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.

The largest furniture industry in Japan has inaugurated, with Enzo Mari, a program called “Un milione di alberi di Sugi – One million Sugi trees”, a type of wood that grows widely and easily in Japan, used to re-propose furniture of the Japanese rural tradition. Alessi promotes Twergi series, small objects for the kitchen and table, manufactured by communities of craftsmen from some of the Alpine valleys in Piedmont and distributed with success worldwide. These examples, chosen among so many, stress the importance of the bond between industry and craftsmanship, tradition and local materials.

In this direction, in our Region we have attempted to work not with individual craftsmen but with a number of communities. We have established networks for knowledge and promotion, provided technological and business assistance to the enterprises. Rather than closed projects, because we know how much craftsmen value their independence, we provided “guidelines”, open to freedom of interpretation of the craft community in respect of certain shared rules. We have defined sustainable protocols for production, and outlined scenarios of consumption that configure products not exclusively for connoisseurs or nostalgics, but for everyone is able to appreciate quality. The territory, in this sense, becomes the first client of the typical craft product: the bars and restaurants, the offices of the institutional communities, the shops selling typical products like foods, are filled with new products, becoming the site of the promotion.
For this reason, “Artigianato Comunità Design” is the subtitle of the exhibition entitled MANUfatto that, if you come to Turin for the conference, we can visit together in the splendid framework of a historic but out-of-the-way location that, like typical craftsmanship, has the same problems of visibility, communication and survival.

Welcome!