What design can do? For society?

Items Live: Design as a Social Act

10 Mayıs 2012
11 Mayıs 2012

In a special edition of Items Live, the live discussion program from Dutch design magazine Items, three up-and-coming designers from various national, cultural and trade backgrounds will share their views on connecting design to users, consumers, citizens, co-creators and stakeholders, also known as 'people'.

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Ekim Tan arguing simple design rules can respond to society's complexity. - Items Live Session Durinf What Design Can Do Conference. Image by What Design Can Do

The three designers are Daan Roosegaarde, Jimmy Loizeau and Ekim Tan. Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde is the founder of Studio Roosegaarde that works as a social design lab with a team of designers and engineers creating interactive designs that instinctively respond to sound and movement. Jimmy Loizeau has worked with James Auger in London since 2000. Their studio of Auger-Loizeau questions the process that gives birth to consumer products rather than blindly conforming to it. Architect and urban gamer Ekim Tan studied architecture in Ankara in her native country of Turkey and urban design at Delft University of Technology, where she is now taking a PhD in ‘human-driven city making’.

Items editor-in-chief Max Bruinsma will talk with the three about their work as social designers. How can design make the processes of conceiving and planning our man-made environment more interactive and participatory? How can design become a critical tool for imagining a more socially connected future? Co-host of this Items Live event will be Jonathan Maas, author of Wereldverbeteraars, a book on unruly thinkers who help us envision a better world.