12-09-2014: Design Boffins Descend on Johannesburg
In less than two weeks Greenside Design Center, GDC and the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, FADA at the University of Johannesburg will host the biggest international design education conference South Africa has ever seen.
The conference will take place from 22 to 24 September. Delegates will descend on Johannesburg for three intense days of debate, sharing of best practices, attend workshops, exhibitions and generally celebrate the role of design in the 21Century and more importantly in an African context. At this stage delegates from 28 counties will be attending.
The theme of the conference is Design with the Other 90 percent; Changing the World by Design.
In 2007, the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum hosted an exhibition entitled ‘Design for the other 90 percent’ which focused on design solutions that addressed the most basic needs of the 90 percent of the world’s population not traditionally served by professional designers. In 2008, Cumulus members signed the Kyoto Declaration, wherein they committed themselves to the ideals of sustainable development. The Cumulus Conference to be hosted by GDC and FADA seeks to bring discussions around the role art and design can and should play in sustainable social advancement, particularly in the context of the African Continent. Focusing on notions of respect, responsibility and sustainability, this conference seeks to explore the vital role that design, visual culture and design education plays in addressing pressing problems of our planet, particularly for under-served communities that are rarely benefactors of the work of artists and designers. It is envisaged that Africa’s distinctive capacity to respond to such problems will be highlighted.
Contributions will be made in the following streams:
1) Respect and responsibility:
This stream explores the social responsibilities of designers in their engagements with communities in a variety of social, cultural and political contexts. It is envisaged that papers will deal with the following issues:
• Collaboration and participatory design: interactivity, responsiveness, and reflexivity
• Design for diversity: site, culture, gender, disability, history and identity
• Multidisciplinary and cross-professional approaches to design
2) Sustainability
This stream foregrounds the economic and environmental aspects of sustainable design, and may address the following:
• Adaptive reuse, design and preservation
• Nature as design resource
• Best practice for designing in developing and under-resourced communities
• Roles of government, the individual, industry and commerce in sustainable design
3) Socially responsible design education.
This stream focuses on the role and importance, as well as challenges, of design education in furthering sustainable and socially responsible design. Possible topics may include:
• Cases of best practice in socially responsible design education
• Critique of dominant educational strategies
• Graduate attributes of the next generation of designers
The Conference culminates on Heritage Day 24 September, and the afternoon will see a Craft Imbiso at GDC in Greenside together with a poster exhibition. The restaurants in the area have bought in to the event and it is hoped the local community will also attend and rub shoulders with the dignitaries. That evening the Gala Dinner will take place at the Forum in the old Turbine Hall in Newtown, a fitting time and place to be in the cultural heartland of Johannesburg
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For more information please contact Prof Des Laubscher at; des@designcenter.co.za
Please see below for additional information
About Cumulus
Cumulus is the only global association to serve art and design education and research. It is a forum for partnership and transfer of knowledge and best practices. Cumulus consists currently of 220 members from 48 countries. FADA has secured its membership to Cumulus this year and GDC has been a member since 2006. These are the only two design faculties on the African continent that are members of Cumulus
About GDC
GDC, Greenside Design Center, is a private higher education institution that specialises in design education. Its mission is to be leaders in design higher education, to nurture innovative and responsible designers for the greater good of humanity. The institution was established in 1987 and over the years has graduated over 1200 designers. It currently offers three-year undergraduate and one-year postgraduate degrees in Interior Design, Graphic Design and Multimedia Design. GDC is a relatively small institution and runs from a single campus based in the trendy suburb of Greenside, Johannesburg.
About FADA
FADA is the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture of the University of Johannesburg and is committed to fostering creative and professional excellence in art and design education. This dynamic and exciting Faculty has a colourful 80-year history during which it has been associated with numerous highly successful individuals in the world of art, design and architecture. The Faculty is home to approximately 1 200 students who study and work in the custom-built FADA Building on the Bunting Road / Auckland Park Campus.
Heritage Day
The day of the Gala Dinner will fall on one of South Africa’s public holidays, Heritage Day. As explained by the Department of Arts and Culture: “Heritage Day's significance rests in recognising aspects of South African culture which are both tangible and difficult to pin down: creative expression, our historical inheritance, language, the food we eat as well as the land in which we live.
Within a broader social and political context, the day's events are a powerful agent for promulgating a South African identity, fostering reconciliation and promoting the notion that variety is a national asset as opposed to igniting conflict. Heritage has been defined as "that which we inherit: the sum total of wild life and scenic parks, sites of scientific or historical importance, national monuments, historic buildings, works of art, literature and music, oral traditions and museum collections together with their documentation.”
