Detailed Program Design to Connect and Link
Dear Members, Colleagues,
the Palermo Post-2020 Conference is approaching, with a slight change due to institutional reasons compared to the previously communicated dates: we will be online on Thursday, February 25th, late morning and afternoon, then on the morning of Friday, February 26th.
The program is rich with presentations, scheduled in continuity with the format that guided the Ascoli edition in 2019, with some new elements in the lineup, the most important of which is the presentation of the Research Ideas only, already selected through double peer review, competing for the second edition of the SID RESEARCH AWARD.
The presentation of the Research Ideas will take place in parallel sessions, coordinated by the SID Research Map Working Group, followed by an open discussion (which we know is highly anticipated) between the scientific community and young researchers, for which we hope for your active participation. Following this, on Friday morning, there will be the keynote lecture by colleague Luigi (Gino) Bistagnino, the upcoming Honorary Member of SID, and the award ceremony.
At this moment, the organizers are working on the capabilities of the web platform that will host our event, to make the meeting not only smooth but also lively. We will imagine Palermo, its scents and sounds through the storytelling with images by Sandro Scalia, and its warmth with the genuine hospitality that our Palermo colleagues will be able to convey even from a distance. Our community’s thanks go first to them for managing this long-awaited event, even in difficult times.
Attached is the program of the days, which will also be posted on the website. Stay tuned because we will need to communicate more news, particularly about the modalities of the under 40 parallel sessions and, of course… the access link!
President’s Communication
Detailed Program Design to Connect and Link
In recent years, Palermo, thanks to its strong Euro-Mediterranean identity and the implementation of policies and practices of integration and respect for new citizenships, has earned the reputation of a “city of hospitality.” In the face of social tensions, economic imbalances, and the multiple lines of crisis emerging from stories and geographies now totally interconnected, the city currently expresses a particular sensitivity and ability to listen, presenting itself as a multidisciplinary laboratory for experimentation on the themes of interculturality, connection, and social and cultural inclusion. In this context and in relation to these characteristics, the annual SID meeting on the advancement of research and scientific perspectives of design proposes an in-depth reflection on the theme of “Design to Connect”
One of the multiple reasons for this choice is that the theme enhances the vocation of design as a “relational” and “connective” discipline and of the project as a tool for building relationships and connections. Starting from the metaphorical and virtual meanings of the verb “connect,” today mainly linked to the digital and network dimension, it is necessary to also address its profound sense in the concrete interrelations between people and their environment, between people and technologies, between people themselves. A commitment in which design, through its imaginative, experimental, and design sensitivity, can put itself to the test, renewing methodological approaches, orientation, and intervention tools, both in the construction of new visions and in the reorganization of social and cultural spaces, ways of daily life, production, and consumption. Finally, this thematic choice aims to verify how the tools and methods of the discipline can contribute to facing the multiple lines of crisis and opportunities emerging at this moment.
A historical peculiarity of design is the circularity of the process that “connects” the continuous theoretical and methodological systematization of the discipline with the experimental practices that activate its design tension. The close relationship with the problems of a constantly changing reality, which is typical of design action, enhances the circularity between theory and practice, between abstract and concrete, between imagination and realization. Taking these characteristics into account, SID proposes to articulate the general theme into three areas, concerning processes, heritage, and people.
The varied phenomenology in which design is shown today documents the dialogue between sectors once dichotomous, especially around the search for forms of systemic innovation that can address complex environmental and social challenges. Design becomes a place of integration between the most advanced technical-scientific fields and the approaches of humanistic culture; between production and the pursuit of the common good; between territorial actors and project experts. In this sense, design increasingly participates in processes in the productive world, in the network, in the environment, with a function of connector between people and systems.
“Design to Connect” also proposes the ability to grasp and narrate the resources and specificity of that multidimensional palimpsest that is the territory, in its peculiar forms of “cultural landscape” where tangible and intangible qualities, tradition and innovation, peculiarities of places and openness to the world intertwine. Here too, the care of the heritage inherited from the past intertwines with technical-scientific languages, becoming today a privileged ground for experimentation in the production of meaning, new forms of knowledge, participation, and economic value.
But the connective quality of design is mainly constituted by the centrality of people: attention to daily life, opportunities for access to resources and networks, the capabilities and identities of individuals and communities fuel the “design hope” of a future not overshadowed by geographical, cultural, ideological boundaries. Despite all the difficulties that the radical nature of contemporary problems poses, this is the ground where design can most serve as an activator, facilitator, and, why not?, problem solver.
Within this broad scenario, SID proposes to identify three topics of specific interest and relevance for the scientific community of design, identifying them as the core in building a rich and plural state of the art of “Design to Connect”:
1 — Connect / People
2 — Connect / Heritage
3 — Connect / Processes
