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Reform Conference 08

Sustainability is a topical subject in contemporary society, so often however the rhetoric is overwhelming and knowing how to integrate it into our professional lives appears difficult.

The ReForm 2008 Conference on Tuesday 4th November (run as part of Design Week Ireland 2008) offers designers (both professional and student) and those working in the design realm, the opportunity to explore new concepts and to learn how to implement sustainability principles into their daily practice. The parallel conferences will be held in IT Carlow and the Cork IT

Lectures from a variety of experts will be linked with participatory workshops where pragmatic tools and skills will be demonstrated. The topics will include Cradle to Cradle thinking for designers and business, Sustainable Product Design Innovation & Sustainable Development for the Cork Docklands.

Parallel sessions will be held in both IT Carlow and the Cork IT where the expert speakers will link in via video conferencing, this allows us to not only share the knowledge but also to bring experts closer without the negative ecological impact.

The IT Carlow venue will focus on Sustainable Product Design, Innovation and Product Service Systems
The Cork IT venue will focus on Sustainable Architecture/Interior Architecture and the Sustainable Development of the Cork Docklands.

It is intended that the mix of design disciplines will facilitate cross disciplinary collaboration and give designers and business people the opportunity to look at how sustainability thinking can be a core part of their practice.

Keynote Speaker (By Video link)
Michael Braungart www.braungart.com

PROF. DR. MICHAEL BRAUNGART has been a professor of Process Engineering at Universität Lüneburg (Germany) since 1994, and he is also serving as director of an interdisciplinary materials flow management masters program. He is the scientific director of EPEA International Umweltforschung GmbH (Hamburg, Germany), which was founded in 1987 and co-founder of McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) in Charlottesville, Virginia. He co-founded the Hamburger Umwelt Insitute (HUI) in 1989, as well. These organizations share a common set of values that embrace intelligent, aesthetic and eco-effective design and seek to optimize products with the Cradle to Cradle framework. Through these activities, Professor Braungart has developed tools to design eco-effective products and business systems and has worked with a number of organizations and companies in a range of industries. He has accepted a visiting professorship at the Darden School of Business, lecturing on such topics as eco-efficiency and eco-effectiveness, Cradle-to-Cradle design and Intelligent Materials Pooling, and he continues to teach at universities all over the world.

Other keynote speakers Include:

At IT Carlow:
Tim Allen- Locus Research (New Zealand) www.locusresearch.com
Ryder Meggitt- Element Zero Six (Scotland) www.elementzerosix.co.uk
Jonathan Crinion- holistic design ecology (UK) www.holisticdesignecology.org

At Cork IT:
Brian O'Brien- Solearth Architects www.solearth.com
Jim Harrisson- on Curitiba, Brazil
Roddy Hogan -Cork Docklands www.corkdocklands.ie

To Book email :
Cork IT- Orla Flynn This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

IT Carlow-Adam de Eyto This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.