Changing the change

Changing the Change Conference has been organized according to the principles of sustainability, both in terms of environmentally friendly-efficiency, for what we could do, and on the base of the spirit of sharing and quality welcoming activities.
The Conference offered a highly scientific and academic agenda together with a research and a project regarding virtual spaces, physical spaces and services, thought to be coherent and sharable by Changing the Change community.
Changing the Change Conference may provide Turin with a sign of the future goals in terms of sustainability, by presenting visions, proposals and tools, which, if they are included in the Conference manifesto, would be extremely useful for our city and its local government to give new directions for the city’s future.
The Conference has been part of the Torino 2008 World Capital Design agenda, which has worked in this sense too: this year is a moment to reflect upon “flexibility”, the way through which design connects knowledge and values, reads the change and, sometimes, pinpoints new directions.

AzzeroCO₂

The preparatory step of the Conference has been designed to have a reduced impact on the environment, to eliminate the greenhouse gases emission resulting from energy consumption, use of materials, transports and staff’s activities.
The AzzeroCO₂ “curing” action regards the Po river park. This will allow the reintroduction of local flora and fauna: 35 tons of CO₂ will be eliminated thanks to this action, the same amount that would have been consumed for the preparatory phase of the conference.

The Conference sites

The Institute of Biotechnology, where we have been, has been carefully designed. We have chosen this location because a high-quality Conference requires highly expressive and functional rooms.
The 11th July dinner has been held at Castello del Valentino. This Savoy residence is especially meaningful for us: it is the headquarter of the Faculty of Architecture of Politecnico di Torino. It has been a friendly dinner party with typical local food which is a mark of our territory: the Paniere della Provincia di Torino-Basket of Typical Products of Turin Provincial Government, a very successful initiative that opted for the sustainable short food production chain: from producer to consumer.

Special opportunities

More than 100 participants used the 20 bicycles we prepared, completely free of charge, to get around the city in a more human way.
GTT Gruppo Trasporti Torinesi also offered the public transportation’s use free of charge.
A lot of exhibitions, Olivetti, una bella Società, Flexibility and Piemonte Torino Design have been kept open in the evening by the TO2008WDC circuit for Changing the Change Community, during the 3 days of the Conference.

Thanks

I finally would like to thank the sponsors (The Regional Council of Piedmont, Torino World Design Capital 2008, The Chamber of Commerce of Turin, GTT-Gruppo Trasporti Torinese, Fantoni Group, DEGA) and the staff of Politecnico di Torino, who contributed as volunteers to make this meeting of ours possible in terms of organization and reception.

Cumulus, the International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media representing 124 first class institutions from all continents, is making a commitment to building sustainable, human centered, creative societies. The Design Declaration will be signed on March 28th in the same venue where the Kyoto Treaty was signed. This event, we hope, will be an important step towards a new role of design in the transition towards a sustainable society. The Changing the Change design research conference, in July, in Torino, will be a second one. Here below, the declaration that will be singed in Kyoto is reported.

PROPOSING NEW VALUES AND NEW WAYS OF THINKING

All the people of the world now live in global and interdependent systems for living. We continue to enhance the quality of our lives by creating environments, products and services utilizing design. Design is a means of creating social, cultural, industrial and economic values by merging humanities, science, technology and the arts. It is a human-centered process of innovation that contributes to our development by proposing new values, new ways of thinking, of living, and adapting to change.

AN ERA OF HUMAN CENTERED DEVELOPMENT

A paradigm shift from technology driven development to human centered development is under way. The focus is shifting from materialistic and visible values to those, which are mental, intellectual and, possibly, less material. An era of “cultural productivity” has commenced, where the importance attributed to modes of life, values and symbols may be greater than that attributed to physical products. Design thinking stands steadfastly at the centre of this continuum. Simultaneously, this development highlights the importance of cultural traditions and the need to extend and revitalize them.

THE IMPERATIVE FOR DESIGNERS TO ASSUME NEW ROLES

Global development, and an awareness of the growth of related ecological and social problems are posing new demands and offering new opportunities for design, design education and design research. Design is challenged to redefine itself and designers must assume new roles and commit themselves to developing solutions leading to a sustainable future.

SEEKING COLLABORATION IN FORWARDING THE IDEALS OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The members of Cumulus, representing a global community of design educators and researchers, undertake the initiative, outlined in “THE KYOTO DESIGN DECLARATION”, to commit themselves to the ideals of sustainable development. Furthermore, the members of Cumulus, have agreed to seek collaboration with educational and cultural institutions, companies, governments and government agencies, design and other professional associations and NGOs to promote the ideals of, and share their knowledge about, sustainable development.

THE POWER TO MAKE FUNDAMENTAL IMPROVEMENTS TO OUR WORLD

Human-centered design thinking, when rooted in universal and sustainable principles, has the power to fundamentally improve our world. It can deliver economic, ecological, social and cultural benefits to all people, improve our quality of life, and create optimism about the future and individual and shared happiness.

In Japan, academic, industrial, and government sectors have been working together to reduce environmental burdens since the Kyoto Protocol was enacted in 1997. After a decade of commitment, an environmental efficiency of industrial products excelled. This advancement includes home electric and electronic appliances, automobiles, and architectures, expanding its effort to a wide variety of products.

These eco-products are gaining their momentum and doing great on the market. It is true that we have seen the advancement. But the fact is, though the Kyoto Protocol had promised Japan to reduce the emission of CO2 by 6% from the 1990 figure by 2010, the figure has rather increased 8%. An effective energy consumption by the expansion of eco-products is not fast enough.

This fact proves that in order to make a society more sustainable, a sole reliance on technology is not enough. What we need to focus now is to change our mass consumption-based life structure and social behavior. Even the core of design needs to shift from eco-design, where an environmental efficiency is emphasized, to sustainable design, where its design alters a value of our society and culture.

In order to achieve this goal, a workshop, the Destination 2007-2025 was held in Shirakawago, a small village, registered as the World Cultural Heritage. The venue attracted over 100 visitors from 8 different countries and during 3 days of intense workshops, it gathered numerous amounts of ideas.

Most of the idea is oriented to create low-carbon society without expanding consumptions. It is to learn from the “pre-westernized” Japanese society. Hopefully, the seeds of idea will take an initiative to create a new sustainable social model in Asia, where the region is expanding faster than ever. From westernized modernization to oriental modernization – Can Asian countries change the course of their direction to the way it is supposed to be?

These resources are to be analyzed and edited, and to be presented as a proposal at the G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit and at the Changing the Change Conference I Torino, in July 2008.

We all contribute to global warming producing carbon dioxide (CO2), methane gas and nitrous dioxide. In particular, as we well know, the emissions of CO2 are caused by almost everything we do, such as cooking, using our laptop, driving to work, flying to a symposium.

Starting just from the occasion given by this conference we have the opportunity to fight global warming by neutralizing that part of CO2 emissions coming from the event that will take to Torino over 300 researchers, most of them from foreign countries.

In fact, we believe that facing the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of this temporary event will be the first minimum objective of the Changing the Change conference, hoping to give a positive signal for a concrete containment of emissions.

Of course it has to be part of a multilevel strategy to tackle climate change proactively and it will regard many matters related to the location of the conference: from the field of the energy consumption to the one of the energy efficiency of the buildings. Anyway the organizers are working at a domestic project in order to offset our emissions through the carbon capacity capture of trees. In collaboration with AzzeroCO2, an energy service company founded in 2004 by Legambiente, Ambiente Italia and Kyoto Club they developed a project to naturally absorbe CO2 in a specific area, chosen among different national and international offsetting projects submitted by the company.

The site is a river park (Parco del Po e dell’Orba) located in the North-West of Italy close to the city of Turin where 475 local species of trees will be planted in order to counterbalance 371 tons of carbon needed for all the activities of the conference.

This is part of a larger forestry project launched by AzzeroCo2 in collaboration with the Federation of the Italian national and regional parks and with Kyoto Club. More than 10 ha will be planted in this area generating more than 500,000 t of CO2 emissions reductions in the next years. This will be monitored and verified by a certification company.

The term “social design” is relatively new in the design vocabulary. Of course, one could say that all design is social in one way or another since its products are introduced into society. But the term “social” as in “social work”, “social welfare”, or “social responsibility” also carries the connotation of serving a social good. Today, we understand “social good” to be a concept that is larger than the satisfaction of each member of society. In material terms, we now realize that it is not possible to satisfy everyone by providing the same level of goods and material consumption that is currently enjoyed by those in the most economically developed countries. We also know that consumption has its side effects. It pollutes the atmosphere and contributes to climate change; it produces waste material that is difficult to dispose of; and it absorbs resources that might be otherwise used for more beneficial purposes.

Thus, we can recognize social design as design that contributes to the social good. Recently, Archeworks, a one-year school in Chicago that focuses on social design projects, published a book called Design Denied. The book states that design which addresses social needs should be available to everyone though we know this not to be the case. So one aim of social design is to reach people who are currently not receiving the benefits of design. Another is to produce goods and services that avoid the negative effects of much that we currently produce.

Fortunately, the need to change our social habits has become more evident. Thoughtful people accept the reality of climate change. They also understand that the gap between wealthy and poor people is growing and needs to be narrowed. And they know that we cannot create infinite landfills. Many people are already addressing these problems, designers among them. The purpose of Changing the Change is to bring together people who are working in new directions that are intended to improve social wellbeing. Last June a group of designers and design educators met in Brighton, England, to discuss the future of design. The main point of their manifesto, Brighton 05/06/07, was that design’s principal purpose is human wellbeing. This is a fundamental shift from the traditional aim of putting market success first. It demands more thought about what should be designed and how. Listening to presentations of projects that are focused on these questions is a good start. From gatherings of people with shared objectives come social networks, new projects, and increased effects. That is what the organizers of Changing the Change are hoping for.