2011 DESIS symposium “Transformation Design for Public”

by Miaosen Gong

The 2nd DESIS symposium “Transformation Design for Public” was successfully organized at Wuxi and Shanghai on Oct. 31st and Nov. 1st 2011. It’s co-organized by Jiangnan University, Tongji University and Politecnico di Milano, and endorsed by DESIS network and Cumulus. Prof. Ezio Manzini was invited to be keynoter and appointed as a Guest professor of both Jiangnan University and Tongji University. Other speakers are Professors from TU/e, MIT, Napoli Univeristy, Aalto University, Tsinghua university, Hunan university, GAFA, HKDI and experts from design professionals like IDEO, Design Connect, TED and so on.

At Wuxi, after welcome speech and appointment ceremonyby Prof. XU, vice president of JU, DESIS Lab* at Jiangnan University was officially launched with an opening ceremony by Prof. Manzini and Prof. Zhong, the director of international office of JU. After keynote speech“To make things happen: triggering sustainable solutions”, there were two roundtables to respond the theme and speech from international and Chinese perspectives with dynamic interaction between panel and audience. Furthermore, there were 6 parallel sessions in the afternoon with specific topics, including 30 presentations by invited/registered speakers and professors of JU. Which offer an open platform to discuss the topics deeply.

At Shanghai, the Vice president, Prof. Wu appointed guest professor after giving a welcome speech. Prof. Manzini gave the second keynote speech “Small project, large change: scaling-up sustainable solutions”, followed with two groups of speeches from academic and professional perspectives. There were also several project presentations by professors of Tongji university and finalized with a roundtable.

This was biggest DESIS event in China in 2011. In this symposium, there were more than 45 speeches and presentations, more than 400 participants including professors and postgraduates. Thank to collaboration between 3 organizers and other partners, 2011 DESIS symposium would be a milestone of DESIS-China, and it indicates that the topics of design for social innovation have been recognizing as one of mainstream design issues in China.

* DESIS Lab of Jiangnan University was transformed from DESIS research center of Jiangnan University that was established in 2009.

To read the original blogpost, go to: http://www.desis-network.org/news/2011-desis-symposium-%E2%80%9Ctransformation-design-public%E2%80%9D

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