Teaching sustainable design
Published: 18.09.08
How do we teach sustainable design in the UK, around Europe, and beyond? This is the question posed by a three-day event organised by the Faculty of Arts & Architecture at the University of Brighton between Friday 19 September and Sunday 21 September 2008.
Entitled '360o – Charting New Territory in Sustainable Design Education', the event will include a day of workshops and talks at 100% Design in London on Friday 19 September, a one-day conference at the university on Saturday 20 September, and an optional tour of eco-architecture sites around Kent and Sussex on Sunday 21 September.
The conference brings together international design and architecture educators in sustainable design education; practitioners interested in higher education and continuing professional development (CPD) in sustainable design, and students of design.
360o forms part of the work of DEEDS (Design Education for Sustainability), an EU-funded project that aims to integrate sustainability into mainstream design education and practice across Europe by providing new educational models and tools (www.deedsproject.org).
The conference will be a dissemination of the work of DEEDS over the last two years and will bring together academics, students and practitioners from across Europe to discuss latest sustainable design thinking, teaching and methodologies. There is also an invitation to contribute to DEEDS with a 'pod', discrete units of information and Teaching & Learning (T&L) resources, which will add to the emerging body of knowledge and resources in sustainable design education.
Karen Blincoe, DEEDS Director, says: "The 360o conference is a chance for sustainable design practitioners to meet from various disciplines - academics and practitioners – to introduce new thinking into the process of designing, to understand and explore current and new methodologies and practices with the aim to future-proof the design profession. This is the first phase of the DEEDS project and we want DEEDS to act as a 'resource stop', a 'wikipedia' for Design, Education and Sustainability."
The project lead is ICIS (International Centre for Creativity, Innovation and Sustainability, Denmark) with other project partners: Academy of Fine Arts, Poznan, Poland; BEDA (the Bureau of European Design Associations); SERI (the Sustainable Europe Research Institute, Germany), and the Faculty of Arts & Architecture, University of Brighton, UK.
Speakers over the two days at 100% Design and the University of Brighton include Anne-Marie Willis, design educator from Sydney, Australia, who was a Founder-Director of the EcoDesign Foundation and now works with Tony Fry at Team D / E / S; Alastair Fuad-Luke, author of the Eco-Design Handbook (Thames & Hudson); Karen Blincoe, Director, Schumacher College, Devon; William Wong, Clore Leadership Programme Fellow, Royal Society of Arts & Manufacture (RSA); Susannah Hagan, author, Taking Shape: A New Contract Between Architecture and Nature (Architectural Press) and Head of the MA Architecture: Sustainability+Design at University of East London (UEL); Jonathan Crinion, Jonathan Crinion Associates; Jonathan Chapman, co-director of the Inheritable Futures Laboratory, If:Lab and University of Brighton senior lecturer; Anne Chick, educator and Director, Sustainable Design Research Centre, Kingston University, and Rob Holdway, Director, Giraffe Innovation, currently working with L’Oreal, Sainsbury’s and British Airways.
For more details, press passes or interviews with speakers, email jo@jomoulds.co.uk, DEEDS Project and Environmental marketing & PR, or call 07968 801467.
For more information and to book a place, email info@deedsproject.org.
Image courtesy of Dr Mitchell Joachim, Terreform, New York.
