home within Parsons School o Design Strategies.Also new this year is the internationally-circulated call or papers and blind peerreview process that has resulted in the present issue, part o Parsons ongoingcommitment to promote cutting-edge research at the nexus o design, busi-ness, and social progress. Updates to the graphic style reect these substantivechanges. I am very grateul to the Karan-Weiss Foundation or its continuingsupport o this journal and the Stephan Weiss Memorial Lecture Series, withwhich the journal is coordinated.

Te rst Weiss Memorial Lecture o the 2008/2009 series was delivered byTomas Darwin, proessor o communications at the University o exas atAustin and its director o Community Partnerships. Darwins lecture describeda community outreach project in which he introduced local leaders to designmethods in order to stimulate constructive new approaches to problems within

Austins communities.Also new this year, we instituted a dialogue ormat or the Weiss Lectures,

in which two or more prominent thinkers are invited to engage one anotherswork rom the standpoint o their own. Te rst Design Strategies Dialogueeatured two internationally renowned scholars, Proessor Ezio Manzini othe Politecnico di Milano (organizer o the orino conerence), and ProessorArjun Appadurai, Goddard Proessor o Media, Culture, and Communicationat New York Universitys Steinhardt School o Culture, Education, and HumanDevelopment. Te results o the inaugural Design Strategies Dialogue arepublished here. With the ongoing support o the Karan-Weiss Foundation, wewill continue to make both this journal and the Weiss Memorial Lecture Seriesa orum or conducting, documenting and publishing research o interest to thedesign and business communities worldwide.

Joel owersDean


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lEttEr from thE EditorS

In this, our rst issue under the new title Te Journal of Design Strategies, weaddress the theme o change design. Te phrase hearkens back to the 2008Changing the Changeconerence in orino, Italy, organized by the sustainabledesign theorist and Politecnico di Milano proessor Ezio Manzini, and respondsto the Design Research Agenda or Sustainability that emerged rom it.

Section 1, Design, Sustainability and Social Change, addresses Manzinis workexplicitly, starting with Small, Local, Open and Connected, his contributionto the inaugural Design Strategies Dialogueeaturing Manzini in conversationwith cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai. Manzini argues that the transi-tion to a sustainable society will depend on developing small and local-scalecommunities that are also open and connected to the wider world, and thatdesigners can help bring such networks o connected communities into being.In his Responses to Manzini, Appadurai cautions against a deault assump-tion that smallness, connectivity, and openness are always mutually supportiveo progressive social innovation, as the example o global terrorist networksshows; he goes on to suggest that ocusing on the design o sustainable sociali-tiescommunities that are open to the world and tolerant o diversitymaybe more important or promoting long-term sustainability than design solely o-cused on arbitrary environmental benchmarks. Finally, Te DESIS Networkoutlines the vision, aims, and activities o the Design or Social Innovation andSustainability Network, ollowed by reports rom DESIS-Local sub-networks in

China, Brazil, the U.S., Arica and Colombia.Section 2, Case Studies, documents ongoing eforts to leverage design in

the service o social innovation. First, design researchers and DESIS-Chinamembers Lou Yongqi and Clarisa Diaz describe a project currently underwayon Chongming Island in Shanghai, which is identiying ways to preserve the vi-ability o rural Chinese liestyles by opening the island to the larger city throughan organic armers market, eco-hiking trails and university research acilities,among other outcomes. Tomas Darwin, University o exas at Austin acultymember and director o Community Partnerships, recounts his CommunityStudio project, in which he led community leaders in design thinking work-shops ocused on local issues, thereby eliciting creative, resh perspectives onintractable community problems. Finally, artist and Parsons aculty memberCynthia Lawson describes a New School combined course and summer develop-ment project in Guatemala that has been a testing ground or comparing twoapproaches to social entrepreneurship in artisan communities.

Section 3, Educational Initiatives, presents a range o current eforts to em-body or instigate change design within educational and other public institu-tions. First, Gavin Melles and three colleagues rom the Industrial and InteriorDesign programs at Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia reect onseveral ongoing pedagogical initiatives there, each integrating principles and


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Matthew H. RobbManaging Editor

practices o sustainability into the curricula o the universitys engineering andindustrial design programs. Next, co-ounder Mariana Amatullo describesDesignmatters at Art Center College o Design in Caliornia, a program atthe oreront o engaged, project-driven pedagogy that links design educationto agendas and bries generated through external partnerships with non-protorganizations, government agencies, and the United Nations (which has recog-nized Designmatters as an NGO). Finally, strategic design consultant LaetitiaWolf interviews Aaron Levy and William Menking, co-curators o the ocialU.S. representation at the 2008 Venice Biennale, questioning them about thepotential or architecture exhibitions to prompt social change.

Section 4, New Professional rajectories, surveys emerging prospects or design,both as a reestanding proession and above all as a toolkit o skills and compe-tencies that are becoming increasingly important to many organizations. First,design researcher Stephen Clune argues that industrial designers today shouldocus not only on products, but also on enablers and prompts to subtly guidebehavior in the direction o reduced environmental impact. Design consultantand Parsons aculty member Elliot Felix describes the emerging discipline odesign strategy as a way o structuring the design process so as to reconcileuser needs with business goals. In her review oExpanding Architecture: Designas Activism, designer and Parsons aculty member Denise Ramzy appreciatesthe books main argument that architects should be engaging a wider range

o constituencies and stakeholdersincluding social service agencies, gov-ernment regulatory bodies, end users, and nanciersthan is typical today.Entrepreneurs and Parsons aculty members Jonatan Jelen and Kaleem Kambojargue that with the emergence o the inormation economy, proessionals romthe design management eld have a role in their own right in the process obusiness design. Finally, design and management theorist and Parsons ParisSchool o Art + Design aculty member Brigitte Borja de Mozota claims thattoday, in the transition to postindustrial societies, it is the skills o designersthat will most help decision-makers ace their current challengesa view odesigns role within organizations intimating new proessional possibilities in theeld o design management.

Lisa DeBenedittisExecutive Editor


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StEphan WEiSS mEmorial lEcturE SEriES

Each year, Parsons School o Design Strategies hosts the Stephan WeissMemorial Lecture Series on Business Strategy, Negotiation, and Innovation.Tis lectureship was launched to commemorate the lie o the late artist andsculptor Stephan Weiss, husband and business partner o the ashion designerDonna Karan. Weiss co-ounded Donna Karan International in 1984, and wasinstrumental in every signicant venture the company undertook: launchingand structuring new brands, most notably the Donna Karan Beauty Company;signing new licenses; establishing in-house legal and creative departments; de-vising its computer design technology; orchestrating the companys initial publicofering in 1996; and negotiating its sale to the current owner, LVMH, MotHennessy Louis Vuitton.

Past Weiss lecturers have included Fred Dust, leader o IDEOs environ-mental design practice; D. Michelle Addington, proessor in the Yale Schoolo Architecture and in the Yale School o Forestry and Environmental Science;and Steven Berlin Johnson, author o several popular science books and analysto emerging trends and business opportunities connected to web-based socialnetworking.

Te Fall 2008 Weiss Lecturer was Tomas Darwin, director o CommunityPartnerships at the University o exas at Austin, who discussed the problemsand promise o using design thinking to help community leaders conceive newsolutions to local problems. His account o the Community Studio project

that he orchestrated in Austin testies to the power o design methods to pro-mote constructive change in wide range o social, political and organizationalsettings.

In Spring 2009, the School o Design Strategies replaced the BBA Programin Design and Management as the ormal host o the Stephan Weiss MemorialLecture Series. Coincident with this shi t was the development o a newdialogue ormat, whereby Weiss lecturers are invited to Parsons in pairs andencouraged to engage each others work rom the standpoint o their own. Terst o these Design Strategies Dialoguestook place in May 2009, and eaturedthe pre-eminent design theorist Ezio Manzini in conversation with the distin-guished cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai. Teir dialogue ocused on theviability o Manzinis call to support sustainable liestyles through encouraginglocal and small-scaled organizations that nevertheless remain open and con-nected to the wider world via the internet and other communication channels.


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SEction 1:dESign,SuStainability, andSocial changE


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Te only sustainable way to get out o the cur-rent worldwide nancial and ecological crisis is topromote new economic models, new productionsystems, and new ideas o well-being. o dene andimplement these new models is, o course, very di-cult. But it is not impossible. And we do not have tostart rom zero. In act, over the last ew decades, amultiplicity o social actorsincluding institutions,enterprises, nonprot organizations, and most oall, individual citizens and their associationshaveproved that they are capable o acting outside o themainstream economic models. In so doing, theyhave created a large reserve o concrete experiencesthat could consolidate and spread to become themost convincing answers to the dramatic challengesthat we must now begin to ace.

The emerging scenario

Tanks to the promising experiences accumulated todate, we can outline a new scenario. Tis emerg-ing scenario lies at the intersection o three maininnovation streams: thegreen revolution (and theenvironmentally riendly systems it makes available);the spread of networks(and the distributed, open,peer-to-peer organizations it generates); and the dif-fusion of creativity(and the original answers to dailyproblems that a variety o social actors are conceiving

and implementing). We will reer to it as the SLOCScenario, where SLOC stands or small, local, open,and connected. Tese our adjectives, in act, neatlysynthesize the sociotechnical system on which thisscenario is based: a distributed production and con-sumption system in which the global is a network olocalsthat is, a mesh o connected local systems,whose small scale makes them comprehensible andcontrollable by individuals and communities.

Small, local, opEn,and connEctEd:des Si Ss

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Te SLOC Scenario is useul because it directs ustoward sustainable solutions, indicating in particu-lar that sustainable solutions necessarily reer tothe local(and the communityto which this localmainly reers) and to the small (and the possibilitiesin terms o relationships, participation, and democ-racy that the human scale makes possible). At the

same time, it tells us that to implement solutions, wehave to consider these small entities and these locali-ties in the ramework o the global network societyin which the local and the small are both open andconnected. Tis change in the nature o the smalland local has enormous implications: With the new

networks, it becomes possible to operate on a localand small scale in a very efective way. Moreover,utilizing these networked systems is the only way tooperate in the complex and ast-changing environ-

ment generated by the present crisis and by thedouble transition towards a knowledge-based andsustainable society.

social innoaTion

Practical applications o SLOC-oriented initia-tives already exist. Some o them are rather difuse.Others are still quite marginal. But all o them arepractical working prototypes o new ways o living

and doing. Considered as a whole, they demonstratethat the SLOC Scenario is not a utopian dream,but a potentially viable perspective. Te challenge,thereore, is to transorm its potentiality into amainstream reality. o do that it is necessary to bet-ter understand the complex interplay between socialand technical innovation that generates the caseson which the SLOC Scenario is based. In act, a llthe promising cases al luded to here emerged roma virtuous interaction between social and technical

innovation: Tey have been conceived and imple-mented (mainly) by the involved actors, who usedtheir personal capabilities, their direct knowledgeo the problems to be solved, andthe applicationand deployment o existing technologies, oten inunoreseen ways.

Tis positive interplay between technological and

social innovations could become a powerul pro-moter o sustainable ways o living and producing.echnological innovation, especial ly in the digitalrealm, opens up new opportunities (in terms o un-precedented orms o organizations) while social in-novation mobilizes difuse social resources (in termso creativity, skills, knowledge, and entrepreneur-ship). Tis positive double link between grassrootsusers and technology is particularly relevant in thetransitions toward sustainability: I small and localsystems are concerned, nothing can happen withoutwidespread creative participation on the part o thepeople directly involved. Tese people are the onlyones who can creatively adopt distributed and peer-to-peer models and adapt them to local specicities.In other words, given their penetration into peopleseveryday lives, the peer-to-peer model and the dis-tributed systems approach cannot be enhancedwithout substantial changes in the way people thinkand behavethat is, without social innovation.

promising cases

At present, in every country in the world, thereare promising cases o social and technical innova-tion, including collaborative social and residentialservices, bottom-up urban improvement initia-tives, local and organic ood networks, distributedproduction systems, and cases o sustainable localdevelopment. Tese examples, which can be seenas signicant steps towards sustainability, are theresult o many initiatives perormed by a variety opeople, associations, enterprises, and local govern-ments. From diferent starting points, these actorsare moving toward similar ideas o well-being andproduction: an active well-being based on a senseo community and shared goods and a productionsystem composed o networks o collaborative actorsthat is based on a new relationship between the localand the global. In their diversity, these cases have aundamental common characteristic: Tey all reer

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to placesthat is, to local resources and localcommunities.

Even i in quantitative terms these cases aremore or less marginal, in qualitative terms they areextremely meaningul. In act, they can be seen asviable anticipations o sustainable ways o livingand producing. O course, these emerging eatures

assume diferent meanings in diferent societies andplaces. Nevertheless, their presence in situations soremote rom one another raises the possibility thatthey may constitute a rst set o sustainable eatures.In other words, they can be seen as the buildingmaterials or developing sustainable alternatives tothe unsustainable ideas o well-being, production,and economy that dominate today.

was of liing anD proDucing

In regard to human well-being, a closer look at thesepromising cases reveals another undamental com-mon characteristic: Each compensates or a decreasein the consumption o products with an increase inother qualities. Tese qualities pertain to physicaland social environments with the rediscovery ocommons; to relationships with the rediscovery ocommunities; to being active with the rediscoveryo individual and social capabilities; to time withthe rediscovery o slowness. All these new qualities

are based on traditional qualities reinterpreted inthe present context. o be appreciated, all o themrequire a human scale, that is, they require small(comprehensible, manageable) systems. At the sametime, given the present high level o connectiv-ity, these small systems can be (and have to be)to the interactions with wider ows o people andideas that characterize contemporary global society.For this complex relation between being small andbeing open we reserve the expression cosmopolitanlocalism.

Looking at these promising cases in terms oproduction, what appears is a new relationshipbetween the local and the global in which local-but-connected systems o production and consumptionare emerging. Tis general eature can take diferentorms, including the sustainable valorization olocal resources (rom natural environments andagriculture to cratsmanship and local knowledge);the realization o symbiotic production processes

(rom zero-waste systems to industrial ecology dis-tricts); and the development odistributed systems(rom power generation to manuacturing and tothe whole economy). What unites these diversephenomena is that each exemplies a connected lo-cal, where knowledge, money, and decision-makingpower can circulate in worldwide networks, but

where most o these resources remain in the handso those who produce them.

small, local, open, connecTeD

Tese emerging eatures, and the cases o sociotech-nical innovation on which they are based, are char-acterized by the our keywords mentioned beore:small, local, open and connected.

Tese our words are meaningul because they arevisionarywhen considered as a whole (they generatea vision o how society could be), comprehensiblewhen considered one by one (their meanings andimplications can be easily understood by everybody)and viablebecause they are supported by major driv-ers o change (the emerging complex relationshipsbetween globalization and localization, the powero the Internet, and the difusion o new orms oorganization that the Internet makes possible).

Tese our words are also important because, insynthesising the results o 20 years o discussions

and concrete experiences, they clearly indicate thatthere is no hope or designing sustainable solutionswithout starting rom the notions o localand othe communityto which this local mainly reers.At the same time, there is no hope o implementingsustainable solutions without considering these lo-calities in the ramework o contemporary transor-mationsthat is, without considering that, in theglobalized network society, the local and the smallare at once open and connected. Tis point is crucialand requires urther development.

small is noT small

Some 30 years ago, E. F. Schumacher wrote hisvery amous bookSmall Is Beautiful. At that time,because the degree o connectivity was relativelylow, the small really was small and the local reallywas local (i.e., isolated). Tereore, Schumachersoption in terms o the small and local scale could


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be proposed only as a cultural and ethical choice.oday, it is no longer like that: With a much higherdegree o connectivity, when the small can be anode within various networks and the local can beopen to global ows o people and inormation, thesmall is no longer small and a local is no longer lo-cal, at least not in traditional terms.

Tis change in the nature o the small hasenormous implications, or better and or worse.Al-Qaeda, or instance, is a bad implication. It is,in act, a constellation o small groups o terroriststhat, by virtue o being connected, became as pow-erul as a big army. On the other hand, a (poten-tially) good implication, and the most interestingone or us here, is that networks make it possible tooperate on a local and small scale in a very efectiveway. Indeed, the development o exible networkingsystems indicates the one and only possibility oroperating in the complex and ast-changing envi-ronment generated by the double transition towardsa knowledge- andsustainability-based society.

local is noT local

Similar considerations emerge with regard to thenotion o local, and the related notion o place. Inrecent decades, there have been long and importantdebates on the emerging world o ows and, there-ore, on the end o places and localities. In my view,the observations rom these discussions were and arestill correct: It is important to recognize the role oows and the crisis o traditional places (with thecorresponding difusion o no-places). But theseobservations do not entirely capture the complex-ity o the new reality. In act, by looking into thiscomplexity, we see that a growing number o peopleare actively searching or placesthat is, or speciclocal traditions and new orms o localities.

In so doing, they establish an articulated and o-ten contradictory relationship with the global. Tus,or example, we see the emerging phenomenon

o localisms that exist in the global ramework orrather that exist because o the long-term trend to-ward globalization. Tis phenomenon also has twosides. Te negative side is the dangerous emergenceo a local as the idealized roots o a dreamed-opure and solid identity that is in opposition to theidentity o the othersa closed localism. Te

positive side is the local as a generator o originalpossibilities and cultures to be cultivated locally andexchanged globallya cosmopolitan localism.

Design for social innoaTion

Designers and design researchers can do a lot toempower social innovation or sustainability. Teycan eed the social conversation (i.e., the interplaybetween social and technological innovation) with

visions and proposals. Tey can also collaboratewith difuse social innovators (to help them conceiveand manage their initiatives) and with technolo-gists, entrepreneurs, and policy makers (to developproducts, services, and inrastructures to make themost promising initiatives accessible and replicable,thereby opening new markets and economic op-portunities). Tese design activities, considered as awhole, can be termed design for social innovation andsustainability.

Design or social innovation and sustainability

is o great potential signicance, but it is still in itsinitial stage.All the topics discussed here need di-erent kinds o research to be developed. Not all othem have to be developed by designers, but manyo them do require some specic design knowledge,including scenarios to articulate in diferent con-texts the general vision o small, local, open, andconnected; solutions to implement these scenariosin a variety o specic applications; tools to acilitatethe new networks and, more generally, to support

ongoing social learning processes. In short, goingback to what was said at the beginning, the topicssynthesized by the words small, local, open, andconnected can be considered as general guidelinesto trigger and orient a broad, open, and collabora-tive design research program.

i e ze ewk se,e e s e e e ee.


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I respond to Ezio Manzinis stimulating remarksnot with a counterargument or a sustained com-mentary but rather with a set o meditations onsome o his key words, which have also inormedmy own thinking.

Small: Tis word invites us to rethink the issue o

scale in a nonlinear manner. As Ezio says, smallis not small, because o the nature o global owsand connectivities. In my recent book, Fear of SmallNumbers,1 I suggested that we are entering a newworld o cellular organizations, which I contrastwith an earlier world o hierarchical, vertebrateorganizations, the best example o which is thesystem o nation-states. Modern capitalism has bothcellular and vertebrate qualities.

Cellularity, which is characterized by loosecoordination, noncentralized reproduction,asymmetrical communication, and opportunisticcollaboration, can be dangerous (as in the case otransnational terrorism) or highly progressive (aswith many movements o grassroots globalization).Tis sort o cellularity relies on global inormationnetworks, high degrees o political and material po-rosity, and highly diverse and accelerated processeso ow. Tus smallness is moved out o the discourseo scale into the discourse o manageability through

the ideas o connectivity, network, and ow. Tus,building on Ezios remarks, I would like to raise theollowing question: Do we recognize that smallnesshas been undamentally divorced rom manageabil-ity and knowability?

Local: Te word local has also become morecomplicated than it seems. I mysel have stressedin my earlier work that locality is always producedagainst the corrosion o context and is thus not aninert or deault state. oday, I would say that alllocality is designed. I this is so, then sustainabledesign is a strategy oidentiying the dynam-ics which underlie the

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1. Arjun Appadurai, Fear ofSmall Numbers (Durham: DukeUniversity Press, 2006).

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everyday production o locality, and extracting a seto principles rom those dynamics that can be e-ectively networked and distributed on a global scale.

Open: Te idea o openness is also interesting, sinceglobal ows sometimes produce closure and some-times produce openness. We need to understand

how to design social systems, especially in denselocalities, that increase the possibility that connec-tivity will produce openness. Tis is a serious andunresolved problem or all socially oriented design,especially o the built environment. In other words,we may also wish to recognize the potential aporiabetween openness and connectivity with regard tothe design o sustainable sociality.

Sustainability: Rather than emphasize the material,logistical, and economic implications o sustain-ability, which we all tend to do, I think we shouldinstead begin with the question o how to designsustainable socialities. Put in other words, how dowe design convivial social environments in a worldwhere connectivity does not always lead to openness(in the sense o tolerance o diversity)? Focusing onthe idea o sustainable socialities orces us back tothe human requirement or stability and closure ascounterbalances to volatility and ux.

Here I suggest that we return to the question o

smallness. We should perhaps not think o smallnessas a matter o scale, but as a matter o some otherdimensions o sustainable sociality such as knowl-edge, risk, and tolerance. Tese latter criteria maysuggest designs or living (both physical and social)that put social thresholds above ecological thresholdsin terms o ideas like carrying capacity. Tis is a con-troversial proposition since it implies that constraintslike global warming cannot be treated as absoluteparameters or design, but must be subordinated tothe question o sustainable sociality when the inter-ests o the two are not, by good ortune, coincident.

In short, I am intrigued and inspired by EziosSLOC proposal, but suggest that we push it urtherto break down the deault assumption that small-ness, connectivity, and openness are always mutuallysupportive. Indeed, proessionals engaged in designprocesses must not disregard the likelihood that thesephenomena are already in conict in todays world.


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thE dESiS nEtWor:des

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The Desis neTwork

DESIS1 is a network o schools o design, compa-nies, nonprot organizations, and other institutions

that are interested in promoting and supportingdesign or social innovation and sustainability. It is alight, nonprot organization, conceived as a networko partners collaborating in a peer-to-peer spirit.

Tis international network comprises severalDESIS-Local sub-networks within specied regions.DESIS-International is thereore the ramework withinwhich the diferent DESIS-Local networks coordinatethemselves and undertake certain global initiatives.

1. See www.desis-network.org/.

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http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/sdshttp://www.desis-network.org/http://www.desis-network.org/http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/sds


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The Desis ision

In the complexity o contemporary societies, itis possible to recognize promising cases o socio-technical innovation. Tey are at once solutionsto current problems and meaningul steps towardsustainability. Tese cases can be ound in a variety

o elds, rom the ecological reconversion o theproduction system to the social construction o anew welare and rom the empowerment o difusemicroenterprises to local sustainable developmentprograms. Many o these promising cases have acommon denominator: Tey have been conceivedand implemented (mainly) by the involved actors,moving rom their direct knowledge o the problemand rom their own personal capabilities. Tat is,they are the results o successul social innovationprocesses.

Social innovation mobilizes difuse social re-sources (in terms o creativity, skills, knowledge andentrepreneurship). For this reason, it is a major drivero change. And it could become a powerul promotero sustainable ways o living and producing.

Given its spontaneous nature, social innovationcannot be planned. Nevertheless, the inventiono new ways o living and producing becomes moreprobable when creativity and design thinking aredifused and when there is a avorable social and

institutional environment. Similarly, new promis-ing cases last longer and are more widely replicatedwhen they are empowered by appropriate setso services, products, and communication tools.Favorable environments and enabling solutionsare the results o articulated codesign processes inwhich nal users, local institutions, service provid-ers, and dedicated product manuacturers are allactively involved.

With regard to social innovation and the emerg-ing new design networks, the proessional design

community has a major role to play. Designersand design researchers must use their proessionalknowledge to empower the codesign processesthat is, to trigger new ideas, orient the resulting ini-tiatives, and conceive a new generation o enablingsolutions (i.e., services, products, and communica-tions specically conceived to support them).

Design can give important contributions to socialinnovation, and vice versa. Social innovation can

present an opportunity or a new generation o de-signers: Proessional designers and design research-ers can work to develop and sustain new networksand eed those networks with needed design knowl-edge. DESIS supports social innovation worldwideand reinorces the design communitys role in it.

Desis aims

Support social innovation using design skills to

make promising cases more visible and eective

and to facilitate their replicability

Help companies and institutions understand the

promising cases potentialities in terms of enabling

services, products, and business ideas

Reinforce the design communitys role in the social

innovation processes, operating both within the

design community (developing dedicated design

knowledge) and outside it (redening designsperceived role and capabilities)

Desis acTiiTies

DESIS pursues its activities on three diferent levels:

Fosters social innovation and sustainability by taking

part in support projects and programs, gathering and

oering greater visibility to signicant cases

Promotes design for social innovation both within

and outside the design community by developingappropriate design tools and organizing cultural and

didactic activities

Encourages the circulation of ideas and experiences,

with a peer-to-peer approach between the dierent

DESIS-Local sub-networks, who carry out compara-

tive research projects and co-produce courses at an

international level

Tese activities are mainly accomplished throughthe coordinating initiatives o the DESIS-Local

sub-networks, each o which is organized autono-mously and reely. Nevertheless, some possiblestandard DESIS activities can be listed:

Proposing and developing national and interna-

tional research programs

Organizing didactic initiatives (such as workshops,

seminars, courses, and conferences)

Preparing didactic resources (such as teaching tools,

course formats, and bibliographic references)


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Collecting research information (such as promising

cases, projects, and research results)

Promoting cultural and communication initiatives

(such as exhibitions, publications, and broadcasts

eio manini

Desis: an inTernaTional communiT of Design

for social innoaTion anD susTainabiliT

Te emergence o the social economy2 makes evenmore explicit the great pressure to develop innova-tions related to social demands. Innovation anddesign have always been more or less intertwined,and historically, this conuence has occurred in tech-nology, whether in terms o new products, systems,or processes. Designers now have the opportunity

to contribute to the new (social) economy. o do so,they will have to adapt their modus operandito bein connection with social innovation dynamics andoptimize their responsiveness to the new demandsthose dynamics generate.

Tus, the community o people and institutionsthat is being ormed with DESIS has an importantcontribution to make: to research, experimentwith, and implement new knowledge, practices,and cultures o design or social innovation andsustainability.

DESIS underlying principles can be traced backto a number o previous international initiativesthat have in recent years helped to establish a set oconceptual tools or promoting social innovationand susta inability.

Among them, the pioneer project, EMUDE,Emerging User Demands or Sustainable Solutions,3explored the potential o grassroots innovation andpinpointed emerging patterns o sustainable living

in Europe. Te project Creative Communities orSustainable Liestyles (CCSL)4 turned its geographi-cal ocus to emerging countriesin particularBrazil, India, and Chinathrough partnershipswith design schools in those three countries. Oneo its main ndings was that social innovation andcollaborative creativity in everyday lie can be ound

worldwide. Even i they are deeply rooted in speciccontexts, their basic principles are very similar. Tesame line o investigation ollowed with CCSLArica,5 which involved design schools in South

2. In the study Danger andOpportunity: Crisis and the New

Social Economyby Robin Mur-ray for the United Kingdomsinnovation agency NESTA, thesocial economy is dened asall those areas of the economywhich are not geared to private

protability. It includes thestate but also the civileconomy of a philanthropicthird sector, social enterprisesand co-operatives operatingin the market, and the manystrands of the reciprocal house-hold economyhouseholdsthemselves, social networks,informal associations, aswell as social movements(p. 10). Murray points to acurrent resurgence of thesocial economy, motivated orenabled by digital technologyand allowing for a user-centeredapproach to the developmentof services and products; thegreen industrial revolutionbringing new practices, newmovements, and new organiza-tion forms; and the increasingsocial pressure aroundintractable social issues (p.12) including education, healthcare, geriatric facilities, andincarceration. These sectorsalready account for consider-able shares of national GDPsboth in the United Kingdomand the United States, and

on current trajectories, thebiggest sectors (both by valueand employment) of Westerneconomies in 2020 and beyondwill not be cars, ships, steel,computer manufacturing, orpersonal nance but ratherhealth, education, and care(p. 12). The challenge now ishow to promote innovation inthese sectors and make thesocial economy a leading forcein the next wave of economicdevelopment (p. 33).

3. EMUDE was funded bythe European Commission6th Framework Programme(20042006). EMUDE identi-ed a large number of promis-ing cases and developed a setof conceptual tools to deal withthem in order to orient policy

makers and to dene researchand design guidelines, whichwould in turn to promote thecases consolidation and dif-fusion. EMUDE was organizedas a consortium of Europeanuniversities and research cen-ters and has mobilized designschools from all over Europein order to identify a collectionof more than 100 promisingcases of social innovationon the continent. See www.sustainable-everyday.net/EMUDE/?page_id=85.

4. CCSL (20062007) was partof the Task Force on Sustain-able Lifestyles, within the Unit-ed Nations Ten-Year Frameworkof Programmes on SustainableConsumption and Production(the Marrakech Process). Seewww.sustainable-everyday.net/ccsl/?page_id=4.

5. CCSL-Africa (20082009)is currently running under theUnited Nations Task Force onSustainable Lifestyles. Seewww.sustainable-everyday.net/

ccsla/.

te e ew ws eese e we e es k e se we ee s e s s ee.
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Arica and Kenya and then other schools around theArican continent. Tis project ocused on clariy-ing the particular orms that social innovationconcepts might assume in various Arican nations,with a special ocus on its emerging urban centers.

Following rom these and other initiatives, DESISas an international network has been ounded in

Italy and DESIS-Local sub-networks have beencreated, rst in China and Brazil and now in theUnited States, Colombia, and Arica (SEE figurE 1).Each sub-network connects primarily local designschools but also other institutions, companies,and nonprot organizations around local projects,innovative teaching, and research. DESIS operates,then, in what might be called a global spirit: It isbased on local sub-networks, each o which has itsown story, specic research agenda, and projectsthat reect local needs. But DESIS is also in dialogwith its international peers, stimulating and beingstimulated by ongoing discussion in a cross-culturalorum. lara penin

figurE 1: DESIS-Local sub-networks

Desis-china6

DESIS-China is a network o schools, companies,nonprot organizations, and other institutions. Itwas co-ounded by a group o design universities inChina in collaboration with Politecnico di Milano. Itis connected with other DESIS-Local sub-networksin diferent countries within the ramework o theDESIS-International network. DESIS-China aims

to actively support design initiatives and projects orsocial innovation and sustainability in China.

Social innovation is a new idea, in China andelsewhere. Nevertheless, it has been widely acceptedand promoted in the last several years since China isin a period o rapid transormation o its economy,culture, and society. Tese transormations call or

social innovation in many contexts and on many lev-els. In the eld o design, there have been intensiveexchanges and collaborations in recent years betweenDESIS-Chinas ounding members, Politecnico diMilano, and the executors o other related projects,including CCSL-China. In March 2009, the rstkick-of meeting between the ounding members oDESIS-China and representatives rom Politecnicodi Milano took place in Guangzhou. Te partici-pants agreed on the DESIS-China proposal andbegan to develop a research agenda.

Te ounding members o DESIS-China includesix major Chinese design schoolssingHuaUniversity, Hunan University, Jiangnan University,ongji University, Guangzhou Academy o FineArts, and the Hong Kong Polytechnic Universitywith additional support rom a group o selectedpartners. When ully operative, DESIS-China willbe composed o diverse participants (schools, insti-tutions, companies, and nonprot organizations)that all actively support DESIS objectives. In the

ounding phase, ongji University is serving as thehost and secretarial oce.

Te members rst collaborative project,DESIS09: Social Innovation and Connection, waslaunched at the kick-of meeting. It seeks to developcase studies o sustainable Chinese liestyles in anetworked society and to elicit design implicationsand guidelines rom these studies. As a combinedresearch and didactic project, it includes six coursesor workshopsone at every participating univer-sityrunning at the same time.

DESIS-China members are also conducting theChongming SustainableCommunity Project, astrategic design researchproject ocused on therural community oChongming Island inShanghai. Here theemphasis is on how design

6. DESIS-China detailsCoordi-nation: Lou Yongqi (China), [email protected], MiaosenGong (Politecnico di Milano),[email protected]. Secretary Ofce: p: 86 2165 98 34 32, f: 86 21 65 9834 32, [email protected]. Website: www.desis-china.org.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.desis-china.org/http://www.desis-china.org/http://www.desis-china.org/http://www.desis-china.org/http://www.desis-china.org/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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can promote the value o rural localities and developexchange networks within an urban-rural system.It is a part o the broader DESIS-Internationalprogram, Design or Social Innovation and LocalDevelopment (DESIS/LD), which urthers priorresearch, including the Parco Sud Milano projectin Italy, the So Paulo project in Brazil, and other

projects in South Arica and the UK.7In May 2009, ongji University and DESIS-

China in Shanghai cohosted a DESIS orum andexhibition. It was the rst public event on the issueo design or social innovation in China, and theoccasion at which the ounding o DESIS-Chinawas ocially announced. Tere were seven speakers,including ong Huimin, dean o the College oDesign, Guagnzhou Academy o Fine Arts; LorraineJustice, dean o the School o Design at HongKong Polytechnic; and Yrj Sotamaa, proessoro Design Innovation at the University o Art andDesign, Helsinki. Sotamaas remarks were entitledDesigning Schools or Social Innovation.

In October 2009, another DESIS seminar tookplace in Shanghai as part o Shanghai InternationalCreative Industry Week. Te seminar was aimed atsharing results and promoting exchange among aseries o related collaborations and ongoing projects.In the current year, DESIS-China will be involvedin various events and activities, including Shanghai

Expo 2010, the Cumulus Annual conerence (alsoin Shanghai), and the Business o Design Week inHong Kong. miaosen gong

Desis-brail8

DESIS-Brazil seeks to shed light on actors thatcould promote social innovation or sustainabilityin Brazil. It also seeks to establish guidelines orthe design o solutionsi.e., a specic set o tools,services, and ski lls that help each case evolve towarda more efective and accessible organization andultimately, to difusion on a larger scale.

Te DESIS-Brazil local network began as theresult o a collaboration between the FederalUniversity o Rio de Janeiros COPPE Institute andPolitecnico di Milano. Te Brazilian university hadbeen a partner in the international project CCSL-Desex, which investigated the potential o socialinnovations to generate and difuse new and more

sustainable ways o living in the urban environ-ments o Brazil, India, China, and Arica. Te col-laboration that began with CCSL activity continuedwith the workshop course DESIGN.ISDS: Design,Social Innovation, and Sustainable Development.Ezio Manzini taught the course at the FederalUniversity o Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) in 2007 and

2008. Manzini also published Design for SocialInnovation and Sustainability: Creative Communities,

Collaborative Organizations, and New Design

Networks(English translation rom Portuguese).9Te course was streamed online to universities allover the country. DESIS-Brazil was ormed out othis second experience and its members now includesome o the major Brazilian universities.

In its initial phase, DESIS-Brazil consists ointerested teachers and researchers in ve schools:Federal University o Rio de Janeiro (the currenthost and secretary), Fluminense Federal University,So Paulo University, Federal University o SantaCatarina, and Federal University o Paran. Te lo-cal network has ormed a steering committee, whichis composed o a representative rom each oundingmember, plus one representative rom the interna-tional network. Te steering committee has regulardistance meetings and at least one physical meetingper year. carla cipolla

Desis-usa10

Te United States is currently undergoing manychanges: change in its political and socio-economicagenda, change to overcome general and specic sys-tem ailure, and change in the way it perceives and isperceived by the world. Among the many elements

7. See the article Enabling So-ciety: New Design Processes inChina, The Case of Chongming

in this volume.

8. DESIS-Brazil detailsCoor-dination: Carla Cipolla, [email protected]. Website: www.ltds.ufrj.br/desis/english.

9. Ezio Manzini, Design para ainovao social e sustentabili-

dade. Comunidades criativas,

organizaes colaborativas enovas redes projetuais. Cadernodo Grupo de Altos Estudos doPEP/UFRJ. Editora E-Papers:Rio de Janeiro, 2008.

10. DESIS-USA detailsCoor-dination: Lara Penin, [email protected]; EduardoStaszowski, [email protected]; Cameron Tonkinwise,[email protected]. Web-site: http://desis.parsons.edu.
http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/sdshttp://www.ltds/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://desis.parsons.edu/http://desis.parsons.edu/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.ltds/http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/sds


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present in this transormational wave, social innova-tion is a relatively new arrival in the general lexicon.

In April 2009, the White House made ocial itsnew Oce o Social Innovation. Even i the newoces agenda is not yet clear to the public, the ewsigns given so ar suggest an intention to increasethe activity and agency o the nonprot sector by di-

recting public investments toward innovative ideasand models that can generate measurable impact.

Responding to the stimulus o the DESIS-International network, a group o proessors romParsons Te New School or Design, Stanord, MI,and Politecnico di Milano gathered in New YorkCity in May 2009 to discuss the implications o thenew oce or design practice and education and tolaunch DESIS-USA.

Tis group understands that the design disciplinescan contribute substantially to the creation o avor-able conditions or social innovation to ourish anddifuse in the United States. From supporting al-ready-existing social innovations in our society, suchas zero-mile ood networks and cohousing initia-tives, to helping constructively address problems inthe areas o health care, urban mobility, or energy,DESIS-USA members intend to use design to helpcatalyze social resources or sustainable change.

Te three ounding institutionsParsons,Stanord, and MIramed the initial phase o

DESIS-USA as a project and developed a twelve-month timetable or conducting a series o activi-ties (including courses, projects, seminars, and aconerence) ocused on design or social innovationin the United States. At the end o this period, thegroup will a lso establish the broader DESIS-USAagenda and dene its mission, goals, managementsystem, and membership criteria. During the rstphase, Parsons is hosting and serving as secretary othe project.

One o the rst projects o DESIS-USA isAmpliying Creative Communities in NYC,which was recently awarded a grant by TeRockeeller Foundations Cultural InnovationFund. Project participants investigate social in-novation phenomena in New York City, analyzethem through diverse disciplinary perspectives, andampliy social innovation initiatives through designmethods and tools. Te project, led by the DESISLab at Parsons, will involve partnerships with local

businesses and nonprot organizations as well asother members o DESIS-USA and the internationalnetwork.

DESIS-USAs ounding members are Lara Penin,Eduardo Staszowski, and Cameron onkinwise(School o Design Strategies, Parsons Te NewSchool or Design); Nidhi Srinivas (Milano Te

New School or Management and Urban Policy);Banny Banerjee (Design Program and Design orChange Lab at Stanord University); and FedericoCasalegno (Mobile Experience and DesignLaboratory at MI). Other attendees o the kick-ofmeeting in May 2009 included Ben Lee, seniorvice president or International Afairs at Te NewSchool; Joel owers, dean o Parsons Te NewSchool or Design; and im Marshall, provost oTe New School. lara penin

Desis-africa11

Te main objective o DESIS-Arica is to orm anetwork o key actors in Design or Sustainability(DS) projects and related activities in the publicand private sector. Te difusion o social innova-tion entails developing inspiring initiatives throughthe DESIS-International network, with a particularemphasis on those o special relevance to contempo-rary local socio-economic and geopolitical realities

on the Arican continent. DESIS-Arica also buildsupon the Creative Communities or SustainableLiestyles-Arica (CCSL-Arica) project, in whichpromising cases o social innovation were collected,documented, and disseminated.

Te inaugural CCSL-Arica initiative showedthat many examples o sustainable living in Aricathat are relevant in contexts ar removed rom ourcontinent. Additionally, there are place-specicexpressions o being and living that are unique toArica, at least in their original authentic orms. Teaccessible and inclusive ubuntu ethos o human-ness is one such unique ideal. Ubuntu posits that Iam because we arean armation o the intrinsi-cally relational character o human existence thatcontrasts sharply withthe individualistic logico modern liberalism.Trough ubuntu, Aricainvites every human

11. DESIS-Africa detailsCo-ordination: Mugendi MRithaa(South Africa) [email protected]; Norah Gitobu (Kenya)[email protected]. Website:www.desis-network.org.
mailto:[email protected]://www.desis-network.org/http://www.desis-network.org/mailto:[email protected]


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being into a robust dialog o engagement andparticipation in the matters that afect all humanbeingsthe sustainability agenda, or example.Trough DESIS-Arica, we hope to promulgate,perpetuate, and preserve the dynamic communitar-ian ethos oubuntu, thereby promoting a spirit oresilience by design.

Te membership o DESIS-Arica is drawn prin-cipally rom aculty members in the ever-expandingNetwork o Arican Designers (NAD). Te intentionis to extend DESIS-Arica to include every actorwho is interested in and committed to membership.NAD was initiated by Adrienne Viljoen o the SABSDesign Institute in South Arica as a peer-to-peernetwork with the explicit aim o oster[ing] designand design recognition in Arica or the sustain-able development o the continent and improvedquality o lie and economic prosperity or all.12Te ounding institutions o DESIS-Arica were theCape Peninsula University o echnology (CPU)in Cape own, South Arica, and the University oNairobi in Nairobi, Kenya. Other members now in-clude Maseno University (in Kenya); the Universityo Botswana; Makerere University (in Uganda);the Federal University o echnology, Akure (inNigeria); and Kwame Nkurumah University oScience and echnology (in Ghana). Tis edglingnetwork is growing through the dissemination o

the results o the CCSL-Arica project, and as moreNAD members become acquainted with the relative-ly new concept o social innovation. Personal contactremains the most efective tool or recruitment.

DESIS-Arica efectively came into being in July2009 in Nairobi, Kenya, during a CCSL-Aricaseminar. Present or this event were actors romacademic institutions, the public sector (includingvarious nongovernmental organizations), the privatesector (both the ormal as well as the pervasiveinormaljua kalisub-sectors), and CCSL-Arica,DESIS, and NAD members (including AdrienneViljoen, Carla Cipolla, Daria Cantu, Ezio Manzini,Franois Jgou, Lilac Osanjo, Lorraine Amollo,

Norah Gitobu, and Mugendi MRithaa). It is antici-pated that a ormal launch o DESIS-Arica will becelebrated during the Arica meets Arica NADArica Design Day event in May 2010. CCSL-Aricahas also been invited to mount an exhibition opromising cases collected during the project at thisorum.

DESIS-Arica has identied a number o proj-ects that would showcase the ecacy o DS andhighlight pertinent social innovation around thecontinent. For example, through its link with theDESIS-Brazil network, a community-based tour-ism project will commence shortly. Fact-ndingmissions and capacity-building exercises began inNovember 2009, prior to the implementation othe design projects. Te city o Cape own and itsenvirons are the ocus o the pilot project in South

Arica, which incorporates a multi-sector array oactors. mugenDi mriThaa

Desis-colombia13

Although DESIS-Colombia shares the objectiveso its partners in China and Brazil, the Colombiancontext is quite peculiar. Given its socio-economic,political, cultural, and even geographical cir-cumstances, social innovation crops up al l overColombia, but so ar it has been disdained because

auto-organization is merely considered a way tomake a living. DESIS-Colombia, then, aims to helpreorient the attitudes o citizens with regard to thosesmall actions that improve peoples livelihoods andthat are solid examples o more sustainable wayso being and doing. Te organization hopes to ac-complish this by publicizing social innovation andits channels, lending voice, visibility, and empower-ment to all such instances o bottom-up creativity.

12. Network of AfricaDesigners (NAD) initiated byAdrienne Viljoen of the SABSDesign Institute in SouthAfrica. See www.desis-network.org/?q=africa.

13. DESIS-Colombia detailsCoordination: Andrea Mendoza,[email protected]: http://designblog.uniandes.edu.co/blogs/desis,http://disenoinnovacionsocial.uniandes.edu.co/.

dESiS s ke: ese,exee w, eeew kwee, es,

es es s ss.
http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/sdshttp://www.desis-network/mailto:[email protected]://designblog/http://disenoinnovacionsocial/http://disenoinnovacionsocial/http://designblog/mailto:[email protected]://www.desis-network/http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/sds


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Aside rom sharing the DESIS-International aimso mapping and subsequently ampliying cases re-lated to greening the cities, enhancing mobility, andimproving ood production and distribution in theramework o design or social innovation and sus-tainability, DEIS-Colombia also seeks to legitimizework on issues in the ollowing areas:

Justice, humanitarian initiatives, multicultural

diversity, migration, and dislocation

Improving the well-being and mood of citizens by

means of public design and interventions close to the

world of art

In June 2009, DESIS-Colombia had a weeklongpre-workshop aimed at mapping local initiatives osocial innovation. Te workshop pursued diferentactivities, such as the writing o a DESIS-ColombiaManiesto and a presentation o work using photo-graphic and video tools, with the aim o creating anaudiovisual archive. DESIS-Colombia is uploadingall these materials to a DESIS blog hosted by LosAndes University.

Based in Bogot, the design department at LosAndes University has been leading the processtowards the consolidation o the DESIS-Colombiasub-network. Now it has been decided that the LosAndes group will work jointly with the AcademicDesign Network RAD (Red Academica de Diseo),

a national entity that promotes excellence in therealm o design pedagogy and research. RAD triesto build interconnections and links among its manymembers, thereby stimulating collective creation.

For several years, RAD has organized an inter-institutional course, inviting groups o studentsrom diferent universities to work on a specictopic or a whole semester. One idea currently underdevelopment involves using the R AD space or aseries o courses starting in 2010. Te courses willocus on an original project based on DESIS andthe cases gathered so ar (which include exampleso community-based tourism and community-based agriculture) that have still to be organized,systematized, clustered, and urther extended intonew contexts.

Te universities involved so ar with DESIS-Colombia are Universidad del Norte (Barranquilla);Ponticia Universidad Bolivariana (Medelln);Ponticia Universidad Javeriana (Bogot);

Universidad Nacional; Universidad Jorge adeoLozano; Universidad Central; Universidad NacionalPalmira (U.N. branch); Universidad de Caldas;Fundacin Universitaria del rea Andina; andUniversidad de los Andes in Bogot. Te consolida-tion o a steering committee is underway, led byFreddy Zapata, director o the Design department

at Los Andes University and with the input o inter-ested teachers and students throughout country.

Besides the academies, several other organizationshave shown interest in DESIS-Colombia and RAD,including the Fundacin Corona, a private non-prot organization which, although not identiyingits work as promoting social innovation per se,has nevertheless worked in this eld or more than10 years, collecting hundreds o cases; and AntanasMockus, a ormer mayor o Bogot who at presentheads Corpovisionarios, an organization workingon public policy and citizenship, mainly the areas omutual regulation and city-building. anDrea menDoa


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SEction 2:caSE StudiES


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The chinese conTexT

At the present historical juncture, it is clear thatdesign processes must be extended into new ter-ritories and dimensions in order to address the manyproblems and opportunities o a rapidly changingworld.1 oday, one o the most dramatic arenas othis change is China, especially with regard to theincreasing pace o urbanization there. Current re-search predicts that 350 million people will be addedto Chinas urban populations by 2025more than

the current population o the United Statesyield-ing a total o one billion people living in Chinascities by 2030.2 Tis kind o growth will necessitatethe construction o some 270 mass transit systemsand 40 billion square meters o oor space in ve

million new buildings50,000 o which couldbe skyscrapers, or the equivalent o ten New YorkCities.Te drive or progress and the switness opolicy implementation in China permit experimen-tation with new ideas and methods; the challengewill be to stabilize Chinas growth by ostering waysin which people can sustain themselves economi-cally, environmentally, and socially. In meetingthis challenge, it will be necessary to involve the in-tended beneciaries. Tis is the only way or generalprinciples to be adapted to local conditions and pro-posed solutions to be made truly sustainable. Andgiven Chinas enormous size, even local projects, insucient numbers, can have global implications.Creating opportunities or local communities to sus-tain themselves is where designers can have the mostpowerul and lasting efects. Some ongoing cases,such as the Chongming Sustainable CommunityProject, illustrate designs new mission and potentialin this era o rapid change.

Enabling SociEty:new des pesses

cte cse c

l q d c Dz

1. Ezio Manzini, Design, Ethics,and Sustainability: Guidelines

for a Transition Phase (Milano:DIS-Indaco, Politecnico diMilano, August 2006).

2. McKinsey Global Institute,Preparing for Chinas UrbanBillion, (McKinsey & Company,2009).


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The chongming iniTiaTie:

a susTainable rural communiT proJecT

Sustainable development in China will depend onmaintaining a harmonious balance between urbanand rural areas. Ongoing one-way migration to ur-ban centers by people in pursuit o better education,

higher income, and modern liestyles has createdan imbalance in Chinese society, particularly in thelast several decades.3 Te problem is magnied bythe act that Chinas population is already one othe largest in the world, and is expected to continueto grow at an unprecedented rate. Te cities o Asia

account or 40 percent o the worlds urban popula-tion, with the highest growth rate currently inChina. Tis growth is concentrated in the Yangtzeand Pearl River deltas, with the countrys largestmetropolis, Shanghai, boasting a population o morethan 20 million.4 However, recent shits in policy

to promote sustainable development in Chinasrural hinterlands have created new opportunities ordeveloping sustainable solutions, both within andbeyond the countrys dense urban centers.

One o the attempts at developing such solu-tions in China is happening on Chongming Island,a 500-square-mile (1290 sq-km) alluvial islandlocated at the mouth o the Yangtze River deltain Shanghai, which has a current population o600,000. In addition to amiliar environmental

issues, this island and its community o residentarmers sufer rom a variety o social and economicproblems. Te unattractiveness o the rural l iestyleor many has led to the loss o human and economicresources. Chongming Islands unique position-ing within the city is one o the reasons or theseproblems, but its position also makes it an excellentvenue or experimenting with urbanrural exchangeprograms oriented toward sustainable development.

Te Chongming Sustainable CommunityProject is a design research initiative led by ongjiUniversity and Studio AOan urban designthink-and-action tank ocused on sustainability.Studio AO is coordinating all the participantsin the project, including the local government oChongming Island, village communities, business

partners, and university resources.5 Te Chongminginitiative seeks to use expanded design as a new toolto promote solutions toward a sustainable uture orrural China. Trough a collaborative efort involv-ing transdisciplinary teams, knowledge is being gen-erated toward the improvement o this island and itspeople in the coming decades. Te projects visionis to make a specically Chinese example o how topractice ecological sustainability, while simultane-ously improving daily lie and socioeconomic op-portunities within a rural community. A successuloutcome in Chongming will serve as a prototype orusing the design process to improve human lie inChina and beyond (SEE figurE 1).

The basic iDea: YN anD YNG

Te setting o Chongming within Shanghai can beunderstood in terms oYin and Yangthe twin,overarching concepts o classical Chinese philosophythat interpret reality as comprised o components

dened through complementary opposition to oneanother. In Chinese thought, these seemingly op-posing principles or orces (e.g., light/dark, up/down,male/emale) are in act interconnected and inter-dependent, each gives rise to the other. Applyingthe Yin/Yangconceptual scheme to the presentcontext, we can say that the exchanges between theurban and the rural districts o Shanghai should

3. During the last centur y, andespecially since the economic

reforms of 1978, focus onChinese progress dened bymodernization has caused thehighest level of migration tourban centers in the historyof mankind. Urban prosperity,while desirable per se, hasleft rural areas increasinglyimpoverished and stigmatizedas backward. See EdwardTaylor, Microeconomics ofGlobalization, World BankReport, 2001.

4. UN-HABITAT, The State ofthe Worlds Cities, 20042005

(London: Earthscan, 2004).

5.www.tektao.com.cn. TheChongming project is plannedto fall under the auspices ofthe DESIS-China Network (www.desis-china.org).

Sse eee c w ee

s e ewee es.
http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/sdshttp://www.tektao.com.cn/http://www.desis-china.org/http://www.desis-china.org/http://www.desis-china.org/http://www.desis-china.org/http://www.tektao.com.cn/http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/sds


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be designed so as to maintain the identity o each,while complementing and reinorcing the other.

Accordingly, the Chongming SustainableCommunity Project aims to network villages on theisland to Shanghai through business and communi-cation exchanges based on and driven by commu-nity decisions. Residents live as they like, withoutsacricing their sense o place. Design, the key toolin this project, is used to interconnect the variousconstituencies within Shanghai, ostering sustain-ability by allowing people to regenerate a systembeneting their own localities. Tus, the immediatepurpose o this strategyattending to the micro-level particulars, but within a holistic, macro-levelvisionwas to develop a series o scenario-buildingprototypes. As the Chongming project seeks aboveall to create productive exchanges among some oShanghais diverse social groups and constituencies,

the result may not always be physical development(e.g., new inrastructure), but rather the develop-ment o immaterial connections among people andthe exploration o their possibilities.

renaissance ofSE J:

The chinese Term for Design

She Jiis the Chinese word or design. It originatesrom an ancient military term that means to estab-lish a strategy. Conceptually, the term consists otwo levels, ao and Qi. In ancient China, the literatiapplied the concept o the ao, or way, to under-stand human afairs, including politics, society, andculture. Artisans working on the level o materialityor operational technique were said to be employingQi. Over time, the connection between ao and Qi,and thereore the concept oShe Jiitsel, was almost

figurE 1: Map of the Chongming Sustainable Community Project process, showing all projectstakeholders: Feedback is circulated among representatives of the community, government, involvedprofessions, and business participants throughout the entire process, from inception of the conceptto the implementation of each step or prototype.


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orgotten by a Chinese culture that had come to beheavily inuenced by Western ideas.6 However, theoriginal meaning oShe Jiwith its connotationso both systematic comprehension and dynamic ap-plicationis currently being rehabilitated in Chinathrough the development o sustainable solutionssuch as those in the Chongming experiment.

A renaissance oShe Jias a designerly sensibilitycan bring a new impetus to todays challenges by

encouraging the deployment o diverse practicaltechniques within a systematic overarching strategy.Moreover, we believe such a renaissance could helporient contemporary Chinese designers in deningwhat Chinese Design is and might yet become. InChongming, She Jiis evident on both the ao andQilevels. ao can be seen in the methodology or

developing various design interventions, whereasQiis on display in the operational application and

figurE 2: Chongming Organic Food Production storyboardUsing existing resources along with designstrategy inputs, farmers are creating a system of organic agriculture linked with Shanghai. Organic farm-ing represents a new initiative for Chongming, one that promotes higher prot potential for its farmersand healthier lifestyles among residents of the city.


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tangible results o the process. As previously noted,combining ao and Qitogether makes it possibleto involve a wide range o societal constituencieswithin coordinated strategic undertakings. She Jiis thus the primary avenue or realizing sustain-able initiatives, including the efort at Chongmingto synergistically link Shanghais urban and rural

populations.

TO: Theor anD sTraTeg

As noted above, one o the basic ideas behind theChongming Sustainable Community Project isthat complementary elements cannot exist withoutone another. In particular, large cities cannot existwithout rural sustenance, whereas rural areas cannotourish without being connected to urban resourc-esand by extensionto global society. Culturesneed to be linked, but not hierarchically. In thecase o Chongming, the twin goals o promotingexchanges with the broader urban population andpreserving a specically rural experience and iden-tity are equally important components. Here, then,the goal oao-level design is to establish a rame-work that encompasses the various urban-rural,government-community, and local-global complexesinvolved in a dynamic and interactive system. Tevillages o Chongming are to be inserted into a

much larger network in which knowledge, people,goods, services, and other resources can circulatemore easily than at present (SEE figurE 2).

Q: Techniues anD Tools

On the other hand, the specic methods, tech-niques, and tools or realizing the goal oao exist,in Chinese philosophy, on the level oQi, a termconnoting the need to always respect the complexityand particularity o the immediate context. In thecase o Chongming, or example, the design teamsresearch indicated that pollution in the islandscanal is related to the decline o its public spaces. Bythe same token, when the canal is no longer a part

o the villagers daily pub-lic lie, it is much easieror it to become polluted.Creating a thriving publicspace along the canal may

be a more ecient long-term strategy, with greaterand more varied benets, than a one-time cleanupo the canal. Surveys and inquiries within the com-munity are used to discover existing work patternsand sustainable practices that can then be enlargedthrough public services or businesses, which are

designed on the basis o the residents vision and ini-tiative. Te potential or enhancing the communityis thus magnied, yielding solutions that emergeorganically rom a context o common goals, par-ticipation, and support. Specically, the Chongmingproject seeks to transcend the urban-rural thresholdby developing an array o local activities, including(but not limited to) ventures in air trade, tour-ism, home rental, education, and communicationtechnology.

Tus, a series o proposals and initiatives havebeen advanced in this project to realize the above-mentioned goals. In one, the Chongming CreativeIndustry Project, armers plan to create a centralmarket by renovating an abandoned village actorylocated along a tourism route. Te actory wouldalso house initiatives related to agriculture, ruraleducation, arts, and leisure (SEE figurE 3).

Further supporting unctions may includelaboratories and elds or organic arming andagricultural science. Some o the space can be rentedto universities or research, thereby establishing ahigher education presence on the island. Villagersand city visitors could cultivate community gardenson the actory grounds, helping to build relation-ships. Various arts venues are also planned toshowcase local and city artists and urther promotethe mutually benecial coexistence o urban andrural populations. O course, these initiatives willcreate jobs running and maintaining the diferent

6. Lou Yongqi, Calling for SheJi: Rethinking and Changingthe Changes in China, (paperpresented at the Changing theChange Conference, Torino,Italy, July 2008).

te e ee s exe e es ess se s e e skees ee ss eses.


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acilities, thereby giving members o the villagepopulation reasons to stay on the island. Te entireprocess is being developed through the collabora-tion o community members, government agencies,businesses, and designers.

conclusion

She Ji, the Chinese term or design, connotessystem and strategy as well as technique and action.Without a systematic approach, the designer canonly act in a short-term or partial rame o reer-ence, which may or may not be sustainable. Withouta dynamic, practical approach, solutions that aredeveloped will not be able to keep up with changes.Design is undamentally about conceptualizing

and modeling new ways o being and doing.7 In theChongming Sustainable Community Project, thisis being achieved by directly involving all relevantparties, including representatives o various proes-sions, government, business, and the community.In recognizing opportunities and bringing togetherdiverse constituencies to develop a shared vision,design is developing an expanded role as an agentor building networking solutions. In this context,

the role o designers is to link disparate resources soas to allow communities to maintain their identitieswhile engaging with the outside world.

At Chongming, this networked, participatory pro-cess establishes a oundation or sustainable solutions

inormed and designed by everyone involved. Teproject has the potential to reshape the urban-ruralrelationship, emphasizing the various sustainabili-tieseconomic, environmental, and socialthatChinese society will need to develop over the longterm. Te ultimate objective o this approach,thereore, is to extend the design process into societyby soliciting the active participation o all stake-holders in developing solutions to design problems.It is hoped that the holistic, systematic approachdescribed here can help overcome the old oppositions

o urban and rural, government and community,and local and global that have complicated andhindered Chinese development up to this point. Asthe Yin/Yang philosophy reveals, these entities are allequally necessary or sustainable change. Te chal-lenge o design in its newly expanded role is to elicitsolutions in a context orapid change in a bal-anced and inclusive way.

7. Nigel Cross, Design-erly Ways of Knowing(Basel:Birkhuser, 2007).

figurE 3: The Chongming Creative Industr y renovation of a village factory. The facility may become a hub

for ve villages along a planned eco-tourism route. Combining leisure with arts and education, the centerwould provide a much-needed space for community activities as well as opportunities for employmentand for higher education.


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In order to make the best use o design as a toolor community change, we have to approach it asboth a capability and a mindset, make it as widelyavailable as possible, and simultaneously pursuedesigned solutions to specic problems and promotethe overall resilience o our communities. In myexperience, we have created a wealth o techniques

and orums or bringing people into dialog abouttheir shared challenges. We have not done as muchto equip people with the tools or building theircapabilities to design solutions to those cha llenges.Ive come to this conclusion through years ohelping specic communities grapple with seriousproblems and manage change. During that time,one thing became abundantly clearour possibili-ties are enabled and limited both by our collectivecapabilities and aspirations and by our ability to beresilient, together, through change.

Our capabilities are tested by the act that many(i not most) o the situations we encounter as com-munities present us with wicked problems.1 Temost salient eature o wicked problems rom thestandpoint o design is that they dey our typicalapproach to problemsolving. When con-ronted with a problem,

we typically expect to

be able to dene the problem, analyze the problem,generate possible solutions, pick one, and execute asolution. Wicked problems, on the other hand, deyclear denition. Because they are so complex, theycan be interpreted in diferent ways. Tey are con-tinually emerging and evolving, driven by interlock-ing issues, interests, and constraints. And becausethese problems involve multiple constituencies andstakeholder groups, dening the problem is both atechnical and a political process.

In practice, this means that wicked problemsare not solvable in a traditional linear way.Understanding a wicked problem is best accom-plished by trying diferent solutions. In so doing,one sees how diferent solutions change or revealdiferent aspects o the problem and thereby changeones understanding o the problemwhich in turn

from thE toWnhallinto thE Studio:

des, de, c resee

T D

1. See Jeff Conklin, DialogueMapping: Building Shared Un-

derstanding of Wicked Problems

(New York: Wiley, 2005).

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wke es.


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calls or new solutionsand so on, in an iterativeprocess. Wicked problems are not so much solvedas they are shaped, inuenced, and changed overtime. We stop engaging them when we have madeenough progress, become engaged with diferent,more pressing problems, or simply run out o time,energy, or money.

Because we are human, the complexities o theproblems we conront are intensied by the actua lexperience o grappling with them. Designershave captured this experience using Heideggersconcept o thrownness. A act o human existence,thrownness captures both the disorientation andthe sense o possibility present in any situation call-ing or real change. Karl Weick denes thrown-ness as always [being] in the middle o something,which means re-design, interruption, resump-tion, continuity, and recontextualizing.2 Or asKees Dorst puts it, thrownness is the predicamento living in an unstable present.3 Living throughand with our thrownness, then, calls or us to beresilient. Moreover, we have to work with each otherto maintain our resilience, balancing competinginterests, ears, anxieties, ideas, and visions or theuture. With participatory methods and creativetools, design can provide a very efective path orostering and sustaining resilience both individuallyand collectively.

resilience

In essence, resilience is both a characteristic o indi-viduals and communities and a corresponding set ocapabilities. Te model that has inormed my ownwork in communities is drawn rom organizationalpsychology.4 According to this model, resilience hasthree key elements. First, it requires the staunchacceptance o realitythat is, the unswerving,courageous understanding and acceptance o whatis actually going on in a given situation. Second, itrequires a strong belie that lie is meaningul intwo senses: rst, that the universe is not completelyrandom or capriciousthings happen or a reason;second, that the universe exhibits patterns o deepcoherence and connection among seemingly discon-nected events. Finally, and o the greatest relevanceto the role o design in community change, is the

uncanny ability to improvisein other words, the

capacity to act in response to oten rapidly changingsituations while maintaining a sense o purpose anddirection.

While these elements have been developed inthe context o organizational change management,we can expand on them to create a ramework orcommunity change design. Te rst element, staunch

acceptance o reality, is critical because it keeps usrom being too optimistic and ignoring or hopingaway the tougher aspects o a situation. At the sametime, staunchly accepting reality keeps us rombeing too pessimistic, ignoring the resources andopportunities that are inevitably available in eventhe direst o circumstances. Another key aspect oreality, rom the standpoint o designing com-munity change, is that a given reality is complexbeyond the comprehension o a single observer.Reality supports multiple, sometimes even conict-ing, interpretations and understandings. Given this,part o our role as designers is to help completeor more ully understand a given situation that weare engaging. Tis is why diversity is so critical toall collective design eforts. Diverse viewpoints andexperiences provide us with a greater set o resourcesor understanding situations and or generating

ways to move orward.Te second element o resilience is a capacity or

nding meaning in situationsa capacity that

derives rom the ability to see ones experiences ina broader context and as serving a larger p

parsons journal of design strategies vol4

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