Summer session starts on July 25. Registration in Bear Track will be announced soon. The number of seats available is limited… If you are interested don’t wait until last minute, pre-register now. For more information about course content click here.
On May 3, with the support of the Centre for the Arts and Communication of Macewan University, I had the honor of visiting the National University of La Plata (UNLP), invited by the Visual Communication Design Department of UNLP, as part of the celebration of its 50th anniversary.
I brought a lecture about my experience teaching design in Canada for the last 5 years. I also introduced the subject “Design for Sustainability” to an undergraduate audience, sharing a slide-show with materials from a variety of design classes in UofA and Macewan. More than 500 people attended the lecture, among students, professors, colleagues and academic representatives. The experience is a first step for establishing a bilateral link between design schools, and it is a great opportunity for future collaborations and academic exchange.
This title is inspired by a line from Karen Blincoe’s “Re-educating the Person”, a text on Sustainability Literacy.part of the book ” The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy” (2009 : 204). In 2006 I attended a pilot workshop for the creation of the first Master program on Design for Sustainability in Europe. Blincoe led this initiative as the director of ICIS, The International Centre for Creativity, Innovation and Sustainability (Denmark), in conjunction with Lund University (Sweden).
This experience was a trigger for my later studies and a turning point in my career, that conducted to my current teaching on Design for Sustainability. It was also the milestone for dissemination of my academic work in remote places like Australia (2010) and China (2011).
2012 is for me a new exciting year for teaching Design for Sustainability in Canada, and also for expanding links internationally. This year I will be giving lectures in Argentina and Saudi Arabia, and working on connecting design schools to LeNS, The Leaning Network on Sustainability, directed by Politecnico di Milano.
It is worth then reading what Karen remind us about this exciting times for designers to play a renewed role.
“We have currently the ideal environment for radical change. A change that could bring about sustainability worldwide. Even if governments are fixed in old thought patterns there is now room for visionaries, radicals and pioneers from all fields to change our societies. “
Read the whole article by K.Blincoe
Image by Sophie Maisonneuve for “Tagging places”, design activism project.
The spring session of Hecol 493 Design for Sustainability will have Prof. John Nychka from Chemical Engineering, and Prof. Mark Anielski from the School of Business, both distinguished guest speakers from our University. Their presentations to the class will be dedicated to discuss about two subjects considered concept tools for this DfS class: Biomimicry and Genuine Wealth.
Dr. Nychka has conducted research projects on engineering materials following natural patterns and biomimicry principles. He introduced last year to this class the concept of “Wettability” of materials, an innovative field of research that approaches the creation of new intelligent materials capable of controlling the behavior of water over their surfaces. Dr. Nychka is visiting our class to share his current work on this and other biomimicry matters
Prof. Mark Anielski is author of the Canadian best-seller book The Economics of Happiness: Building Genuine Wealth . He works as permanent consultant for local, national and international communities, businesses and governments. He advices on core subjects like economics, genuine progress, and quality of life indicators. Prof. Anielski is visiting our class to discuss these relevant issues, to exercise our critical thinking and give us an update of his current work.
Spring session starting on May 28, and summer session on July 25. The number of seats available is limited… If you are interested don’t wait until last minute. For more information about course content click here.
Tarsands’ bitumen re-oriented to China through BC lands: the real question is not about the pipelines, but about continuing the expansion of “dirty oil”
Image: DES 494 project by Cameron McRae
If you cannot improve a system from within, you need expertise and inspiration from outside. Looking at the right models makes the difference.
Is Canada’s higher education system (the closest version to our American neighbors’) looking at the right model? This article describes a successful alternative to the North American way for education: the Finnish model, which more than a model it is a philosophical approach to the most basic human right after health, food, water or shelter. Here some remarkable quotes extracted from it:
“There’s no word for accountability in Finnish. Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted.”
“Real winners do not compete.” There are no lists of best schools or teachers in Finland. The main driver of education policy is not competition between teachers and between schools, but cooperation.
“…in America, parents can choose to take their kids to private schools. It’s the same idea of a marketplace that applies to, say, shops. Schools are a shop and parents can buy what ever they want. In Finland parents can also choose. But the options are all the same.”
“…a country has to prepare not just some of its population well, but all of its population well, for the new economy. To possess some of the best schools in the world might still not be good enough if there are children being left behind.”
Finland’s experience shows that it is possible to achieve excellence by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on equity.
Picture: northern lights in Finland http://compacttravels.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/the-northern-lights.jpg
