Jonathan Chapman is course leader of the master’s programme in sustainable design at the University of Brighton in England and
author of Emotionally Durable Design: Objects, Experiences and Empathy (Earthscan, London 2005). As a sustainable design theorist, his work seeks to
understand and reveal the behavioural phenomena that shape patterns of
consumption and waste. His research has matured through sustained scholarship
and reflection from his polemical activist roots to the developing of effective
counterpoints to the unsustainable character of the contemporary material
culture and the pioneering of innovative ways of designing, consuming and
behaving in the twenty-first century.
Clive Dilnot is currently a professor of design studies at the Parsons School of Design and
the New School in New York. He has taught the history, theory and criticism of
art and design in Britain, at Harvard University in the United States, in Hong
Kong and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he was director
of design initiatives. He has written extensively in these areas; his recent
publications include Ethics? Design? (Archeworks, Chicago 2005) and Pirelli Work (Steidl, London 2006). His current concerns focus on the role of design
capabilities in terms of understanding how we can create the conditions for a
humane world.
Ezio Manzini is a professor of design at the Politecnico di Milano and holds honorary
doctoral degrees from The New School of New York (2006), Goldsmiths College of
London (2008) and the Glasgow School of Art (2009). At present, his main
interests tend toward design for social innovation and, in particular, the
promotion of DESIS, an international network concerned with design for social
innovation and sustainability (http://www.desis-network.org ). His recent
publications include
Collaborative Services (Polidesign, Milan 2008) and “Service Design in the Age of Networks and Sustainability” in Satu Miettinen and Mikko Koivisto, eds., Designing Services with Innovative Methods (University of Art and Design, Helsinki 2009).
Victor Margolin is one of the pioneers of design history and theory. He is the first American
to receive a doctoral degree in the field of the history of design. During his
many years as a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, he became
one of the world’s most vocal advocates for the importance of design theory and history. He has
written or edited eight books; one recent publication is The Politics of the Artificial: Essays on Design and Design Studies (University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2002).
Per Mollerup is the author of numerous books, including Marks of Excellence: The History and Taxonomy of Trademarks (Phaidon, London 1997), Collapsibles: A Design Album of Space Saving Objects (Thames and Hudson, London 2001) and Wayshowing: A Guide to Environmental Signage, Principles and Practices (Lars Müller Publishers, Baden 2005). Until recently, he had his own graphic design
studio in Copenhagen, Mollerup Designlab A/S, which dealt primarily with
branding and information design. He currently teaches at the Swinburne
University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.
Barbara Predan received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the theory and development of design from the Department of Design
at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana. She is
currently writing her doctoral dissertation at the Scientific Research Centre
of the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts, through the University of Nova
Gorica, under the supervision of Professors Jelica Sumic - Riha (SRC SASA) and
Jonathan M. Woodham (University of Brighton, U.K.). She is the co-author, with
Tanja Bercon, of the book
Nazaj k oblikovanju - Antoloski pregled teorije oblikovanja v slovenskem
prostoru (Back to Design: An Anthological Survey of Design Theory in Slovenia), published
in 2007 by the publishing house Litera and the Pekinpah Association in the book
series Nova znamenja (New Signs).
Cvetka Pozar is an art historian and senior curator in the Department of Visual
Communications at the Architecture Museum of Ljubljana. She curated the
exhibition To the Polling Booths! The Poster as a Political Medium in Slovenia 1945-1999 and is the author of its catalogue (Architecture Museum, Ljubljana 2000). She
was also the co- curator of the exhibition New Objectivity in Slovene Photography and a co-author of the catalogue (Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana 1998). She is
the co-editor, with Petra Ceferin, of the book Architectural Epicentres: Inventing Architecture, Intervening in Reality (Architecture Museum, Ljubljana 2008), which is based on the lecture series they
organised.
Dieter Rams is an industrial designer who has had a profound influence on the design of home
appliances around the world. One of the key figures in German functionalist
design, he started working for the Braun company in 1955 and was the head of
its design centre from 1961 to 1995. [Read the interview]
