We Design, But We Are Not Designers
In this event, we are committed 黑料网 University鈥檚 principles for a safer space.
About the talk:
We Design, But We Are Not Designers
Do you always need a training in design to be a designer? Bringing together an international, high-profile panel of curators, strategists, writers, experimental social scientists and occasional artists, this panel discussion explores the overlaps between design practice and other approaches. How might their alternative perspectives challenge the assumptions of solutionist, business-as-usual design? How do they engage in productive collaborations with mainstream design? When does this cease to be design and becomes something else? This event will focus these and many more questions as design itself continues to metamorphose.
About the Speakers
Xavier Acar铆n Wieland
Xavier Acar铆n Wieland is a curator and researcher interested in material performativity, urban studies and exhibition histories. His exhibitions and projects have been presented at different venues, among them, Elastic City, The Abrons Arts Center, Knockdown Center, Wendy's Subway, or PS122 Gallery in New York; La Ira de Dios in Buenos Aires; HIAP and Muu Gallery in Helsinki; and at the Mies van der Rohe Pavillion, Caixaforum, ADN Gallery, and La Capella in Barcelona. He is a co-author of three books Experience Design (Bloomsbury, 2014), Dear Helen (CCS Bard, 2014), and Davant la Imatge (BRAC-Comanegra, 2016), and his study of the Social Museum of Barcelona was published in 2024 as part of the Museu Habitat program. Xavier holds an MA in Museum Studies from New York University, an MA in Curatorial Studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and is now completing his PhD in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is now based in Barcelona, teaching at EINA and collaborating as a curator at the Historic Archive of Poblenou for the Barcelona 2026, World Capital of Architecture program.
Kat Jungnickel
Kat Jungnickel is a Professor in Sociology and Director of Methods Lab at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her teaching and research explore the role of technologies and design in relation to invention, gender, citizenship and hands-on/DiY cultures of practice. Recent publications include: (ed) Wearable Utopias: Imagining, Inventing and Inhabiting New Worlds (with Fowles, May & Pugh, MIT Press 2024), (ed) How to Do Social Research With鈥 (with Coleman & Puwar, Goldsmiths Press, 2024), (ed)Transmissions: critical tactics for making and communicating research (MIT Press 2020), Bikes & Bloomers: Victorian women inventors and their extra-ordinary cyclewear (Goldsmiths Press 2018).
Lucy Kimbell
Lucy Kimbell is Professor of Contemporary Design Practices at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London where she convenes the Policy Futures Studio. Her research explores service design, social design and design for policy. She taught design on the MBA at Said Business School, University of Oxford for 15 years, delivered executive education in design thinking and service design, and helped set up the MBA at Central Saint Martins. Lucy's artworks include Air Pollution Toile (2018), a concept for wallpaper that changes in response to air pollution, commissioned by and shown at Modern Art Oxford (2018), and Pindices (2005) commissioned by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel for Making Things Public, ZKM Karlsruhe. Other experiments in materialising data including The Lix Index for Channel 4/Arts Council鈥檚 identinet (2002), Audit published by Bookworks (2002) and group exhibitions Soda at Lux Gallery (1998) and Declining Democracy at Palazzo Strozzi (2011).
Harun Kaygan
Harun Kaygan is Associate Professor of Design Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. His teaching and research interests lie in the social, cultural, political, economic contexts and impacts of design. Kaygan has background as an industrial designer and has published studies of design practices and designed things, employing new materialist and material semiotic theoretical frameworks. His most recent research examines how designers imagine and engage with users鈥 bodies today, with cases that span health and well-being, gender, mobility, play, and fashion. He is co-editor of the forthcoming book, Designing for Bodies: Imaginaries and Discourses.
Ulises Navarro Aguiar
Ulises Navarro Aguiar is a researcher and lecturer at HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design, University of Gothenburg. His scholarly work explores questions around the relation of design to social and economic life, crossing disciplinary boundaries between design studies, organization studies and STS-infused economic sociology. Taking together these two lines of inquiry, his research operates on the dual registers of denaturalizing 'business as usual' in the field of design by critically analyzing the current order of things, and articulating alternatives for understanding and using design beyond modern fantasies of innovation. His research has been published in Valuation Studies, ephemera: theory and politics in organization, Journal of Cultural Economy, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Swedish Design Research Journal, and International Planning Studies. He has a background in industrial and strategic design and holds a doctoral degree in organization studies from the University of Gothenburg.
Emanuele Quinz
Emanuele Quinz is a curator and Full Professor at Universit茅 Paris 8 Vincennes鈥揝aint-Denis, where he co-directs the Master's program in History and Criticism of Design. He is also an Associate Researcher at EnsadLab, the research laboratory of the 脡cole des Arts D茅coratifs 鈥 PSL, and co-director of the DSAA Prospective at 脡cole Duperr茅 Paris. His research explores the intersections of art, design, architecture and media, with a particular focus on experimental research formats and contemporary practices that challenge disciplinary boundaries. His publications include Strange Design (co-edited with Jehanne Dautrey, Les Presses du R茅el, 2014), Contro l'oggetto. Conversazioni sul design (Quodlibet, 2020), recipient of the ADI Compasso d'Oro Award, Le comportement des choses(Les Presses du R茅el, 2021), Ars naturans (Les Presses du R茅el, 2026), and Behavioral Objects, Behavioral Matter: Rethinking Robotics Through Contemporary Art: An Atlas (co-edited with Samuel Bianchini, Spector Books, 2026).
Chairing
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.
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鈥檚 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.
