Friday, 4 November
Design awareness took on the leading role for the discussion panel that opened the day on Friday.
Päivi Tahkokallio, CEO of Tahkokallio Design+, tried to broaden the outlook of the attendees: “We are often focused on design, and this reflects what Molinari said: that it is not a question of trying to convince others about design, but to show the results that design can achieve. What can we do at global level? Proximity works, but it is relative. When you think that you have understood, we change the perspective. I believe that this is relevant if we want to be successful as a community that wants to change things.”
Dr Brandon Gien, CEO of Good Design Australia, showed that unity is strength in the case of his country. The Australian council, founded over 60 years ago, is formed by figures from different areas, not only designers, and the result has been a totally revised strategy in the food and culture sectors via the circular economy. “Good design solves problems, the best design prevents them.”
Whilst with “Design awareness: can we make it mainstream?” Alok Nandi, professor of design, creativity and innovation, convinced his audience that “we cannot generate experiences, but we can generate the conditions that enable these experiences.” According to Nandi, we are blocked by the problem/solution dichotomy: “We have to go further and understand the paradoxes in our context and requestion the systems.” At the end of the day, “Design is about making interactions between fiction, function and form.”