Icograda World Design Congress 2009

Pat Knapp is in Beijing, China this week representing the SEGD at the Icograda World Design Congress 2009. There has been are great deal of talk regarding sustainability issues. Marc Alt, Brian Dougherty, and Sophie Thomas were among the sustainability leaders who spoke throughout the week.

Below is an except from Pat's blog post on blog.segd.org. You can also read about a speach Leslie Gallery Dilworth gave in a crowded lecture hall on the campus of China’s largest design school, the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

“Are we at the service of just making things, or is our purpose to make things better?”
That was the question posed by Marc Alt and others this week in Beijing, as the Icograda World Design Congress 2009 focused the attention of 1,700 designers and design educators from around the planet on design’s role in sustainability and social justice issues.

“As designers, we’re feeling a crisis of confidence around producing materiality in the world,” noted Alt, principal of New York-based Marc Alt + Partners, a design, research, and strategy agency dedicated to sustainability and social innovation. He is also co-founder of the AIGA’s Center for Sustainable Living.