DESIS

Dr. Carlos Angulo Gálvis

Rector of la Universidad de Los Andes warmly welcomed Prof. Manzini and officialy opened his visit to the University, highlighting the pertinence of the event within the main vision and objectives of the University hence there is a constant interest around research and social responsibility on a very interdisciplinary basis, which now embrace the urgent and utmost important topic of Sustainability.

I.D. Freddy Zapata Vanegas

Director of the Design department at the Los Andes, introduced the main topics to be worked during the forum

First speech of Professor Manzini.

In his first intervention, he brought us good news, his speech was mainly devoted to give a wide perspective to see how within our societies, despite all the hindrances of contemporarity (war, poverty, economic catastrophes, environmental catastrophes) it is not just important but possible to change people’s mind, so that they can imagine and start  new ways of be and doing for a new kind of well being. This possibility exist and has to be helped, by means, among others, of design because: BEING A DESIGNER IS BEING OPTIMISTIC! Some cases studies, projects and examples of “creative communities” brought from all over the world were shown, all being born from the bottom up, meaning from people themselves; cases related to community based agriculture and other “working prototypes” for new ways of living and organize a city being social innovation a major driver of sustainable changes. Finally he introduced the SLOC scenario: an idea embracing the “slow, local, open and connected” which is coherent with the construction of more sustainable cities.

Marta Lucía de la Cruz, Ofelia Corredine

Fundación Corona, Casa Editorial EL TIEMPO

These two wonderful ladies told us the story behind the PREMIO CIVICO CORONA Por Una Bogotá Mejor (civic award recognizing the efforts and creativity of people who on self basis give solutions to their needs by getting in touch and act in synergy with their neighbours). On their presentation we had a first hand glance of the evolution of this Award, which has already being on for more than 10 years.

One of the most relevant issues of this project is the fact that the main supporter (Fudación Corona) decided to make an alliance with the publising house of the newspaper El Tiempo, in order to give proper visibility to all this initiatives.

The main goal of the Award is to strenght collective actions and give visibility to their values.

This was a real moment to share. The audience was invited, beforehand, to bring something to share with others… some fruits, a cake, some nuts and WOW! it worked! We wrote a Coffee-Break-Manifesto based on Hans Ulrich Obrist and one of his inventions:

“El acto alimentario es un acto privado cuando se piensa en el individuo y sus necesidades básicas, pero cuando se diseña sociedad, se vuelve el más público de los actos y el compartir, el más generoso de los gestos.

Hoy estamos presenciando y siendo parte, de un cambio de paradigma. No sólo estamos comiendo, sino que estamos, masivamente: conectando, compartiendo, re-orientando y disfrutando una inmensa diversidad de sabores e ideas que de alguna forma nos ayudarán a re-diseñar nuestra manera de pensar.

Aproveche este momento para compartir, conocer y “diseñar”, porque como dice Hans Ulrich Obrist, es en los coffee breaks en donde realmente suceden los eventos:

“(…) we decided, a few hours before the event was supposed to take place, to cancel the conference and to just do a “non-conference.” It had all the ingredients of a conference — badges, tee shirts, bags with all the speakers’ CVs, a hotel where all the people would stay, a bus to pick them up in the morning and bring them to the science center, people at the airport picking the guests up, all of the logistics — but the conference no longer was there. It was just a coffee break…”

Sonia Verswyvel and Blanca Isabel Calero, two women who for different reasons have to live their lives on a wheel chair, shared with us their insights regarding processes to prompt the re-appropriation of cities for disabled people reflecting on urban spaces, urban planning (the lack of it, going beyond mere laws but actual infrastructure) and the role that according to them design can play for the improvement of the life quality in cities.

Time was not enough to deal with miriade of questions that the morning (and afternoon)  speeches raised, therefore we decided to list those so that you can have access and see the majority of them listed (and hopefully answered) in the coming weeks.

With his usual clever and very witty way of communicating, former Major Antanas Mockus made reference to his strategies for “acting on the action”, this, knowing that human actions are multimotivated and multiregulated (by norms and rules) and that because of this, this knowledge facilitates its transformation. Former Major Mockus leaded us to a journey towards a territory where  something he coined as “citizehship cuture” had place; being driven by the creativity factor. All this en-route the improvement of Bogotá’s life quality during his mandate.

His political approach besides being quite rich, stimulated the audience and nurtured the conversation on Design and Social innovation. Professor Mockus intervention was way inspiring, sharing deep and moving ideas among which his most important academic surprise in the last 10 years, which is that regulation depends on emotions. From there then, questions regarding the role of design could/should now be addressed. How could design help  harmonizing the gap between law, moral and culture? how creativity be instrumental on that?

In this second part of Professor Ezio Manzini was tempted to react to Professor Mockus intervention, but decided to develop such conversation at the final panel. Relevant there was to highlight the conversation that emerges when trying to articulate rules and innovation, this shaped by means of creativity.

Professor Manzini´s speech was based on “what designers can do in the realm of social innovation. This, lead by short photo-stories narrating/describing and comparing cases of social innovation trying to find out differences between initiatives and “projects” related to bottom-up creativity, initiatives that stay just like that without any external “professional creative” help. This compared with other cases in which the “hand” of the designer can be traced, by having he/she provided a platform to develop such initiatives in technological, logistic, graphic, etc, ways.

And so Professor Manzini concludes that as a complex artefac, Social innovation can be prompted/enhanced/helped by design because it is able to make it last, it can help transforming the stories born from the bottom up and build up not just a project that works for the community and thus for the city itself,  but a theoretical body from which design can keep growing.

Professors Ezio Manzini & Antanas Mockus

Professor Manzini stated that he did not totally agreed with the way in which Prof. Mockus presented the “story” of the rules, because according to Prof. Manzini rules are not necessarily things that people “hate”. After a short chat, both of them agreed with the fact that there is another way to follow the norms and it is simply because people like them.

In this line, it was suggested that the “story” of sustainability does not have to be a burden for people, citizens have to feel motivated and like it, because it is not a matter of obligation nor fear, it is just that people deeply agree with it.

At that point Professor Mockus stressed the fact that people should also feel “admiration” for the law because bad repression destroys cooperation, he found lots of meeting points between social innovation and behavioural economics theories.

Later on, Professor Manzini talked about the importance of moving from “user’s centred design” to “comunity centered design” in order to walk towards sustainablity trying to reduce difficulties and enhanced people’s capabilities and will,  to this,  Prof. Mockus replied with his preocupation for developing a participatory city building that could help to, for instance, get small cities closer to the academia and thus the issue of social innovation in a way that it could be effectively applied.

Our guests agreed also upon the fact that the academia can be a positive antenna to detect cases of social innovation and efforts that may help improve quality of life.

Tuesday August the 25th and Wednesday the 26th 2009

WORKSHOP

The main scope of this workshop was, having acknowledge the existence of cases of social innovation world-wide, getting participants closer to our Colombian reality bringing and working on the possible intervention of cases that were already mapped and collected during the pre-workshop.

To make the story short, a set of 5 cases was selected,  namely: El Cazanoticias, Wednesday’s bicycle trips, NIghts Without fear, Guasca farm-market and Idrocolectivo Wetlands, which are  briefly described below.

Remarkable of this workshop was the opportunity to have students from different regions of the country not just working together but getting to know the existing Colombian initiatives and review them from their designers perspective, getting to know the value underneath each initiative.

THE CASES

1. WETlands

Group:

Maria Camila Velasquez Sierra – Universidad de los Andes – Bogotá, Colombia

Maria Cristina Ibarra Hernandez – Universidad Del Norte – Barranquilla, Colombia

Carlos Castellanos Neira – Universidad de los Andes – Bogotá, Colombia

Jose Vicente Salazar Ibáñez – Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano – Bogotá, Colombia

The Córdoba wetland is a green spot inside the city of Bogotá that crosses 3 neighborhoods, having a total area of 43 acres approximately. It is the habitat for 118 bird species and a great variety of insects and microorganisms.

In the lately 90´s the Wetland was endangered with building invasive projects that promised a huge disaster in the ecosistem. As a result,a group of five enterpreneurs with different careers and education, created IDROCOLECTIVO, which main Goal is to diffuse their experience and knowledge in different fields the Wetland´s value among the neighbours, so they can be all involved in every desition that is proposed to be made for the area.

Description:

IDROCOLECTIVO is the initiative of 5 young people composed by 1 biologist, 2 artists, 1 psychologist and 1 designer; their Goal is to educate the community that doesn’t know the importance of this ecosystem. To encourage the people to participate, they designed events like tours and art exhibitions.

In order to preserve the wetland, big groups of people shall be avoided because they can cause an impact in the ecosystem. What this group do is to promote the value of the Wetland to a limited group of people, including students, scouts, citizens and anyone who lives around this area. It’s also limited the time dedicated to this matter, every 15 days the group organizes art exhibitions which  include photography, sculpture, expositions and general info that shows and spreads the  richness  of the habitat. The time applied to these activities cannot be used all year long continiously because of budget reasons.

Enabling solution

The physical platform or bridge will create the space where the community will have a distant contact with the wetland. In this way the window intention of observing from the distance (that communicates respect, self consciousness and far admiration), was made in a different way that accomplished the same objective. The platform is located in the wetland limits and at the same time allows people get a better glimpse of the landscape, transmitting the message that observing from the outside must be the adequate way of interacting with it.

2. Sana Mente

Cooperative farming learning on typical agriculture.

Place: Guasca, Bogotá savannah, Colombia.

Group:

Silvia Guevara Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá

Angela Boyacá Universidad de los Andes – Bogotá, Colombia

Santiago Kattah Universidad de los Andes – Bogotá, Colombia

Description: The organic producers association started in Guasca 7 years ago thanks to a woman who believed organic products might compete with quality and health benefits, related with traditional chemical grown plants. Today there are 70 farmers who learn and are practicing the organic agriculture. The goods produced by the people are sold in the traditional town’s Sunday market of Guasca, the organic production is focused mostly on vegetable fruits, vegetable and chicken growing.

Enabling solution

Concept idea:

To organize an organic farmer community in the area of Guasca, interested in developing a product  and service based market that tends to serve a tourist urban public. Its a whole system that is focused on teaching, practicing and enjoying the agriculture habits centered on organic farming, some aspects that will be explored are: harvesting, growing, collecting, washing, preparing and finally consuming the products. Visitors participate on every aspect and will have to cooperate with their work and share with others, this way they feel a compromise with themselves, and got the respect and visibility  farmers own for centuries but have lost because thanks to centralization and urban production focus, Anyway we have to recognize Colombia is an Agriculture based Country and Cities are developing thanks to the fields and farmers that feeds. This initiative will create on tourists the dependence feeling , and the impact agriculture deservs.

For this, it is necessary to promote the initiative among the organic food producers, find the ways to organize a farm with its infrastructure that can attend the tourists, develop the different aspects related to  production that will be able to be the farm self-sufficient and let the tourists and farmers develop the whole system initiative. Publicity got to be done on the urban areas that promote the good aspects and offer plans for family, friendly or school trips on weekends.

As soon as Visitors arrive will be organized in groups and will be assigned different farming tasks that will have to develop by cooperating with each others and coordinating every related activity on watering plants, harvesting, collecting, washing preparing and eating the animal and vegetal organic products.

At the end of the day the visitors will have experienced a totally different and innovative idea that let them know the importance and dependence to urban habitants on farmers and productive fields on the agriculture. Related on organic products benefits, and ways of preparing typical dishes and our gastronomy.

Share with other tourists, farmers with their families so they will know the whole agri-culture tradition in our Country.

The model might be done on other areas that pretend to attend visitors from other places in different regions of our country, we have to notice the importance and impact agriculture have on our daily life.

3. NIGHTS WITHOUT FEAR

Team:

Leidy Abril

Adriana Almeida

Diana Gomez

Sandra Mendez

Place: Bogotá, Colombia. Locality of Suba.

Description:

It’s a community where people organize meetings as a non-violent response to violent threats and as a way to re-appropriate public space, which belongs to them and has been taken away.

Empowered case

Concept idea: Mobile Nights Without Fear

The aim is to create a pilot plan based on Nights Without Fear to reproduce this action in other communities.

Improvement realized:

As has been said before, Night Without Fear is an action against violent threats. This kind of violence is a common reality in Bogotá and Colombia as well. So, through an informative video will be presented the main structure of Nights Without Fear, which will be reproducible in communities where this kind of problems are part of their daily life and they want to change that fact. In a vehicle, the organizers of NWF will deliver the video and answer any questions people from other communities may have. This is so to help new actions in different places.

Enabling solution elements

List of the components and their synthetic presentation:

Nights without Fear Work Team: it is the one that will help other communities organize the event at their own places. It is composed of 6 people al least. Each person is in charge of one activity.

Cine-forum and discussion: selects the movie that will be presented, and the discussion that will be around the selected topic.

Food and beverage: coordinates the Caldo and Canelazo cooking.

Security coordinator: takes care of security issues.

Traditional games: is in charge of obtaining the games, either rented or borrowed.

Music shows: gets the musicians to be presented on stage.

Main Manager: coordinates all the other actions besides legal actions (ask for permissions and sponsorships).

Event representation vehicle: is a car from someone belonging to the community, who accepts borrowing it, in order to give the event a friendly, trustful image by being somehow a mobile office.

Video: for its realization it is necessary to document all the processes needed to make it possible. To organize the information, identify problems and give some suggestions for them to be solved. The video will be an instructional guide presented by the Nights Without Fear organizers, showing the positive results they have accomplished.

4. WEDNESDAY BICYCLE TRIPS

The initiative was born four years ago and pretends to empower the appropriation of an existing infrastructure (bicycle paths) on Wednesday’s nights. It began as a group of friends who likes to get together and ride their bikes for entertainment and sport, at the same time with the intention of knowing the city, riding as a group for security benefits, more people started to join them.

Empowered case

Concept idea: A distributed opportunity for citizens to reappropriate of their city, replicating the Wednesday bicycle trips idea and system developed only in a certain sector of Bogotá. Generating a wider structure diffused in different gathering points, that gives the opportunity to more people to join the initiative.

Enabling solution elements

Web site:

The website aims to consolidate a community around the usage of bicycle paths and to become a tool to enable all the members to propose possible meeting point trips and any other ideas.

Trainers:

Staff of the initial idea, they are in charge of instruct the future organizers of the subgroups.

Gathering point:

The new gathering points pretend to increase the access to the initiative for more people all around the city.

Sponsors:

The initial sponsors are supposed to be present on the distributed gathering points, and local participants or establishments of each group area are invited to support the idea with their products, services or facilities. At the same time, governmental entities can facilitate cultural activities to be integrated to the trips.

5. HOMEREPORTERS – CAZANOTICIAS

“Home Reporters” (Cazanoticias) is a Colombian denouncing TV show, that helps people to get communicated with authorities, who would provide solutions.

The Internet-based collaborative application suggested, supports the current broadcast system from the ‘Home reporters’ TV show. The idea is to make visible the unsolved cases on TV emission, in order to enhance the coverage, to give attention and to relate them with pertinent instances.

Description: ‘Home Reporters’ (Cazanoticias) is a Colombian TV program that shows daily life problems pointed out by the normal TV viewers who act as journalists, identifying cases such as: security problems, deficient urban infrastructure, public health, among many others community issues.

The TV show process begins when a normal citizen identifies one of the problems mentioned before, he is supposed to register it by any image, taken by technological media (digital or video cameras mainly), then he/she can send it to the TV show by email or physical mail. Usually the show receives a large number of denounces and the edition committee analyses and decides which are the chosen ones to broadcast after the proper verification.

Empowered case

Concept idea: Network solution

Our intervention proposal is focused on one of the weak links we identified: since the time on TV is really restricted, the most of the cases received by the show can’t be emitted or solved due to the show’s popularity. Based on the unsatisfied denounces of the group of people who can’t get an answer for their requirements, we want to increase the response capability and visibility by using other technological media with more direct participation possibilities as the Internet. The idea is that people who can’t get a direct answer from the show would be redirected to an internet-based collaborative application, which would get together many users with similar problems and increase the critical mass that can have a more effective solution to the problem. Internet application would first of all help the show stuff to classify the cases based on many tools, such as forums, polls, social networks and statistics, everything in order to give them visibility and to relate them with the pertinent authority, instance or possible solution.

Improvement realized: (1000 characters)

Description of the improvements realized

• What are the demands it responds to?

It responds to inefficiency in the actual system to categorize the enormous number of cases, make them visible for others and to search for a solution to all of the cases received.

• What is the aim of the solution? +

This improvement increase the number of people that became visible to the society and also to other home reporters to get links and increase the critical mass that can work together to get a fast solution . Also some extra material can be produced, through which cases can be followed.

• What happens and how it happens?

People uses the new platform explaining their denounces. All the information is classified first through the platform and then by the team of “cazanoticias” to decide which ones are broadcastable and which are used for the platform. The format can classify, organize and give some results to have a complete feedback for home reporters and the authorities.

Main actors (promoters, supporters, users, connections):

• Promoters: Felipe Arias (Director and host), Gisselle Aparicio (Producer, coordinator and editor), Jennifer Hernandez (Practicing-Researcher), Elias B. Gonzalez (Practicing-Researcher). Select all the material that can be used on the show and in the platform.

• Providers: RCN Channel (TV),

• Other people and organizations involved: Policia Nacional (Colombian national police), they provide information about denounces. Depending of the case different government entities are involved. The platform serves as a more efficient link between the community and the authorities.

• Final users: Mid class people, who can denounce, make visible their cases and connect with more denouncers with the same problem, even they share neighbor.

• Connections: is the initiative connected or affiliated to a network or an entity? Yes RCN television.

Benefits: why is the improved case is more sustainable? Is it reducing environmental impact? Is is regenerating social fabric?

Yes, the platform can connect different people with the same problem and initiatives, also reaches different instances that seems to be so far, where problem can be solved directly.

Enabling solution elements

1- Denouncer is the responsible of filling the platform form with different denounces. Then they can make some connections with others who have the same denounce or live in the same neighbor. This empowerment of people´s voice gives more power to this critical mass to have better and quick results.

2- The RCN journalists (Cazanoticias team) receives all the information, already clasified by the platform, Then they broadcast them, and made the due contact. They also control the show website.

3- Digital platform (website) is a way to improve the existing system. The case collection is easier and more organized because a format classifies cases according to subject, geographic area, and affinity of possible solutions. In this way people would have the chance of looking what is happening on their neighbor, because authorities could publish the information received by cazanoticias, helping the cazanoticias stuff in the information verifying.  Website tabulates the results to maintain a constant feedback for denouncers as for journalists and authorities.

UNTIL HERE THE CASE STUDIES. THE IDEA IS TO IMPROVE THE WEBSITE AND MAKE A GALLERY FOR EACH ONE; THIS ALSO TO MAKE A FOLLOW UP OF THE DEVELOPMENT/INITIATIVE/INVOLVMENT OF PARTICIPANTS WITH EACH ONE.

Thrusday August the 27th

Professor Manzini goes to Medellín. Kindly invited by the Pontificia Universidad Bolivariana.

Friday August the 28th

Professor Manzini is invited to the first formal meeting of Desis Colombia to entlight a bit the consolidation process of the Desis Chapter in Colombia.

The meeting had place at the Nacional University where besides the meeting he got to know the initiatives that in the sustainability realm the Nacional University has developed, such as the community gardens and the Bicycles workshop.

Saturday and Sunday, August 29th and 30th

Professor Manzini got to know initiatives promoted by comunities nearby the city in small town such as Zipaquirá, Guasca and Guatavita.

In Guatavita he met the indigenous that are leading the Tourism based project to protect and guide visitors around the El Dorado lagoon. Also had the opportunity to visit sancturary of Sesquilé where a community of indigenous belonging to the Muiscas tribe, make efforts to consolidate its roots and “remember” where do they come from, which are their ancient practices, rites, medicine, etc.

Nearby Guasca the farmer´s market was visited. And near Zipaquirá the PANACA project was visited by kind invitation of their organizers to have a look of this “thematic park” which aims at getting closer citizens to the rural area, its uses, values and products.

Finally, Professor Manzini had the chance to discuss with members of the Los Andes Design department staff, topics related to research methods, tools, and recommendations, stating why, for him, the utmost important issue, despite the branch of the discipline where a designer could stand, is to keep in mind that Sustainability is not an application field, not a discipline but a transversal tension along the whole design practice.

Thanks for visiting Professor!

fotos: Momo, Kataki, Javier Cardona.