Decolonisation, Immigration and Stories of Power

This year NORDES 2017 Design + Power was happening at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) from 15th to 17th of June. It was my first-time participation at this conference, so I was not sure what to expect. A day before the conference started I visited Linda Blaasvaer from SOD – System Oriented Design group. I know department for years and as I am greatly adopting theirs’ systemic design tools like GIGA-mapping at my service design lectures. The next day the conference opened with the first keynote speaker the Dean of Design at Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCADU) Dori Tunstall, who is the first black female dean of a faculty of design. She presented several thoughts provoking students’ projects; like the one from Asian Canadian student who designed his resume readable only if you pull your eyes (see photo below).

At the end of the same day rising design research star, as mentioned by one of the organisers, Mahmoud Keshavarz, who is Post-Doctoral Fellow at Uppsala University gave the keynote talk. He is investigating the contemporary politics of movement and migration and he is critically reflecting on its counter-practices as a series of more or less successful design initiatives related to this issue. Unfortunately, Keshavarz did not propose any significant guidelines when dealing with this sensitive topic. However, there were also other interesting presenters like RyöPpy, Ylirisku and Knutz from the University Of Southern Denmark talking about Object Theatre; and Thomas Binder, as a keynote speaker, which I listen with one ear only, as I was running to chair interesting case session of two PhD students presenters. One of them was Hella Hernberg (supervised by Ramia Mazé) from the Aalto University presenting the role of architect/designer as ‘urban agent’ in Kalasatama temporary use projects. Lastly, I would like to expose another inspiring workshop from Bertolotti, Tassinari, Yelavich and Baerten (they excelled at DRS 2016 too) where we were writing with design fiction inspired “stories of power relationships in future words”.

Another great feature of this conference was that we as presenters have entire half an hour for presentation and feedback, which is nowadays rare at the conferences. Next time Aalto University, Department of Design will host NORDES 2019.

For those who missed NORDES and you are interested in systemic design SOD leader Birger Sevaldson is organising together with Alex Ryan Peter Jones among others Relating Systems Thinking and Design 6 (RSD6) symposium titled Environment, Economy, Democracy: Flourishing Together. Symposium will be happening in October from 18th – 20th drawing prominent keynote speakers like Lucy Kimbell, Richard Buchanan and Sabine Junginger if I mentioned just a few.

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