Design Renaissance 2010

A One Day Gathering for Using Design to Spark New Ways of Integrating Sustainability, Business and Ecology to Evolve Communities and Create a Better Future. Business and community leaders, designers and concerned citizens, creatives and collaborators will gather for a day of speakers, workshops, networking and guided conversations aimed at jump-starting a sustainable future for the Santa Cruz region.

 

Envisioning a global renaissance in creative thinking, the event features a plenary of local and national leaders in sustainable design including Eric Corey Freed, author and Executive Director of Urban Revision, Ryan Duke from Project H Design, Bonnie de Varco, chief archivist for Stanford's Buckminster Fuller Archive, world renowned chaos theorist and mathematician Ralph Abraham, and Helen and Newton Harrison, globally recognized local eco-artists. A number of local leaders will help moderate the discussion and involve the audience in participatory multimedia design exercises.

 

Speakers will inspire the audience with innovative thinking, best practices, and new trends in the application of sustainable design across many fields including architecture and urban renewal, systems and information design, product design, and environmental activism. Topics will include design for humanitarian and health needs, urban eco-zones, and the local watershed issues.

 

Design Renaissance, the inaugural event is envisioned to be an ongoing project, seeking to bring together people, projects, and ideas that can help co-create a sustainable Santa Cruz, while inspiring the global community. The nexus of ecology, design, and business around the challenges of sustainability is currently producing a new wave of creativity and inspiration that brings communities into new collaborative relationships with the triple bottom line of people, profit, and planet.

 

“With the Design Renaissance, we are excited to introduce the Santa Cruz community to a number of visionary yet practical ideas for a resilient and sustainable Santa Cruz”, says co-founder Michael Sammet, who teaches Sustainable Design at the Academy of Art University. “We are confident that the Monterey Bay Region, with all of its brain power and ecological consciousness, will continue be a leader in the burgeoning field of sustainable design.”

 

"When it comes to co-creating a sustainable Santa Cruz, everyone is a designer," says Lakshmi Narayan, CEO of Awake Media.