PM2024 qingdao

From 16.10.2024 to 18.10.2024 Platform Meeting

The Council is pleased to announce the 2024 Platform Meeting (PM2024) to be held in Qingdao (China) on 17-18 October 2024, preceding the Council's General Assembly. The Platform and General Assembly will be hosted by the Tsinghua (Qingdao) Academy of Arts and Science Innovation Research (TASA), a research campus of ICoD Member Tsinghua University.

Introduced in 2014, ICoD 'Platform Meetings' is a place for ICoD Members to gather to explore common challenges and action for change in a participative format. Unlike the formal Assembly, the Platform format was created for a more in-depth discussion on current issues in design practice and how they impact professional associations, the teaching of design and, ultimately, the role of the Council in facilitating these exchanges. At Platform Meetings, Educational, Professional and Promotional Members work through current topics of design professionalism traversing the regions and categories.

Exceptionally in 2024, we have elected to partner with TASA (our Member Tsinghua University's Educational Research Lab) to present you the first TASA-ICoD International Conference on Evolving Design Education Curricula, which will take place on on 17–18 October 2024, in Qingdao (China) at their beautiful new facilities. The Conference (Platform Meeting) will be followed by a reception and exhibition opening on the evening of 18 October 2024. The 2024 EGM and 30GA will take place in the same location on 19 October 2024.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
We are thrilled to announce the following three keynote speakers, experts on topics tying the history and future of design.

Alison J. Clarke is a professor of Design History and Theory, and Director of the Papanek Foundation at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Alison J. Clarke’s research deals with the intersection of anthropology and design; specifically in terms of their shared focus on the politics of material culture and social relations. Her recent monograph Victor Papanek: Designer for the Real World (MIT Press, 2021) explores the controversial origins of social design, casting a critical perspective on the origins of a movement claims to promote social justice through people-centred approaches. Her present book and research project Design Anthropology: Decolonizing and Recolonizing the Material World (MIT Press) explores the blurred historical boundaries between design practice and anthropology, and the social consequences of applied anthropology in the corporate design sector. Clarke’s research has been supported by numerous leading organisations including the Graham Foundation, the Smithsonian, Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) among others.

Anthony Dunne is a partner in the design studio Dunne & Raby as well as University Professor of Design and Social Inquiry and Co-Director of the Designed Realities Studio at Parsons / The New School in New York. He is also a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the China Academy of Art (CAA). His projects and writing with Fiona Raby explore ways of bringing different kinds of speculative thought from fields including philosophy, science, and literature into conversation with design. Their books include Hertzian Tales (1999, 2006), Design Noir (2001, 2021), Speculative Everything (2013), and Not Here, Not Now (Spring 2025) Their design projects are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the MAK, Vienna. In 2015, Dunne & Raby received the inaugural MIT Media Lab Award, and in 2021 they were made Royal Designers for Industry and Life Fellows of the Royal Society of Arts.

Alison J. Clarke and  Anthony Dunne, 

Keith Murphy is a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. His research focuses on the role of design in society and culture, as well as the overlaps between the design professions and social science. He has studied architects and type designers in the United States, and furniture designers in Sweden. His current research concerns writing and writing systems, and the people who work to take care of printing technology. Murphy co-edited Designs and Anthropologies: Frictions and Affinities, a volume demonstrating the importance and power of design and the ubiquitous and forceful effects it has on human life within the study of anthropology.

Bruce M. Tharp (co-Founder of the studio Materious) is believed to be the first industrial designer to receive a PhD in anthropology (University of Chicago), in 1998 Tharp began researching the material culture, focusing on the production & consumption of value. He first earned a BS in mechanical engineering from Bucknell University and a master’s degree in industrial design from Pratt Institute. In between his schooling, he served as a US Army nuclear weapons officer (Captain) in Germany. After researching the future of work and the workplace for Haworth Inc.'s design research think-tank, the Ideation Group, he began his teaching career. Over the last twenty years, he has been a tenured professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and currently at the University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design. His and his wife's award-winning design studio has exhibited internationally, licensed designs for local and global companies, and self-produced commercial, experimental, and discursive products. They also co-authored Discursive Design: Critical, Speculative, and Alternative Things (MIT Press), which is available in Chinese.

Keith Murphy and Bruce M. Tharp.

THEMES AND TOPICS
Current design practice and teaching are mired in outdated consumption and market models, myopic perspectives of design history and, too often, adherence to short-term corporate priorities. At this critical time, facing a climate crisis due to irrational consumption, amidst increasing social tensions – even as advances in technology promise greater benefits for all – good design offers a better future.

This demands reconsideration of traditional standards of professional practice and existing design education curricula. The topics to be considered at the conference include:

• How should the design education curriculum evolve to cope with 21st-century challenges and opportunities?
• How should professional standards of practice and codes of ethics evolve to better serve the designer community and how should these be included in design education?
• How can designers and design educators take “ownership” of the public design discourse that has been appropriated by marketers, corporations and self-styled “lifestyle” proponents – undermining public understanding of “good design” and its potential?
• How can “History of Design” courses, that currently focus on a Western narrative, mainly reflecting the last 200 years and market-driven models rooted in the Victorian “Industrial Revolution, be renewed, based on the capacity (propensity) of designing as a defining human attribute, common to all cultures and dating back into antiquity?

2024 CALENDAR

Welcome Reception | Wednesday 16 October 2024
The Welcome Reception for ICoD Members and community is planned for the evening of 16 October 2024, at 19:00 at the Qingdao SSAW Hotel (details below).

Platform Meeting | Thursday 17 – Friday 18 October 2024
The ICoD-TASA International Conference on Evolving Design Education Curricula will showcase keynote speeches, panel debates, and curated presentations, fostering ample opportunities for engagement and interaction.

2024 Extraordinary General Meeting | Saturday 19 October 2024
Members only event.

30 ICoD General Assembly | Saturday 19 October 2024
Members only event. See the 30 GA Event Page for more details on what happens at our bi-annual General Assembly. 

REGISTRATION
The Platform Meeting is open to all ICoD Members. Members can register for the Platform Meeting via the GA Registration site. If you are a Member and would like a link to this form, please either check your emails for bulletins from us or email events@theicod.org for more information.

Non-Member entities and members of the ICoD Community including Iridescent Network members, IDMN members, Affiliates and Lifetime Friends or others who are interested in attending the 2024 Platform Meeting as Observers may do so by invitation of the ICoD President. To request an invitation, please contact General Manager Marnie Guglielmi-Vitullo at office@theicod.org.

MEETING VENUE
The 30 General Assembly and related activities will be held in Building 01 of the Tsinghua (Qingdao) Academy of Arts and Science Innovation Research Centre, known as TASA. TASA is located in the Chinese city of Qingdao. The address is (in English and Chinese):

No. 2565, Jiaozhouwan East Road, West Coast New Area, Qingdao, Shandong Province

[中国山东省青岛市西海岸新区胶州湾东路2565号]

RECOMMENDED ACCOMMODATION
A special arrangement has been made with the Qingdao SSAW Hotel to provide accommodation for the Platform Meeting and 30GA participants. The hotel is located in proximity to the TASA campus allowing participants to walk to the venue.
Please reserve your room on the Booking website here. Note that a special rate of RMB 350 (approximately USD$ 50 / € 45) has been determined for booking in the period from 13–21 October 2024, including breakfast. You will note that when you book through the site above, the discount is only applied when you have selected your dates and have moved forward to reservation details. Please note that this site only takes reservations, you will not be charged when you reserve your room, the hotel is expecting full payment to be completed by credit card at the hotel.

VISA LETTERS

For Members, Visa letters should be requested through the ICoD GA Registration site. Non-Members invited to the event by TASA or ICoD will receive letters with their invitation. 

CONTACT

If you have any questions about the 2024 Platform Meeting or other activities in Qingdao, please contact our General Manager, Marnie Guglielmi-Vitullo at office@theicod.org.

This Event page will be updated regularly.