Eina inaugurates the academic year 2024-2025 with the conference ‘Creative practices for eco-social design’, to be held on Thursday 19 September at the Bosc facilities.
This event, open to all audiences, will feature the participation of experts and academics, and seeks to emphasise the responsibility of creatives in the transformation of society in tune with contemporary ecological and social challenges.
We will discuss the active and responsible role that designers can assume in building a more just and sustainable world, and analyse examples of practices that present critical methodologies and tools that challenge current design and production paradigms.
Programme
09:30 am - Welcome
- Miquel Molins, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Eina Foundation
- Tània Costa, Eina's academic director
9:40 am - First session
Presented by: Manuel Cirauqui, director of einaidea
Jose Luis de Vicente, director of the Design Museum.
What do we owe to pigeons
"All major capitals of the world are facing a housing crisis. All major capitals have a problem with pigeons. Humans and pigeons have lived together since we invented cities. The species that fills our squares, “Columba livia forma urbana”, is a native of brick and concrete, having never known another environment.
Since we domesticated them we have co-evolved in parallel, repurposing them for new functions every few centuries. Pigeons have been a source of protein, fertilizer, telecommunications infrastructure, military and espionage technology, entertainment, pets, and racing animals, and finally we have downgraded them to pest. From building shelters for them we’ve shifted to designing pigeon-proof cities, with architectural barriers, sound weapons, and contraceptive technologies. Although they are everywhere in the urban space, we have managed to make them invisible when it comes to deciding what is their right to the city".
Jose Luis de Vicente is a curator and cultural researcher. His work is situated between design, art, technology, science, and innovation. Throughout his career, he has been a pioneer in producing contexts for collaboration and dialogue. Working with national and international institutions, curators, artists, designers, architects, technologists, scientists, activists, and communities of practice, he explores emerging social scenarios beyond institutional or disciplinary frameworks.
10:00 am - Q&A session
10:15 am - Eco-social Design
Marina Otero Verzier
Social design today and what it may mean in the future: new social roles for designers attuned to contemporary ecological and social challenges.
Marina Otero Verzier is an architect and researcher. She forms part of the Architecture and Design Advisory Committee at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. She was the Director of the Master’s Degree in Social Design at Design Academy Eindhoven (2020-2023) and the Director of Research at Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam (2015-2020). Previously, she was the Director of Programming at Studio-X, Columbia University GSAPP. She has curated “Compulsive Desires” on lithium extraction and “Rebel Mountains” at the Municipal Gallery of Porto (2023), “Work, Body, Leisure” at the Netherlands Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2018), and “After Belonging” at the Oslo Architecture Triennale (2016), among others. Along with You Mi, Lucia Pietroiusti, and Filipa Ramos, Otero curated “Bodies of Water” at the 2022 Shanghai Art Biennial, directed by Andrés Jaque. Otero has co-published books including Automated Landscapes (2023), Lithium: States of Depletion (2021), More-than-Human (2020), and Architecture of Appropriation (2019). In 2022 she received the Harvard Wheelwright Prize.
10:35 am - Q&A session
10:50 am - Break
11:05 am - Second session
11:05 am - Case Study 1 - Geo-Design: Indo-Pacific Maps
Presented by: Sara Coscarelli, Deputy Director of Eina; and Javier Nieto Cubero, Director of Innovation and Enterprise
Urtzi Grau
How can design be a neighbouring discipline to ecology, geology, biology, physics, technology, geopolitics and cognitive science, and how can the research, narratives, experiments, ideas, poetics and solutions that emerge from this neighbourhood be brought collaboratively to the world?
In 2013, the Australian Department of Defence relocated Australia to the Indo-Pacific, a new geopolitical region stretching from South America to the Gulf, from Southeast Asia to East Africa. Its extent makes it the ultimate design project: it covers two-thirds of the globe. However, because of its abrupt conception, the social, political, economic, technological, ecosystemic and spatial structures of the Indo-Pacific are still in the process of formation.
Urtzi Grau is an architect, academic, and professor at the UTS School of Architecture. His research explores the role of architecture in responding to critical challenges impacting the Indo-Pacific region including climate justice, immigration, land rights, and the extractive economy.
11:25 am - Q&A session
11:40 am - Case Study 2 - Design for transition
Tània Costa - Adrià Garcia i Mateu from Holon
Work methodology to develop collective emancipation processes.
Tània Costa holds an undergraduate degree and a PhD in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona, with research accreditation from the AQU. Since 2024, she has been the Academic Director at EINA, where she has been the Research Coordinator of the Master’s Degree in Research in Art and Design (MURAD) in addition to teaching undergraduate and master’s degree classes. She is a researcher associated with the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), a coordinator of the consolidated SGR Research Group in Aesthetics and Theory of Design and Art (GRETDA), and a director of doctoral theses with the philosophy department at the UAB. Her academic contributions fall within artistic and design practices that promote social innovation from a contextual, participatory, and performative focus, encompassing approaches from transitional design to applied aesthetics.
Adrià Garcia i Mateu has a Degree in Design from Eina. He is a founding member of the Holon collective, a non-profit cooperative working for environmental social justice. He has more than a decade of experience in projects with organisations such as Som Energia SCCL, UN Environment or Interface Inc. and is a founding member of EDIVI, a Catalan network of centres promoting design for social innovation and sustainability.
12:00 pm - Q&A session
12:15 pm - Roundtable
Presented by: Pilar Cortada, director of Eina Obra
REFLECTION: IMPLICATIONS AND CHALLENGES
Integration of sustainability and resilience principles
Moderated by students: Simon Fernandez Katz, Fernando Palma and Laia Poy
Previous speakers.
Simon Fernandez Katz is a 2nd year student of the Bachelor of Design. He is mainly a graphic designer. Photography and analogue techniques are part of his interests. Born in Buenos Aires and living in Barcelona for almost two years.
Laia Poy Ros is a 4th year student of the Bachelor of Design, specialising in product and 3D modelling, with a multidisciplinary background that combines concept and production with technical and experimental approaches.
Fernando Palma Fanjul is an industrial designer, with more than 20 years of professional practice, he is an academic and full professor at the School of Design of the UBB in Chile. Master’s Degree in Vehicle Design (Elisava, 2004) and University Master’s Degree of Research in Art and Design (EINA, 2024). PhD Candidate in Philosophy in Contemporary Aesthetics at UAB. His lines of research and experimentation are design for transitions towards more sustainable societies, the pedagogy of emancipated and emancipatory design, performativity in design practice and education, and new technologies for design.
12:55 pm - Q&A session
1:10 pm - Closure
Tània Costa, Eina's academic director
1:15 pm - Lunch
Activity carried out with the support from the Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte.