Design Symposium – Untangling Design Purpose

As design has progressed from a traditional craft to an advanced professional field and an academic discipline, it has consistently encountered barriers and obstacles, only to evolve and adjust in response to the demands and opportunities of the times. Design can either perpetuate existing problems or offer innovative solutions and be a force of change; it can be a catalyst for sustainability, or inadvertently harm the environment; it can be a bridge between cultures and foster inclusivity, or carelessly perpetuate inequality.

The symposium Untangling Design Purpose is poised to delve profoundly into the core essence of design today, all in pursuit of answering fundamental questions. Our overarching goal is to envision new potentials of design for a hypercomplex world, transcending its origins and problematics, and harnessing its capacity to evolve into a potent, pluriversal catalyst for the regeneration and transformation of people and planet.

The symposium is being jointly hosted by Professor Oliver Szasz from Macromedia University of Applied Sciences in Munich and Dr. Kirsten Scott from Istituto Marangoni in London.

Chapman is a consultant and strategic advisor to global businesses and governmental organizations from Puma, COS, and Philips, to the House of Lords, the United Nations, and NASA. His Op-Ed for The Guardian outlining his research agenda received 1,000+ comments within hours of going live.

He is a Visiting Professor in Design at the Politecnico di Milano, and graduate student advisor at MIT, Cambridge University, Royal College of Art, and KAIST. He holds a PhD in Design (2008), MA in Design Futures (2001), and BA (Hons) in Industrial Design (1997).

At the age of 38, he became the youngest person in the UK to achieve the rank of Full Professor in Design. New Scientist described Chapman as “a mover and shaker” and a “new breed of sustainable design thinker.”

Doing so, she focuses on being-in-the-world theories, embodied and aesthetics interactions, imagination, data-enabled design and participatory sensemaking. Her research questions questions practices and societies through theoretical lenses, including design-philosophy correspondence, in which philosophy informs design practice and design practice is used to philosophise, in order to tackle imminent societal challenges.

Caroline is founder and member of the steering committee of the Tangible Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI) Conference, editorial board member of the International Journal of Design, member of the Dutch Design Week sounding board, and ambassador of CLIKCNL for the Key Enabling Methodologies related to ‘Participation and co-creation.’