LAUNCH OF DESIS AGEING AND INGENUITY CLUSTER (老)

In June 2013, the HKDI DESIS lab working team embarked on its first overseas trip to Sweden & Denmark for two international design conferences. The Cumulus Conference is a global meeting for art and design education and research. Conducted twice a year, this was the first time the conference was hosted in Sweden by the Linnaeus University. It was held in the town of Kalmar, which is renowned for its historic castle and links to IKEA. In conjunction with the Cumulus Conference, there was its sister event, the DESIS Forum. Together with Linnaeus University (Sweden) and MAD-Faculty, Campus Genk(Belgium), we launched a new DESIS thematic cluster – “Ageing & Ingenuity” calling for case studies and collaborative research & exchange on a solution-focused approach on ageing. For more info, please visit: www.desis-network.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The trip continued to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation in Copenhagen, Denmark, where the annual Nordes Conference was held. Celebrating experiments in design research, this most important design conference for the Nordic countries brings together a cross-generation of scholars to explore design as a mean for promoting social change or as a critique of political and ethical values. During the conference we hosted a collective design workshop to explore the design method of ‘mapping inspiring figures” for future ageing research. Dr Lee also presented a research paper entitled “The ingenuity of ageing: An experiment to explore the role of designers as a moral subject”. The design study of ingenuity with a group of retired academics in Beijing Tsinghua University was shown.