Der Designer Florian Pfeffer hat ein wildes Potpourri aus inspirierenden Projekten, Methoden und Ideen zusammengestellt. Der Hermann Schmid Verlag hat es veröffentlicht. Die Verlegerin Karin Schmidt-Fridrichs sprechen gemeinsam über “Die neue Rolle der Gestaltung in einer veränderten Welt”.

Das Buch kann ich jedem Gestalter ans Herz legen, am besten zusammen mit dem Buch Transformationsdesign von Harald Welzer und Bernd Sommer, in dem beide präzise und eloquent Leitlinien für eine zukunftsfähige Gestaltung skizzieren. Welzer/Sommer liefern den fundierten Diskurs, Pfeffer ein Feuerwerk von Ansätzen und Inspirationen.

Einziger Wermutstropfen für mich als postmateriellen Bücherliebhaber: “To Do: …” gibt’s nicht als eBook, und dass obwohl die vielen Querverweise im Buch geradezu nach einem interaktiven Medium schreien. Transformationsdesign hingegen gibt’s aus als elektrisches Buch, und das sogar ohne Kopierschutz. Gute Ideen müssen weiter gegeben werden!

Danke Hans Höger für’s organisieren dieser Lezione Aperta!

Christof Gassner: Lifestyle oder Müsli: Alltag, Ökologie, Design

Generiert eine neue Thematik neue Formen der visuellen Kommunikation?

Kann sich auf dem Markt der Massenmedien ein alternatives Projekt mit einem alternativen Design durchsetzen?

Wie viel (Basis-)demokratie verträgt Gestaltung?

Mehr zu Christof Gassner und seinem Vortrag

To foster understanding, collaboration and co-design with our event we brought together divers persons, groups, practices and discourses – hoping that they work together in fruitful ways. And they did :) The setting we prepared, the tools and process we offered proofed to be useful. And above all, the persons and groups we invited were great!

We got plenty of very positive feedback, like “… using a very real local issue added so much tangible value to the experience as a opportunity for learning.” wrote Joe Shaw. The workshops showed that designers can get people work together to design and develop solutions. Within such creative processes not only products and services are designed, but the shared experience of successfully designing and producing together, is an outcome by its own. On top of this some relations created in such processes keep on working together, for example between the both initiatives L’Orto Semi Rurali and AKRAT in case of the workshop with Cecilia Palmer. The role of the designer as a facilitator works.

Some more praise: “I really appreciated the critical and alternative approach of the invited speakers.” (Andreas Trenker). And I was happy that the divers discourses completed to each other, in some cases it appeared as if they would have been prepared together as the two talks of Susanne Elsen and of Open State.

With her discourse on Eco-Social Transformation Susanne laid the ground for the practical approaches and examples Open State presented directly after her talk.

There are be many other things to mention and to show. We will soon publish a documentation, with all talks as videos and some more documents, among other the real-time-booklets that where produced by during the event by Nina & Elletra (Words & Ideas), Tobia (Photography), Philip &  Amin (Design and much more, always with great efficiency and beauty). Thank you! And thanks to all the many volunteers!

Proceedings will be published somewhen next year. In the meanwhile we start preparing the next edition of BY DESIGN OR BY DISASTER, which might get going already in winter 2013. We will change setting and focus, because winter is not summer, and we will also consider the critical feedback, like the remark of Brave New Alps, who wished to have more time after the conferences to deepen issues in a discussion. Therefor we will foresee a more time for dialog after the talks next time. Ursula Tischner, who is currently organizing the sustainability maker convention (October 15, Cologne), wished there would have been a real party with dancing. I can only agree, saying with Emma Goldman: “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution!”. More critical feedbacks and ideas are very welcome!

One thing did not work out at all: the incredibly committed and excellent cook Armin did get only very few donations for PREM PRASAD, the initiative providing food in the street of india. But fortunately you can also donate online. If you liked the food and the service, please give something!

Last but not least: I am happy to continue the collaboration with Alvise Mattozzi. Our both characteristics and competencies complete each other. And next time we get in a third person, which is more straight forward than both of us, too ;-)

See more images on FB.

provides and creates tools for a consciuos designing of our future which will be particularly challenging, and demanding creative processes beyond familiar dimensions.
It is about desiging the space between people: the political, social, artistic, scientific, economic,
philosophical, spiritual, practical space.
It is an artproject by people of various professional fields who like to work together in projects, grow in scale, scope and capacity through collaborative interdisciplinary work. Their common basis is an open
definition of creativity which does not exclude any field of work. These collectives share, at their core, an
idea and a belief that creativity is our single most valuable resource. The only resource providing
solutions for the dramatic global chaos we face.
Art is critique on a mechanistic way of thinking.

found on utopiatoolbox.org
They just published a UTOPIA TOOLBOX book [mainly in German language]. You can take a look over there.

Each workshop accepts a maximum of 16 participant. Please apply until 8 of September.

Participants from Bolzano hosting guests from elsewhere, can register for free – please inform Hannelore Schwabl about your offer and register until 8th of September. If you need free accommodation, please write an request to Hannelore.

Find more information on our FAQ page.

In our conference and workshops we – Alvise Mattozzi and me – bring together various competences in order to learn from each other and to experiment practices of transformative design.

On this blog we will collect related material. We are happy about comments, proposals and critic. The rest of this web site is under development. More information on the program will be added continuously. Get the newsletter to stay up-to-date.

Registration for the conference day and for the 2-day workshops starts on july 22nd.

We thank Amin Al Hazwani and Philip Santa for the excellent design and the development of this web site.