19 - 21 February 2020

About Milano Design PhD Festival

Milano Design PhD Festival is a program of meetings and events with the international protagonists of design culture.

Established in 2009, the Festival was born as the place where the PhD candidates of the doctoral programme in Design of Politecnico di Milano, who completed their commitment could defend their thesis.

Since its birth, the doctoral programme propelled the manifold research activities conducted in the Department of Design. A community of almost two hundred scholars, research fellows and PhD students focused on both probing the disciplinary foundations of design and increasing its fields of application.

Over the years the Milano Design PhD Festival became an international occasion for discussing several issues in design process among Italian and international researchers, PhD candidates and world mentioned professors and scholars. 

This year we are very proud to celebrate a double anniversary:
the 30th anniversary of the Politecnico PhD programme in design,
and the 10th edition of the Festival.

10

EDITIONS OF MILANO DESIGN PHD FESTIVAL

30

YEARS OF DESIGN PHD PROGRAMME

On Wednesday 19th, from 2.30 to 3.30pm, “Meet the PhD in Design” provides graduated MSc Students and MSc Students in their last year, a unique opportunity to get to know more about the our PhD programme.

MEET THE PHD IN DESIGN

On Wednesday 19th, at 4pm, it will take place the opening ceremony, with welcomes and the Lectio Magistralis by Ezio Manzini.

OPENING CEREMONY

On Thursday 20th and Friday 21st, the morning will be devoted to the PHD Thesis defence, while in the afternoon to specific events.

PHD DEFENSES

On February 20th, from 2.30pm there will be the “PhD in Design. Building a Network of excellence”, an open discussion about emerging issues and challenges for doctoral design education.

NETWORK OF EXCELLENCE

On February 21st, from 2.30pm we will host the 7th chapter of the DESIS Philosophy Talks “Designing as Politics of Nature”, a moment of dialogue between design and philosophy on the topic of the politics of nature.

DESIS PHILOSOPHY TALKS

All the events are taking place at Politecnico di Milano, Campus Bovisa, via Candiani 72. The  details are detailed in the program below.

Defending Sessions

Meet the PhD candidates defending their theses

Digital impact on design objects and systems

Room B2.2.12
02.20 – 9am

Yichen Wu

February 20th, 9 am

The Design Methodology for Connected Objects in High-Level Design Education.
Research on Design Methodology-Centred Contents and Strategies for Chinese Art University System

Milica Pavlovic

February 20th, 10 am

Designing for Ambient UX.
Design Framework for Managing User Experience within Cyber Physical Systems

Mario de Liguori

February 20th, 11 am

Delaying Obsolescence of digital products.
Interdisciplinary Research through Emotionally Durable Design and Well-Being in Z Generation

Design methods for situated contexts

Room B2.2.13
02.20 – 9am

Sara Conte

February 20th, 9 am

From Adriano Olivetti’s project: Eduardo Vittoria. Research, drawing and design.
New methods of representation to enhance the modern architecture

Tu Ngoc Pham

February 20th, 10 am

Design Thinking as a Driver of Vietnamese Interior Design Education

Fiamma Colette Invernizzi

February 20th, 11 am

Design Strategies for Post-Industrial Societies

Creativity 4.0 and organizational change

Room B2.2.14
02.20 – 9am

Carmen Bruno

February 20th, 9 am

A method to explore the influences of the digital transition on human creativity within the design process

Martina Rossi

February 20th, 10 am

Human Resource Design.
Steering human-centred innovation within private organisations

Filipe Lima

February 20th, 11 am

Leveraging the potential of service design in non-design-intensive organizations: A knowledge transfer view

Updated and sustainable manufacturing

Room B2.2.12
02.21 – 9am

Arianna Bionda

February 21st, 9 am

Toward a Yacht Design 4.0. How the new manufacturing models and digital technologies (could) affect yacht design practices

Mai Trinh Bui

February 21st, 10 am

Design for Sustainability in Fashion.
A consolidated knowledge-base and know-how for environmentally and socio-ethically sustainable Accessory Design

Embedding culture in design processes

Room B2.2.13
02.21 – 9am

Shushu He

February 21st, 9 am

Design for Intercultural Experience.
A design framework within User Experience Approach

Giovanni Profeta

February 21st, 10 am

Displaying open cultural collections.
Design guidelines for cultural content aggregators.

Download Here the Full Program
of Milano Design PhD Festival

02.19

2.30pm

Meet the PhD
in Design

@ Polifactory, B3 building

An event to get to know more about our PhD

The event is free. For attending you need to register on Eventbrite.

“Meet the PhD in Design” is a networking event where attendees can have a cup of tea and cookies while meeting and talking with PhD students and Doctors in Design, graduated in the previous years at Politecnico di Milano.
The event is addressed to graduated MSc Students and MSc Students in their last year.

02.19

4.00pm

Open
Ceremony

@ Polifactory, B3 building

Welcome greetings

Join the event and celebrate with us.

As ever year, the Milano Design PhD Festival starts with a warm opening, followed by a lectio magistralis.
This year Ezio Manzini will discuss a key topic for our community: Research Through Design.

Lectio Magistralis
Being Terrestrial. Research through design in the Anthropocene

The lecture is largely based on the contents of two books: Design when Everybody Designs, MIT Press, 2015 and The Politics of the Everyday, Bloomsbury, 2019 (Italian edition: Politiche del quotidiano, Edizioni di Comunità – CheFare, 2018

Know more: Abstract

In a changing world, most of the knowledge we need in order to act within it is not to be found in books. It should be rather created by operating in the same turbulent reality in which we find ourselves. For designers, doing so means to adopt a Research through Design approach: which is, to create design knowledge by developing projects, reflecting on them and sharing these actions-plus-reflection results.

This lecture discusses this statement by moving from a first basic assumption: since we are in the Anthropocene, whether or not to take into account the ecological emergency is no longer a design choice. In fact, we do no longer have a real choice, as we are forced to do something about it. In turn, the design choice is now about to choose in which direction to go: a choice that is largely depending on the mental maps we use.

Given that, the lecture proposes the map provided by Bruno Latour’s most recent reflections (B. Latour, Down to Earth. Politics in the New Climate Regime, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2018). In particular, it focuses on the need to acknowledge the existence of a new attractor: the living system of which we are part and that Latour names “the Terrestrial”. In this framework, the design research goal should orient and support us, designers and other social actors, in this process of learning how to be Terrestrial.

To give a concrete indication of how this kind of Research through Design can work, in this lecture I propose a concrete example of design research: the well-known Super Illes (Super Blocks) programme in Barcelona, integrated by the Super Illes+ Project (i.e. a scenario building activity driven by a design school together with external partners). The questions are: are these activities really generating sharable knowledge? Are them useful in order to provide some useful directions? Are they somehow helping us in being Terrestrial?

02.20

2.30/5.30pm

PhD in Design
Building a Network of Excellence

@ Polifactory, B3 building

An open discussion about emerging issues and challenges for doctoral design education

Attend the panel and enjoy the discussion given by international speakers.

A spontaneous and global network among PhD in Design programs has been recently established involving Politecnico di Milano (IT) with Aalto University (Fi), Carnegie Mellon University (US), Imperial College (UK), The Institute of Design (US), TU Delft University (Ne), aiming at sharing experiences, reflections and ideas for future developments of PhD education in Design.

The seminar will unfold some emerging issues and questions identified within the network to open the discussion to a broader audience of academics and experts.

In particular, we will reflect on the dimension of Research Through Design and its relevance within doctoral education in Design.

PANEL

Weston Baxter
Assistant Professor
PhD in Design Engineering
Dyson School of Design Engineering
Imperial College, London [UK]

Jonathan Chapman
Full Professor
Director of Doctoral Studies
PhD in Transition Design, School of Design
Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh [USA]

Guy Julier
Head of Research
Department of Design
Aalto University, Helsinki [Finland]

Ilpo Koskinen
Professor of Design Research
UNSW, Sydney [Australia]

Ezio Manzini
Founder and President of DESIS Network
Honorary professor at Politecnico di Milano
Distinguished Professor at ELISAVA Barcelona School of Design and Engineering
Guest Professor at Tongji University [Shanghai]
Guest Professor at Jiangnan University [Wuxi]

Johan Redström
Professor of Design
Umeå Institute of Design
Umeå University, Umeå [Sweden]

 

Pieter Jan Stappers
Director of the Graduates School and Research
TU Delft Graduate School
Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft [The Netherlands]

Carlos Teixeira
Associate Professor
Coordinator of the PhD Programme in Design
Institute of Design
IIT Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago [USA]

 

CURATORS

Paola Bertola
Full Professor
Coordinator of the PhD Programme in Design
Design Department
Politecnico di Milano

Lucia Rampino
Associate Professor
Vice-Coordinator of the PhD Programme in Design
Design Department
Politecnico di Milano

Paolo Volonté
Associate Professor
Design Department
Politecnico di Milano

Annalinda De Rosa
Research Fellow
Design Department
Politecnico di Milano

02.21

2.30/5.30pm

DESIS Philosophy Talks #7
Designing as Politics of Nature

@ Polifactory, B3 building

A day dedicated to the dialogue between design and philosophy on the topic of the politics of nature

Attend the panel and enjoy the discussion given by international speakers.

The DESIS Philosophical Talk is a series of talk organised by a series of academic and institutional intellectual partners developing a discourse together on certain issues.

The issues addressed are perceived as particularly urgent within their own design research.
Articulated in a program of seminars, throughout approximatively two years, they spread in different academic institutions and events sharing the concern for those issues and therefore guesting the talks.

This new series will question how to include in the political arenas of conversations for actions on common interests also natural non-human agents.

This intellectual dialogue will be structured throughout an afternoon seminar curated by the Politecnico PhD programme in Design, in collaboration with the DESIS Philosophy Talks, and will bring in conversation design research with the thinking of contemporary philosophers and anthropologists reflecting on post-anthropocentric thinking.

FIND OUT MORE

PANEL

Paola Bertola
Full Professor
Coordinator of the PhD Programme in Design
Design Department
Politecnico di Milano

Weston Baxter
Assistant Professor
PhD in Design Engineering
Dyson School of Design Engineering
Imperial College, London [UK]

Jonathan Chapman
Full Professor
Director of Doctoral Studies
PhD in Transition Design, School of Design
Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh [USA]

Alastair Fuad-Luke
Full professor of Design Research
Free University of Bozen [Bolzano, Italy]

Guy Julier
Head of Research
Department of Design
Aalto University, Helsinki [Finland]

Ilpo Koskinen
Professor of Design Research
UNSW, Sydney [Australia]

Ezio Manzini
Founder and President of DESIS Network
Honorary professor at Politecnico di Milano
Distinguished Professor at ELISAVA Barcelona School of Design and Engineering
Guest Professor at Tongji University [Shanghai]
Guest Professor at Jiangnan University [Wuxi]

Pieter Jan Stappers
Director of the Graduates School and Research
TU Delft Graduate School
Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering
Delft [The Netherlands]

Carlos Teixeira
Associate Professor
Coordinator of the PhD Programme in Design
Institute of Design
IIT Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago [USA]

 

Arturo Escobar (video)
Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Emeritus
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill [USA]

Tim Ingold (video)
Emeritus Professor
Department of Anthropology, School of Social Science
University of Aberdeen [UK]

CURATORS

Ezio Manzini
Founder and President of DESIS Network
Honorary professor at Politecnico di Milano
Distinguished Professor at ELISAVA Barcelona School of Design and Engineering
Guest Professor at Tongji University [Shanghai]
Guest Professor at Jiangnan University [Wuxi]

Virginia Tassinari
Research Fellow
Design Department
Politecnico di Milano
and Adjunct Professor
LUCA School of Arts, Bruxelles [Belgium]

Stefano Maffei
Full Professor
Design Department
Politecnico di Milano

Annalinda De Rosa
Research Fellow
Design Department
Politecnico di Milano

PhD Drinks
Aperitif and Networking

All the events will be followed by a moment of aperitif and networking.

The initiative is aimed at facilitating interaction and discussion among the speakers and the participants.