Mugendi M'Rithaa

Mugendi M'Rithaa, Marco Ogê e Carla Cipolla no jantar do II ISSD/SBDS, em São Paulo.
Mugendi M'Rithaa leciona no Departamento de Design Industrial na Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), Cidade do Cabo. Foi conferencista no Quênia e Botsuana. Desenvolveu sua formação no EUA, Quênia, Índia e África do Sul. Ele é membro do DESIS-Africa.

Mugendi M'Rithaa, Marco Ogê and Carla Cipolla at the II ISSD/SBDS, in São Paulo.
Mugendi M'Rithaa teaches at the Department of Industrial Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), Cape Town. He has previously lectured in Kenya and Botswana. He was educated in Kenya, USA, India, and South Africa. He is a DESIS-Africa member.

DESIS meeting in Sao Paulo-Brazil (NEWS)

By Carla Cipolla:

Dear all,

writing to give you news about the workshop, round table and DESIS
network meeting on ISSD conference in Sao Paulo. Other than Brazilian
members, also Mugendi and Andrea were there, so you can all help to
gave an overview of what were going on there.


WORKSHOP

The workshop has gathered the higher number of participants (compared
with the other paralell ones). It was a good sign of interest!!
As it was not a "closed" workshop (i.e., only for DESIS members) so it
was necessary to start up from the beggining. So, to introduce DESIS
theme, we have used the structure Francois proposed (thank you
Francois, people have asked about you!) that was able to give an
overview. It was a very short workshop (only 4 hours) so it was not
in the spirit of DESIS09, but it was really an introduction.

But not only because we went further:

- participants (non-members) have better understood the meaning and
the contents of the DESIS Network and have raised many questions,
particularly regarding how the network operates and how they could
engage:

a) regarding undergraduate students. It was raised the question about
how undergraduate students could participate on DESIS Network. One
of them have talked about to stimulate students (students association)
to collect and discuss cases, creating a kind of "spontaneous" and
"viral" iniciative, using esisting platforms in the web, etc., totally
student initiative A discussion about what he have called "other kind
of Design". He thinks that it will have a high appeal with design
students. We were very happy with his interest (and he have contacts
with students associations), let's see how it will go on.... (hope
well!)

b) regarding design offices: a design studio leader, Fernanda Martins,
have a studio in Amazon region and have participated in the workshop.
She also have asked how studios could participate and engage in the
network. She have a wonderful work with mobile phones, young people,
tourism, in the last World Social Forum. It was financed by Oi (a
mobile operator) and now (after the financial support finished), she
is working to keep the work going on. She have also other works and
we have talked a lot (work on food issues, for example). She
collaborates a lot with NGO, so we could also reach them. She thinks
that other studios could engage also.

For both cases, we will have to identify here in Brazil how to
articulate with our efforts these two profiles.

We have discussed about contents: how to identifiy what is "social
innovation" in each country.... the character of possible "enabling
solutions" and how to design them. The discussions were based on
cases from our international databank, also those being collected by
DESIS09 process in Brazil. There was a long discussion about how to
identify and classify cases as "social innovations" , the concept of
"innovation" and "social", considering also specific local levels
(neighbourhood, city, country) and also the architecture of each
case... (top-down. totally bottom-up, NGO o non-NGO, etc...etc).
Participants were really motivated to discuss that.


ROUND TABLE

The round table took place in the end of the first day. It was
composed by Mugendi, Vezzoli, Lia Krucken, Cyntia Malaguti
(DESIS-Brasil member) and me. The objective was to gather these
keynote speakers of the day and open a dialogue with the public (I was
acting as a mediator). The debate was particularly articulated to the
theme of design and social innovation (DESIS). Some points were
discussed (just inserting the ideas raised, without commenting it):

- the attention that social innovation and design does not become one
more "fashion" in design practice
- design practice that is based and promote human interpersonal
relationships and express their culture
- the (new) skills involved in this approach to design and how to
structure courses to prepare students to deal with this
- the designer that is involved himself/herself on what is being designed
- coerence (sustainable designer, non only sustainable design)
- the importance to structure a serious criteria to evaluate social
innovation cases considering also their environmental impact,
- the connection and feedback to "local communities": after you have
collected a cases does not only "disappear", i.e. to be responsible on
that
- the issue of intelectual property, communitarian property, ecc, ways
of giving recognition to original ideas (or traditional knowledge)
- the colaboration between LENs and DESIS (also told in the Vezzoli speech)


INTERNATIONAL DESIS.

also if other collegues were missing, It was a "big" DESIS meeting
gathering Colombia, Africa and Brasil. Andrea Mendoza, Mugendi
M'Rithaa and myself (with other DESIS-Brazil) members have presented
their activities.

We have discussed also how to going on in the network. Two issues was proposed:

- the same strategy: choose a conference (the one in China on which
Ezio will chair a session about social innovation?) on which to
present papers, but in this time organize a "closed" DESIS meeting,
only for members. In Brazil we have discussed relevant issues in the
open workshop, we have met each other (Andrea didn't know Mugendi
before) but we think now is time to really have our specific and
focused meeting.

- the papers would be necessarily written between DESIS members (not
individual submission) as a way to create, reinforce and/or manifest
our connections and possible/actual collaborations


DESIS AFRICA AND BRASIL

Mugendi and Stuart Warden (Mugendi's colleague) have visited Rio, and
our university. We have streghten our collaborationon DESIS issues
(also formally) and we are planned also to visit Cape Town in February
for and event DESIGN INDABA. Common issues were defined as a common
ground for our work (in extreme synthesis) pass through tourism,
mobile, food and, in paralell, entrepreneurship promotion


POSITIVE RESULT

We considered that the ISSD conference was a relevant moment to the
network as we have presented ourself in a international event,
creating also a diffusion and recognition (and interest) for our
activities.

We had the opportunity to thanks the ISSD conference organizers for
all the support given to DESIS network activities (Aguinaldo dos
Santos -DESIS member, Monica Moura e Jofre Silva)


Best wishes for you all,
Carla

DESIS Workshop

Aconteceu em São Paulo, nos dias 05 e 06 de novembro, durante o II Simpósio Internacional sobre Design Sustentável (ISSD)/II Simpósio Brasileiro de Design Sustentável (SBDS), o Workshop DESIS09 (Design para a Inovação Social e Sustentabilidade).

O workshop faz parte da série de workshops denominados DESIS09, realizados precedentemente na China, África e Colômbia por membros da rede internacional DESIS (www.desis-network.org). Houve um estímulo a aplicação no Brasil da metodologia DESIS09 que, partindo da apresentação e discussão de casos de inovação social, promove um exercício de design, buscando exemplificar soluções e estratégias para o aprimoramento e difusão daqueles casos que possuem reconhecido valor em termos sociais e ambientais.

O workshop, aberto ao público, foi conduzido por membros nacionais e internacionais rede DESIS (Design and Innovation for Sustainability) sob a coordenação de Carla Cipolla (DESIS Brasil).

DESIS é uma rede internacional que reúne escolas de design e outros atores interessados em promover e dar suporte à ações relativas ao design para a inovação social e sustentabilidade. E´uma organização no-profit, concebida como uma rede de parceiros colaborando em um espírito peer-to-peer e articulada em diversas redes DESIS locais (China, Brazil, Colômbia, USA, África, Europa).

Além dos participantes do evento que se inscreveram no whorkshop e de Carla Cipolla (DESIS Brasil), estavam presentes alguns representantes da rede DESIS International: Mugendi M'Rithaa (DESIS Africa), Andrea Mendoza (DESIS Colombia), Liliane Chaves e Marco Ogê (DESIS Brasil).

Palestra Carla Cipolla

Currículo resumido de Carla Cipolla

Doutora em Desenho Industrial pelo Politecnico di Milano, Italia (2007), possui mestrado em Engenharia de Produção (2002) e graduação em Desenho Industrial (1997) pela Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Atualmente é professora visitante em Design de Serviços no Politecnico di Milano e pesquisadora PRODOC no Programa de Engenharia de Produção da COPPE-UFRJ. Atuou durante quatro anos como pesquisadora em doutoramento e um ano como pesquisadora contratada no Politecnico di Milano, INDACO, na unidade de pesquisa Design and Innovation for Sustainability (DIS) coordenada pelo prof. Ezio Manzini, com a qual colabora até hoje. Nesta unidade de pesquisa esteve envolvida no desenvolvimento e gestão de diversos projetos de pesquisa e atividades internacionais, com destaque para o papel de secretaria científica e coordenadora editorial da conferência internacional "Changing the Change: Design Visions, Proposals and Tools", organizada pelo Politecnico di Milano em uma iniciativa promovida pelo ICSID- International Council of Societies of Industrial Design e com o suporte de ICOGRADA, CUMULUS - International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media, dentre outros. Atualmente atua como "guest editor" do periodico "peer-reviewed" ARTIFACT (Taylor & Francis/Routledge). Tem experiência na área de Desenho Industrial com ênfase no tema emergente do "Design de Serviços" no qual desenvolveu uma das primeiras teses de doutorado. Outras áreas de atuação são Design para a Inovação Social e para o Desenvolvimento Local Sustentável.

Carla Cipolla

Confirmada a vinda da professora Dra. Carla Cipolla a Florianópolis. Carla participará da banca do mestrando Marco Ogê e ministrará palestra sobre design e inovação social.

Currículo resumido de Carla Cipolla
Doutora em Desenho Industrial pelo Politecnico di Milano, Italia (2007), possui mestrado em Engenharia de Produção (2002) e graduação em Desenho Industrial (1997) pela Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Atualmente é professora visitante em Design de Serviços no Politecnico di Milano e pesquisadora PRODOC no Programa de Engenharia de Produção da COPPE-UFRJ. Atuou durante quatro anos como pesquisadora em doutoramento e um ano como pesquisadora contratada no Politecnico di Milano, INDACO, na unidade de pesquisa Design and Innovation for Sustainability (DIS) coordenada pelo prof. Ezio Manzini, com a qual colabora até hoje. Nesta unidade de pesquisa esteve envolvida no desenvolvimento e gestão de diversos projetos de pesquisa e atividades internacionais, com destaque para o papel de secretaria científica e coordenadora editorial da conferência internacional "Changing the Change: Design Visions, Proposals and Tools", organizada pelo Politecnico di Milano em uma iniciativa promovida pelo ICSID- International Council of Societies of Industrial Design e com o suporte de ICOGRADA, CUMULUS - International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media, dentre outros. Atualmente atua como "guest editor" do periodico "peer-reviewed" ARTIFACT (Taylor & Francis/Routledge). Tem experiência na área de Desenho Industrial com ênfase no tema emergente do "Design de Serviços" no qual desenvolveu uma das primeiras teses de doutorado. Outras áreas de atuação são Design para a Inovação Social e para o Desenvolvimento Local Sustentável.

DESIS Network website

DESIS is a network of schools of design and other schools, institutions, companies and non-profit organizations interested in promoting and supporting design for social innovation and sustainability. It is a light, no-profit organization, conceived as a network of partners collaborating in a peer-to-peer spirit.It is articulated in several DESIS-Local (that are sub-networks within a specified local area). DESIS-International is therefore the framework where the different DESIS-Local coordinate themselves and where some global initiatives are taken.

More information:

http://www.desis-network.org/