An Evening with Ezio Manzini, brought to you by o2NYC

Where: The Cherry Lane Theater 38 Commerce Street West Village, NY City When: Wednesday, May 6, 2009 6:00 - 8:00 PM Tickets: Register Here Whether you've been tirelessly working away on sustainable design strategies for years, or have only recently joined the movement, you must be wondering, what do we do NOW? Design for positive social and environmental impact - let's admit it - it is easier said than done, even when the economy was booming, and the demand for shiny green things was on the rise. The more we seemed to dig deeper and learn about the environmental and social consequences of design, the more we struggled with the moral quandaries built into our systems of production and consumption. Sure, we could do better, but would better get us to where we need to go? Now that the global economy is on the precipice, can we rethink and reframe our goals? What IS our exit strategy?

Ezio Manzini, author of Sustainable Everyday, Professor in Industrial Design at the Politecnico di Milano, and founder of o2 Italy, will join us for an evening conversation. Ezio has been on the journey towards sustainable design for over 20 years, and has noticed a growing trend to move beyond first measures of eco-efficiency, to seek larger vision of sustainability.Ezio will share his current vision for sustainability, to define our exit strategy as a community of designers:

"Research on eco-efficiency has been successful, but has not improved the overall picture. Current products and services, taken one by one, use far less energy and materials than those of some decades ago. However, no indicator of aggregate consumption indicates a decrease: even in countries where research on eco-efficiency has been most successful. Overall consumption of environmental resources continues to grow. This clearly tells us that increasing improvements in the current system are not enough. The transition towards sustainability requires a systemic change. It is not a question of doing what we already do better. It is a question of doing different things in completely different ways.

There is an emerging demand for visions of sustainability. This requires scenarios to show that is possible to move form the "less of the same" perspective to the "better and different" one. That is, the one where is proved that there are feasible, socially acceptable, even attractive, alternatives on different scales for various aspects of people's lives.

Where will this vision come from? The emerging features, as the cases of socio-technical innovation on which they are based, are characterized by four keywords: small, local, open and connected. We know that these same keywords are characterizing the contemporary society, when we look at it as a network society.

To do that the role of the design community (can be crucial to feed the social learning process) with the needed design knowledge: new scenarios (on sustainable ways of being and doing) and specific design contributions (to the development of viable solutions)." - Ezio Manzini