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Event Details
Humanizing Energy: Design and Art for Energy Transition
Guest editors: Barbara Di Prete, Agnese Rebaglio and Lucia Ratti (Politecnico di Milano)
In a time of “polycrisis” (Tooze, 2021) such as the one we are currently experiencing, energy sustainability is considered a primary emergency, and one that even institutional actors are addressing, with culpable delays and with policies that often remain too extemporaneous; in this scenario, design and art represent strategic levers of action and innovation, to stimulate paradigm changes, to experiment new technologies and new conceptual-operational models and, in short, to explore more sustainable scenarios for the future.
In this vision, design disciplines intervene in the "hard" components of the energy transition and its "soft" and more relational and qualitative aspects. Such a dimension is ‘close’ to individuals and calls upon their personal responsibility without devolving solutions solely to institutions, companies, and international bodies. In such a scenario, the energy transition is instead based on the collective participation of all social entities, both formal and informal, and thus requires a sharing of themes, scales, and project intentions.
Community, care, technology, culture, identity, education, neighbourhood welfare, behavioural change, urban biodiversity, social and ecological networks, soft mobility, and urban resilience are some of the themes that should converge for a sustainable and inclusive energy transition.
The aim is to understand how the tools and skills of art and design can bring about innovations in meaning and provide new value, social and operational models, acting on a multiplicity of scales and spheres (e.g., domestic and urban space, product-services systems, communication campaigns, exhibition devices, architectural artefacts, installations, and public artworks, event design, etc.).
The call, therefore, intends to investigate – through projects, research, testimonies, experiments in progress, or anticipatory visions – the contribution that design and art can provide to support the energy transition, acting to change the everyday habitat towards the use of renewable sources, intelligent devices, community models for resource sharing, and technical as well as social infrastructures capable of responding to the challenge that awaits us.
Abstract submission by email to editors@padjournal.net
Timing
Launch of the Call: January 2024
Abstract: 10 March 2024
Full Paper: 8 April 2024
Double Peer Review: 8 May 2024
Publication: by the end of June 2024
Additional details here: https://www.padjournal.net/new/humanizing-energy/
