Ezio Manzini says..

So lets begin …
With inspiring words from our key note speaker Exzio Manzini

Lessons learnt. After many years of researches and experiences on sustainability, and on design for sustainability, some major lessons have been learnt:
• Radical system innovations: no single product or service proposal can be considered as a real step towards sustainability.
• A new sense of “the local”: sustainability calls for valorization of existing physical, social and cultural local resources.
• A new idea on well-being: the expectations in terms of quality of life have to be modified in order to live better consuming less.

Working hypothesis. Facing these largely shared ideas, some working hypotheses can be done:
• The transition towards sustainability will be a large system discontinuity, prepared by a multiplicity of oriented local system changes and driven by emerging visions of the future.
Designers (and design researchers) may play a relevant role conceiving and promoting of scenarios of sustainable ways of living and solution based on local system changes).
• The reduction of tangible products has to be (more than) compensated by increasing the quality of the commons (i.e. the social and environmental common goods) and the degree of satisfaction (i.e. subjects as agents of their wellbeing).
• A new design knowledge is needed to shift their focus from tangible goods to commons and form user-centred design to an actor-centred design (i.e. to design for active people endowed with capabilities and will of using them).

Ezio Manzini Sep 07