#HTE

From Pneumatic Inflatables to Designing for Healthcare: Better World by Design 2016

This past weekend over 700 people gathered in Providence, Rhode Island for Better World by Design. In it’s ninth year, the conference held between adjacent college campuses Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University, brings creators, innovators and professionals of all types together for a three day long gathering to examine and promote the importance of critical design thinking. Based on the theme of Interplay, the conference was broken into three categories: Micro, Meso and Macro. Each day examined the social and physical scale at which interplay is occurring. Through thirty-five presentations, conference attendees critically analyzed design’s interdisciplinary power and gained greater understanding of how to truly strive towards creating a better world.

Photo Source: Better World by Design

While the official themes were Micro, Meso and Macro, presentations also seemed to fall into one of three categories: biological design, design’s role in policy and envisioning technological futures. From learning about cybernetics in an inflatable pavilion to hearing a woman talk about how she grew cheese from foot bacteria, envisioning design applications to urban infrastructure and healthcare, the workshops and lectures were as entertaining and engaging as they were informative and thought provoking. Thanks for an amazing conference Better World, see you next year for conference number ten.

Friday morning registration took place on RISD’s campus.

An inflatable structure by Providence-based design collective Pneuhaus was present provided the backdrop for registration throughout the weekend.

Thanks to the screen printing social venture Printambrose, even Better World’s tote bags given to attendees demonstrated how design contributes to creating a better world. Printambrose is a Michigan based screen printing social venture that employs urban youth transitioning to post secondary education while also providing them with entrepreneurial leadership skills.

Photo credit: Printambrose via Instagram

While pneumatic inflatable’s exterior looks like a RGB hedgehog, the interior felt like a rainbow-cloud dreamscape.

Synthetic biologist and artist Christina Agapakis of Gingko Bioworks opened the conference with her keynote “At the Microbe Scale,” in which she shared examples of combining design with biology, and an experiment in which she grew cheese from her foot bacteria.

In SAP Labs’ Kursat Ozenc’s presentation “Ritual Design Lab: Power to the Rituals!” attendees worked in small groups to identify the mechanics and power behind rituals.

Photo credit: Better World by Design via Instagram

The two Pneuhaus members used webbing and clips to create harnesses for 257 beachballs and set a beginning web for participants to work from.

Matt Muller and AugustLehrecke of Pneuhaus held the first workshop of the weekend, “Pneumatic Masonry,” on the RISD Beach.

Demonstrating the steps for assembly, the partners dislodged a group of balls from the mass and folded the pattern to create a more bulbous form.

Workshop attendees were instructed to pair off and follow the steps to assemble as many of their own beach ball formations as possible.