Chapter Proposals for Heritage as a path to innovation: a reflection on European Design in the near future (March 2015)

Website: http://www.masterofeuropeandesign.com/
Deadline for submission of notice of interest: 2 March 2015

Recently, a wealth of discourses is proposing design as a discipline capable of bridging the gap between academic research and everyday applications, innovation theories and companies’ capacities, cultural mixes and society/citizenship renewal. However, rather than benefiting from these interests, design is often squeezed into too many faulty statistics and incomplete reports, that make the disciplinary field increasingly slippery. Design is infinitely expanding its interests: from products to services, systems, cultures, strategies, citizenship, and so on. Issues are requiring further investigation, while the complexity and the turbulence of the actual socio-economical system are seeking a clearer disciplinary focus, that could easily communicate design to all potentially interested parties – from companies to policy makers, and citizens.
How can we map the contemporary/future practices of design?
Which are the important shifts to be proposed/envisaged in design education?
Which topics are relevant for current design PhD paths?
What would a European perspective on this disciplinary shift look like?

NORDES 20115: Design Ecologies: Challenging anthropocentrism in the design of sustainable futures (June 2015, Stockholm Sweden)

Dates: 7-10 June 2015
Location: Konstfack – University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm, Sweden
Website: http://nordes.org/nordes2015
Deadline for submissions: 7 January 2015

Design hinges a natural-artificial continuum through humans’ natural capacity to produce what we call ‘the artificial’. At a time when human activity is threatening biodiversity and causing severe climate change, it becomes obvious that natural and artificial systems can no longer be conceived in isolation but only in relation to each other – or indeed as one.

The coupling of natural and artificial systems poses challenges due to its complexity and partly reveals the anthropocentrism that has traditionally characterised design. Several questions arise in this context. How can design practices embrace pluralism by recognising, in the manifestation of design itself, biological as well as cultural diversity? In other words, how do we in design, and beyond, move from the kind of ego-system we seem to be so trapped in towards the kind of eco-system everyone and everything can gain from? How are designers, educators and researchers of design currently engaging with these challenges, and how might or should they engage with them in the near future? Designers in Scandinavia have shaped and influenced many local human societies to an important extent through a legacy of democratic and user-centred values. How can these be extended to acknowledge and celebrate humans’ cohabitation on a global scale to also include the myriad of all other existing species and systems at alternative scales in time and space? How can the various design practices be genuinely sensitive to ecological complexity? And how can they be understood, designed and studied in relation to each other – or indeed as a whole?

Making Autonomy: Design, Material and Visual culture in Latin America (April 2015, Aberdeen Scotland)

Dates: 17-18 April 2015
Location: University of Aberdeen, Scotland
Website: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/events/slas-2015
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 28 November 2014

Organised by Dr. Livia Rezende (V&A/RCA History of Design Programme, Royal College of Art, London, UK) & Dr. Patricia Lara-Betancourt (Research Fellow, Modern Interiors Research Centre, Kingston University, UK)

Panel to be held at the 51st Society for Latin American Studies Conference.

Special Issue of Architecture and Culture: Architecture and the Spaces of Information (Feb 2015)

Website: http://www.ahra-architecture.org/architectureandculture/issue/architecture_the_spaces_of_information/
Deadline for submissions: 17h00 GMT Monday 16th February 2015

Call for submissions: Architecture and Culture, vol. 4, no. 1: Architecture & the Spaces of Information
Ruth Blacksell and Stephen Walker, Editors.

Special Issue of Intl Review of Social Research: Culture, Market and Society – Between marketization of culture and culturalization of market (Dec 2014)

Website: http://www.irsr.eu
Deadline for submission: 1 December 2014

This special issue will be published as Volume 5, Issue 1, February 2015.

Guest editors: Philippe Chantepie (Ecole Polytechnique-Telecom Paris-Tech / Orange), Anda Becu=00 (National Institute for Research and Cultural Training), Dan Eugen Raiu (Babe-Bolyai University)

In the last decades of the 20th century the academic research has become aware of and interested in the changes brought by the industrialization and democratization of culture. Whatever the concepts used to define these changes – “information society”, “new economy”, “creative economy”, “knowledge-based economy”, or “network society”, they reflect the interest in the relation between culture, society and economy. Mass society corresponds to a high scale of production, distribution and consumption of cultural artifacts and services. In this context, the art for the sake of art becomes questionable and this has transformed the cultural field and the artists as well. A new definition of culture, more extensive and inclusive, was needed to express different values and practices. Authors like Pierre Bourdieu or Richard Florida opened the debate, by bringing into the attention of academic world social and cultural practices ignored before and they launched a new approach in their research field.

CfP: Cumulus Conference Milan Italy 2015 – The Virtuous Circle

The Virtuous Circle of Design Culture and Experimentation

Cumulus Conference during EXPO Milan 2015

June 3 -6, 2015

Hosted by Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

Deadline for submission: UPDATED November 24, 2014

AIS/Design Storia e Ricerche #5 (April 2015)

Contact: editors@aisdesign.org and cc: journal@aisdesign.org
Deadline for submission of abstracts: UPDATED 10 October 2014

Designers and Writing in the Twentieth Century
edited by Fiorella Bulegato, Maddalena Dalla Mura and Carlo Vinti

AIS/Design. Storia e Ricerche is a peer-reviewed online journal promoted by the Italian Society of Design Historians and dedicated to the advancement of the history and historiography of design.

Issue No. 5, which inaugurates the editorial programme for the years 2015-2016, coordinated by Fiorella Bulegato, Maddalena Dalla Mura and Carlo Vinti, will be dedicated to the relationship between designers and writing and to investigating the impact it has had on the development of the culture of design in the twentieth century.

Special Issue of Wi: Journal of Mobile Media: Mobile Trash (Nov 2014)

Website: http://technotrash.org/cfp-mobile-trash-2016/
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 1 November 2014

EDITED BY MEL HOGAN & ANDREA ZEFFIRO (JANUARY 2016)

For this special issue of Wi: Journal of Mobile Media [wi.mobilities.ca], we are gathering contributions that address the idea of ‘mobile trash.’

The intention of this issue is to reconfigure the concepts of ‘mobile’ and ‘mobilities’ in relation to trash, by its various definitions and formations, from new materialism, feminism, media ecology, media archaeology, and queer frameworks.

Closed Systems / Open Worlds (August 2014)

Contact:  ClosedandOpenBook@gmail.com
Deadline for précis: 1 August 2014

Edited by: Jeremy Hunsinger (Wilfrid Laurier University), Jason Nolan (Ryerson University) & Melanie McBride (York University)

This book will consist of explorations at the boundaries of virtual worlds as enclosed but encouraging spaces for exploration, learning, and enculturation. Game/worlds like Second Life, OpenSim, Minecraft, and Cloud Party are providing spaces for the construction of alternatives and reimaginings, though frequently they end up more as reproductions. We seek to challenge those spaces and their creativities and imaginings.

EAD11: 11th Conf of the European Academy of Design: The value of design research (April 2015, Paris France)

Dates: 17-19 April 2015
Location: Paris Descartes University – Paris College of Arts
Website: http://www.europeanacademyofdesign.org 

Design today is increasingly being recognized as creating value – whether for cultural and collective intelligence, for embedding new technology into new behaviours, for fostering or acting as a force for change in societies and for companies confronted with complex problems. This value is based on design research within a large variety of settings and scientific backgrounds. The gestalt of the conference is “the whole is more than just the sum of its parts”. Taking this principle to heart, the conference will bring together all stakeholders in design research and design process innovation. University labs, design schools, and R&D departments from industries have been invited.