Public Lecture

The Problem of the ‘Social’ in Design

Politechnico di Milano
Polifactory, Milano
February 21, 15.00

Prof. Alison J. Clarke

Further information

Over the last decade social design has evolved as a method, as much as an output, of design practice underpinned by the boom in arts-based design research. This talk delivered as part of the PhD  Design Festival 2019 examines the origins, and some of the discontents, of this movement asking who the audience for the ‘social’ in design really is, and how far design can go in addressing the micro-politics of everyday life.

Keynote Lecture

The Other Way: Designing a Sustainable Tomorrow

London Design Museum, UK
February 22 10.00–17:30

Prof. Alison J. Clarke

Further information

The keynote addresses the issues raised in an international symposium celebrating the ways in which transdisciplinary creative practices generate new approaches to sustainable innovation. Tracing debates of the sustainable to their origins in earlier design practice, the lecture asks how a new generation of designers, liberated from the disciplinary conventions of previous generations, might address a future in which socio-environmental have moved from the periphery to the centre of design practice.