News

International Conference Green-Being September 22 15.09.2022

International conference "Green-Being: WTF?*"

P R O G R A M

September 22.09, Baltic Manufactory 

10:00   Ilona Gurjanova (EST)

Designer, curator    

EAD (Estonian Association of Designers) President, Main organiser of Tallinn Design Festival

INTRO                                               

10:15   David Kusuma PhD (USA)    

WDO (World Design Organisation) President  

Present Senior VP of Product Management & Innovation at Oregon Tool

WELCOME SPEECH! CIRCULAR ECONOMY                                        

10:25   John Thackara (UK)              

An author, curator and professor, “Thackara has established a global reputation as a cutting edge design expert" (Wall Street Journal ) 

An author, curator and professor, John curated the celebrated Doors of Perception conference for 20 years - first in Amsterdam, later across India. He was commissioner of the UK social innovation biennial Dott 07, the French design biennbattry ial City Eco Lab, and the 2019 Urban-Rural expo in Shanghai. He is a visiting professor at Tongji University in Shanghai, Polimi in Milan, and SVA in New York, and is a Senior Fellow at the Royal College of Art in London.  

SUSTAINABILITY YOU CAN TOUCH  

            "Sustainability Reporting. Net Zero. Climate Finance. ESG. Green New Deal. A lot is happening at a strategy and policy level - but how directly do these initiatives touch people in their daily working lives?

                        A big majority of today’s workers - in offices, and remote - want to participate in real-world activities that have a positive impact on their local environment and communities*. And designers are well placed to create these connections between thought and action.

                        The good news? Opportunities are all around us. John Thackara describes companies that, helped by design, green the streets around their offices; set up biocanteens with local farmers; plant micro-forests on disused land; ‘daylight‘ lost rivers; help their city become a national park; organise bioblitzes with local schools - and many more."      

11:00   Kai Realo (EST)          

Ragn-Sells , chairman of the board        

Kai Realo is a top manager with long-term experience who works as the chairman of the board of the environmental company Ragn-Sells. Prior to that, Kai worked for 16 years at Statoil/Circle K, the last 9 years as the company's general manager. The career change from retail trade to environmental issues was prompted by the desire to promote the green revolution and contribute to more sustainable ways of working. Kai is also the chairman of the council of the Central Union of Estonian Employers and belongs to the council of ELRON. In 2018, Kai was elected the best manager in Estonia at the Äripäev management conference. 

ON THE WAY TO MORE SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION    

            Kai talks about the circular economy and consumer habits, i.e. how to satisfy people's need for individuality and personalization with the help of a few resources and new technologies.            

11:30   Eray Sertac Ersayin (Turkey)

Board Member of WDO. President of Industrial Designers Society of Turkey 

Eray Sertac Ersayin is an experienced design professional, who has been managing design initiatives globally, these include various industries, NGOs, societies and national government projects. In the past 14 years, organizing several international design events such as Design Turkey, Design Evaluation Systems for the Ministry of Trade, and Turkish Exports Assembly. He has been deeply engaged in integrating designers with the government and industry. These collaborations bring awareness of SDGs through responsible production and consumption in various sectors. There are approaches that can implement responsible production and responsible consumption criteria. We need to assess this power, which is very important to our planet.                    

CIRCULAR JOURNEY - FROM THE IDEA TO THE FINAL PRODUCT OR THE SYSTEM          

            It is important to talk about the value and impacts that design brings to our work and daily life and that the journey from the idea to the final product or the system, so-called  circular journey, which is planned and the strategies are defined. We have a lot of content to talk about, from material to technology, strategy to end customer, and our organizational charts to target-based cooperation without any hierarchy, by considering the circular economy as a circular strategy. Along with all this, we will also discuss and talk about the interactions of design, passion, value, and impact by sharing the WDO and WDO activities and vision      

12:00  Lunch                                                                                                                        

13:00  Paula Nerlich  (UK)

Material Designer and PhD candidate

Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment (HBBE)

/ Bio-Futures for Transplanetary Habitats Initiative (BFfTH) 

Paula Nerlich is a designer and explorer. With her material research, she aims to support the elimination of so-called food waste through the creation of circular biomaterials from industrial food production surplus. In her practise as a material designer and as co-founder of Circular Home Lab, she initiates discourse around rethinking systems of waste, the food industry, and the community. Paula is a PhD candidate at The Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment as part of the project The Living Textile Interface group, led by Dr. Jane Scott. Her PhD project The Materiality of Well-being: Living Textiles as Interfaces to enhance Well-Being in the Built Environment is a practise-led research project, studying the potential of textiles as living structures that nurture the well-being of human and more-than-human inhabitants in the built environment through multi-sensory inter-species interactions. Her design research takes her off the planet with ‘Bio-Futures for Transplanetary Habitats’ and in the collaborative project ‘Human-Bacteria Interfaces’ Paula explores how we could design meaningful interactions between humans and the nonhuman within the everyday space of the built environment, focusing on mutualistic symbiotic modes of being.           

LIVING MATERIALITY: TOWARDS TRANSITORY LIVING MATERIALS IN CIRCULAR SYSTEMS        

         Paula Nerlich will discuss new materials thinking within circular systems. Exploring  possibilities on how we could rethink the material world around us and move towards a more sustainable and healthy material landscape through two pathways: 1) Opensource skills sharing in DIY material making as a tool to empower individuals,  communities, and design professionals to explore future possible implementations and opportunities of circular thinking. 2) Growth of living circular materials as the future of creating. Diving into a world of living materials that have the characteristics of biological systems: self-replication, self-regulation, self-healing, environmental responsiveness, and self-sustainability.      

13:30   Sergio Davila Urrutia (Mexico)        

An industrial designer and research professor. External Linkages & Professional Practices. Science and Art for Design. Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana 

MoA Sergio Davila is a designer with the conviction that the design approach can have a positive impact in developing the next evolution of our society. He studied for his BA in Mexico and an MA in combination Finland and the Netherlands. His work has been exhibited in Salone del Mobile in Milano, Design museums in Helsinki and Amsterdam (Platform21), Bienal de Diseno in Mexico City, Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, and a key panelist in Seattle Design Fest 2017 and 2018. Since 2008 he directed the studio "Vivencia Design" first in Amsterdam and later on in Mexico City, where he focused on projects that involved new technologies and experience design, his projects ranged from set design to contemporary art. Among his main clients were the theme park "Kidzania", artist Pedro Reyes, PPC Comex, and designer Eric Klarenbeek, among others. Since 2014 he became a research professor at the Metropolitan University and focuses his research on social activation and transition design. From 2017 to 2021 he coordinated the BA in Industrial Design updating the study program and achieving the first international certification for the whole degree. Starting in 2021 he is in charge of external linkages for the Architecture & Design Faculty.            

A NEW GENERATION OF BIODESIGNERS    

            This work presents an exploratory experience aimed at reshaping the notion of biodesign in order to strengthen the training of future industrial designers and be more prepared to design with biotechnology. In the academy, we frequently hear the concepts of biodesign and bionics to indicate the application of biological principles in a project. Even within the curricula of various degrees in industrial design, a course can be  identified to address this issue. However, little is discussed about biotechnology and its         implications with biodesign in particular and with design in a more general scenario. In this context, the question arises: What notion of biodesign is the one that should permeate today? To answer, a methodological work was carried out, which allows   exploring the relationship between biotechnology and biodesign, through a theoretical study and the development of several final projects for industrial design students. The results obtained exemplify an alternative perspective to the exercise of biodesign, which is not necessarily simplified to the application of a biomaterial but, on the contrary, can represent the proposal of a sociotechnical system that impacts the user, the community, or even the entire society.  

14:00   Reet Aus PhD (EST)

Founding Partner at Aus Design and Upmade Senior researcher at Estonian Academy of Arts / Sustainable Design and Material Lab - DiMa  

Reet Aus is a PhD-qualified Estonian fashion designer and environmental activist, a natural rebel who founded REET AUS COLLECTION® and THE UPSHIRT®. She is a pioneer in the field of industrial upcycling for fashion and has developed the UPMADE® certification, in order to pass on her knowledge to brands and factories. The mission of Reet Aus is to minimise the ecological footprint of one of the world's most contaminating businesses – the fashion industry. We do it by industrial upcycling. This means producing clothing from pre-production leftover fabrics. The fact that no extra fabric is produced for us makes our clothes carbon neutral. Moreover, as the fabric we use is virgin, we make sure that the leftover fabric does not contain harmful chemicals and that production is socially responsible, meets workplace safety requirements, and does not use child labor of course. This radically not-wasteful new way of the production model is based on a scientific core methodology called UPMADE®." 

DESIGN OF THE UNIVERSE  

            "We feel like we need a fashionable coat, a certain brand of jeans, pointy-toe shoes.

            But is it really so? Either we want things that are there or we have an idea of what we can't do without. And what happens when we step outside this world of things?

            How does the universe design itself? What do we really need? And how could things reach us? What is more important, the shape of the shoe toe or how it has materialized in our lives?"         

14:30   Kärt Ojavee PhD (EST)

Kärt is an artist, designer and researcher at the Estonian Academy of Arts Sustainable Design and Materials Lab - DiMa.           

Her work is focused on future concepts of textiles and materials. Ojavee experiments with new technologies and traditional textile fabricating techniques, testing the borders of both disciplines. She is a founding member of Studio Aine, a materials design and development studio, whose research is focused on environmentally sensitive materials, material awareness and cross-domain networking. Studio Aine has experimented with growing materials using microorganisms, industrial residues and various forms of bio-waste. Ojavee’s latest works include curating an international exhibition “Seaweed Ceremony”, group exhibitions include “Edible” at TAB 2022; "Material Change: Design and New Technologies” at Adamson-Eric Museum; installations at Shezad Dawood’s; "Leviathan: the Paljassaare Chapter” at Kai Art Center and a textile installation "Save As" in collaboration with Johanna Ulfsak at the Espoo Museum of Modern Art.  

MATERIAL AFFAIRS  

            Through the case studies of material research by Stuudio Aine and the Estonian Academy of Arts DiMa lab, the relations of locally relevant materials are the focus of the presentation. It peeks into the questions of sources, value, narratives, and how could practice-led design research bring a change into the perception of materials around us.                                                                                

15:00   Panel moderated by Päivi Tahkokallio                              

16:00   End    

 

*way to the future