The Ecological Turn Conference, Bologna, Italy

How does the ecological thinking affect architects, designers and the design culture itself?

The Anthropocene has the merit of challenging our conventions in an oblique manner by reconnecting the history of mankind with the history of the Earth. The ecological thinking understood here will not be a generic reconciliation with nature, but a political project, a clash between narratives, a challenge to designers and architects, their materials and their design practices to rethink the way in which human beings define themselves, their images and relationships within the world in which they live. In this respect, design visions can be the tool for activating new relations.

The international conference The Ecological Turn wants to explore this upcoming world view setting from a multidisciplinary perspective. Within this process of change, we want to discuss how the figure of the architect and designer reviews their role, their knowledge, their experimenting with new design approaches, by  answering mainly two questions:

•   How to represent, imagine, visualize the Anthropocene through design cultures?
•   How can this political event change the production and design processes?