What Design Can't Do
The event is free, but requires registration.
When
Where
About the talk:
Late Futurism: The Future as a Mode of the Present
In this talk, Silvio Lorusso delves into the disillusionment that permeates contemporary design culture, where grand narratives of empowerment clash with the realities of deskilling, ornamental politics, and an increasingly indifferent professional landscape. Drawing from his book What Design Can't Do, he examines how designers navigate a field that has become more of a problem than a solution, offering a critical vocabulary to articulate their frustrations and rethink their role within the chaos.
About the speaker:
Silvio Lorusso
Silvio Lorusso is an Italian writer, artist and designer based in Lisbon, Portugal. He published Entreprecariat (Onomatopee) in 2019 and What Design Can’t Do (Set Margins’) in 2023. Lorusso is an assistant professor at the Lusófona University in Lisbon and a tutor at the Information Design department of Design Academy Eindhoven. He holds a Ph.D. in Design Sciences from the Iuav University of Venice. Lorusso’s work touches upon visual communication, memes, post-digital publishing, entrepreneurship and precarity, digital platforms, design culture and politics, creative coding, art and design education, videogames. His practice combines a variety of media such as video, website, artist’s book, installation, lecture. This activity is further stimulated by writing essays, curating exhibitions and organizing public programs. Between 2020 and 2024, Lorusso co-directed with Francisco Laranjo the Center for Other Worlds. He has been a member of Varia, the Center for Everyday Technology, as well as part of the editorial board of Italian graphic design magazine Progetto Grafico. Among other venues, his work has been presented at Het Nieuwe Instituut (Rotterdam), MaXXI (Rome), Transmediale (Berlin), The Photographers’ Gallery (London), Kunsthalle Wien, MAAT (Lisbon). His writing has appeared in several magazines and publications, including Volume, Real Life Magazine, Metropolis M, Il Tascabile, Esquire Italia.
About the host:
Guy Julier
Guy Julier is the author of Economies of Design (2017) and The Culture of Design (3rd Revised Edition 2014). A writer, academic and practitioner, he has over 30 years professional experience observing and researching global changes in design, economics and society. He is credited with having established Design Culture as a field of study and research.
While he was Professor of Design at Leeds Metropolitan University (2001-10), Guy Julier founded and directed DesignLeeds, a cross-disciplinary research and consultancy unit specializing in social design. He was also a co-director of LeedsLoveItShareIt, a company formed to develop and prototype new approaches to urban regeneration. In 2011 he was appointed as the Victoria & Albert Museum/University of Brighton Principal Research Fellow in Contemporary Design and Professor of Design Culture. At the V&A he developed new approaches to curatorship while also directing the museum's Design Culture Salon.
He has collaborated with the thinktank, Policy Connect in undertaking a UK parliamentary enquiry into design for public services. With Lucy Kimbell, he has led a number of initiatives and projects to develop cross-disciplinary thinking and methods in social design.
Event Host:
About the talk series:
Design Interrupted Conversations for a 21st Century World
Today, the study and practice of design are in great flux. We are amidst the biggest socio-economic transformation since the 1750s, experiencing the fifth Industrial Revolution. There is a growing pressure to transition economies driven by extractive, wasteful and polluting logics towards systems designed to fit the planetary limits. Such transformation requires the design of new types of products and services, as well as new systems and approaches to large-scale changes.
At the same time, design as a practice area is also changing. It is shifting away from a more rigidly defined practice of professionally trained designers creating graphics, objects and spaces towards a practice that is loosely defined, fuzzy and seemingly omnipresent. Many have been calling for democratizing design and recognizing the efforts of non-professional designers. Design thinking, methods and practices have entered many contexts, including governance, jurisprudence, sciences and activism. The design community has been grappling with the ever-expanding definitions of what design is and who a designer is.
This talk series invites design professionals, students, academics and anyone interested in these challenges to a series of conversations. Each event features a scene-setting lecture by a leading practitioner and thinker followed by open discussion. Three themes give focus to the series: digital, societal and material transformations. What is design’s role in these transformations? How do we generate new know-how to support the needed transitions, and what examples already exist that we can learn from? What stands in the way of progress towards equitable, diverse, and sustainable lives, and what is the role of design in removing such blockages? What are design and designers in this new context?
Department of Design at Aalto University invites you to join our conversations to explore what design is, can and should be in the 21st Century.