What is the role of design in a world moving to a sustainable model? Today, each of us is a designer to some extent. The technological revolution that has taken place in the last couple of decades provides certain possibilities for bringing about change compared to the past. Ezio Manzini cites examples from community farming in China to digital platforms applied in healthcare in Canada, from interactive storytelling in India to forms of shared accommodation in Milan. They allow us to glimpse an already visible part of the new world of sustainable civilization that is now emerging during the transition.
In a phase of large-scale change, individuals as well as organizations and public entities must constantly redesign their existence to define their mission and the actions needed to achieve it. Ezio Manzini maps the possibilities that design experts could use to provoke and support meaningful social change. To do this, we need to rediscover the power hidden in cooperation, which leads to the emergence of organizational forms based on small, local, open and connected.
Ezio Manzini (1945) is an Italian design researcher and honorary professor at the Politecnico di Milano, whose focus is design for sustainability and social innovation; initiator of the network DESIS (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability). He has won the Italian design award Compasso d’Oro twice (1987, 2016).
Translated by Ellu Maar
Special editor: Ruth-Helene Melioranski
Language editor: Anu Seidla-Suitsu
Editor-in-chief: Neeme Lopp
Graphic design: Stuudio Stuudio
288 pages, in Estonian
Estonian Academy of Arts Press, 2019
978-9949-594-83-2