The Risk Society

How can design help us overcome the global risks of today? How does the concept of risk intersect with political change, which in turn may have impact on design implementation? And how might risk help us to develop our understanding of design, with the aim of making a better future?

Over the last 18 months the world has experienced unpredictable and unprecedented challenges. Natural disasters, economic downfalls, rising violence and ecological uncertainty are some of the global risks that have come to define our time. This year’s Beazley Designs of the Year reflects the ways in which design is responding to these risks through inventive acts of resilience.

The symposium lends its name from the late sociologist and social thinker Ulrich Beck’s seminal book Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (1986).Taking Beck’s analysis as a point of departure, it questions how design as a discipline can provides cities, communities and individuals with tools to prepare for social, economic and political threats and uncertainties.

In examining work from Beazley Designs of the Year and elsewhere, speakers will reflect on topics including; globalisation, the migrant crisis, artificial intelligence and the Anthropocene.

Speakers include: Glenn Adamson, Jaya Klara Brekke, Mercedes Bunz, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Adam Greenfield, Grainne Hassett, Helga Schmid, Jack Self, Aram Han Sifuentes, Christina Varvia, Ben Vickers and Austin Zeiderman.

Background image | ©Jack Self 2017