Being a designer means being an optimist: given the problems, all the problems even the most difficult, all we can do is to presume there is a possibility of solving them, not because we cannot see the difficulties (designers must also be realists), but because we have no alternative. To be designers we must make proposals, and we cannot but base these on such opportunities as we come across.

It seems to me that, faced with a world drifting rapidly towards catastrophe, we need this designer realism-optimism more then ever. We have to see the problems, but also to think that in spite of everything, it is possible to solve them; we must get down to finding solutions. Maybe this is why we are all here today.

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[Changing the Change website]

[DESIGN RESEARCH AGENDA for SUSTAINABILITY]

There are two interesting different interpretations of the term flexibility: flexibility as openness, that is, able to allow a variety of uses; and flexibility as evolutionary potential, that is, able to change in time in relation to context alterations. Two signs that seem to me to be very useful to face the double transition with which we have to confront nowadays: the underway one, toward the society of networks and knowledge and the necessary one, which has still a long way to go, towards sustainability.

Referring to design, openness and evolutionary potential are, in my opinion, interesting topics at all levels: from the one that concerns the simplest material products to the one related with the most complex socio-technical systems. In the following notes I will focus, specifically, on the socio-technical systems, that is, the conjunction of products and services on which our life is based on…

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In the present times, designers have to operate in a society in which, as contemporary sociology points out, “everybody designs”. In other words, they have to consider themselves part of a complex mesh of designing networks: the emerging, interwoven networks of individual people, enterprises, non-profit organizations, local and global institutions that are using their creativity and entrepreneurship to solve problems, to open new possibilities and, sometimes, to take some concrete steps towards sustainability…

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Given the urgency, dimension and complexity of the problem to be faced, we must conceive an articulated research programme: a worldwide collaborative research programme into design for sustainability, targeted to catalyse and focus all the available design energies.

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We organised with Slow Food Italy a one-day Slow+Design seminar on the “slow approach to distributed economy and sustainable sensoriality” in Milan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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