Plenary Speakers

The International Conference on Design Principles and Practices will feature plenary sessions by some of the world’s leading thinkers and innovators in the field, as well as numerous parallel presentations by researchers and practitioners.

Garden Conversation Sessions

Plenary Speakers will make formal 30-minute presentations. They will also participate in 60-minute Garden Conversations – unstructured sessions that allow delegates a chance to meet the speakers and talk with them informally about the issues arising from their presentation.

Please return to this page for regular updates.

The Speakers

Mariana AmatulloAmatullo founded the design for social impact program Designmatters in 2001. Through her leadership, Art Center is the first design institution to be affiliated as a non-governmental organization with the United Nations. The Designmatters award-winning portfolio unites educational objectives with advocacy and social innovation outcomes that are disseminated globally. A native of Argentina, Amatullo is a Non-Profit Fellow with the Doctor of Management, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. She holds an M.A. in Art History and Museum Studies from the University of Southern California and a Licence en Lettres Degree from the Sorbonne University, Paris.

Banny Banerjee

Banny is interested in realizing the design field’s potential in catalyzing systemic change. As design begins to grapple with increasingly complex problems, at the Stanford Design Program, he is working on developing radically new processes in which design thinking can be leveraged. His focus is to develop transdisciplinary processes to bring about rapid change and large-scale impact. He is the founder of the “Design for Change Lab” to address issues of sustainability, technology futures, and the dynamics of rapid change. Currently he is working with faculty from behavioral sciences, social economics, systems analysis, management science, engineering, and art to generate new platforms for design thinking.

Originally trained as an architect, Banny Banerjee holds graduate degrees in Architecture, Mechanical Engineering, and Design. In India, he worked in the fields of architecture, structural engineering, adobe housing for the rural poor, and low embodied energy building systems. After coming to the US, he worked in the fields of computer simulation for energy in complex systems, software engineering, mechanical engineering, product design, industrial design, furniture design, interactive art, and design strategy. His interests in the confluence between digital and physical experiences took him to Xerox PARC where he worked on ambient media and physical computing. Prior to Stanford, he worked for IDEO as designer and design strategist creating novel experiences and crafting futures for high technology companies.

As a person who likes to cross boundaries between disciplines, he has worked on projects related to architecture, energy analysis, software design, structural engineering, MEMs applications, nanotechnology, ambient media, object semiotics, space missions for Jet Propulsion Laboratories, low cost structural systems, sustainable design, appropriate technology for third world countries, organizational transformation, technology strategy, and technology art.

Despite his interest in technology and design theory, he likes to be elbow deep in design work. He is happiest in the presence of sharp minds, sharp cutting tools, wood dust, cutting oil, and the smell of solder.

Philip Beesley

Philip Beesley MRAIC OAA (Professor School of Architecture, University of Waterloo; examiner University College London) is an architect developing responsive kinetic architectural environments that approach near-living functions. His work is widely cited as a pioneer in the rapidly expanding technology of responsive architecture. He has authored and edited eight books, three international proceedings and a number of catalogues, and appears on the cover of Artificial Life (MIT), LEONARDO and AD journals. He has been responsible for some 150 architectural projects. He was selected to represent Canada for the 2010 Venice Biennale for Architecture, and has received worldwide press including WIRED, TEDx, Discovery Channel features. Distinctions include Prix de Rome in Architecture (Canada), VIDA 11.0, FEIDAD, Dora Mavor Moore and a number of Distinguished Performance awards from Waterloo. His graduates have received 2 Fulbright and 2 Tsinghua fellowships and the Berkeley prize. Beesley’s funding includes core CFI, SSHRC, NSERC and Canada Council for the Arts grants and he served as Dissemination Director for the NCE-funded Canadian Design Research Network. His service includes executive board member for ACADIA (Association for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture), and adjudicator for numerous grant programs.

Lorenzo Imbesi

Lorenzo Imbesi is an architect, with a PhD in Environmental Design, and is Associate Professor at Carleton University, School of Industrial Design (Ottawa, Canada), and he has been teaching and researching at Sapienza University of Rome from 1997. He is a critic and essayist for many reviews, and is currently Co-Director of the magazine “DIID – Disegno Industriale” and speaker also as keynote and coordinator for international conferences and curator of design exhibitions and events. His interests range over Design Culture, focusing its critical expressions and theoretical inter/trans/post-disciplinary implications connected with contemporary knowledge society and the social, cultural and ethical impact of new technologies and artifacts.

Loredana Di Lucchio

Loredana Di Lucchio, Ph.D. in Design, is Researcher Professor at “Sapienza” University of Roma.

Her research and teaching activities are focused on the relationship between production, communication and consumption in order to investigate and define the strategic role of Design as driver for consumption aware behaviours.

She is speaker for international conferences, coordinator of several Italian Research Boards, essayist for theoretical and design reviews, in particular she is member of the editorial board of the magazine ‘DIID – Disegno Industriale Industrial Design’, and of the web-magazine of Italian Design Research Network ‘SDI Review’.

She has organized many seminars, workshops and exhibition about the relationship between Design and Brand with a particular attention at the semantic, productive and social implications.

At the same time, she has opened a personal focus on Asian Design, considered as emblematic expression of the contemporary culture.

Lev Manovich

Lev Manovich is the author of Software Takes Command (released under CC license, 2008), Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database (The MIT Press, 2005), and The Language of New Media (The MIT Press, 2001) which is described as “the most suggestive and broad ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan.” Manovich is a Professor in Visual Arts Department, University of California -San Diego, a Director of the Software Studies Initiative at California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (CALIT2), and a Professor at European Graduate School (EGS). He is much in demand to lecture around the world, having delivered 450 lectures, seminars and workshops during the last 10 years.